The 2024 Southport Riots: Social Media, AI, Exceptionalisation and the Mainstreaming of Racism and the Far Right

Event:

AI and the Far-Right Riots in the UK
Thursday 26 June 2025 6.00pm to 7.30pm
LSE - Hosted by the Department of Media and Communications

Organised and chaired by: Dr Beatriz Lopes Buarque (LSE)

On July 29th, 2024, three girls were fatally stabbed while attending a Taylor Swift dance event in Southport. Although the police did not disclose information about the attacker's identity, fake news about their ethnicity and religion rapidly spread on social media platforms alongside conspiracy theories claiming that the UK has been deliberately invaded by racialised migrants, particularly Muslims. The amplified combination of misinformation and disinformation coupled with the mainstreaming of the far right and its blend of racism and xenophobia culminated in what has been described as ‘the worst wave of far-right violence in the UK post-war’.

In this webinar, we will share insights from an interdisciplinary research project that investigated how AI influenced the riots. Funded by the LSE Urgency Grant Scheme and led by Dr Beatriz Lopes Buarque, the project brought together leading experts on the far right, alt-tech, racism, algorithmic culture, alt-tech, societal security, digital culture, and misogyny for a workshop aimed at identifying the role played by AI in the riots. The scholars involved in this project are: Dr Aaron Winter (University of Lancaster), Allysa Czerwinsky (University of Manchester), Dr Ashton Kingdon (University of Southampton), Dr Julia Ebner (University of Oxford), Dr Meropi Tzanetakis (University of Manchester), and Dr Robert Topinka (University of Birbeck).

Join us as we discuss the following topics, followed by a live Q&A session:

The algorithmic amplification of visual representations of racist conspiracy theories
The use of GenAI tools to incite racial hatred
The weaponisation of White femininity and White masculinity through GenAI
The algorithmic amplification across alt-tech platforms and mainstream social media platforms (X, Instagram, TikTok)
AI-driven harm and the normalisation of racism