“Many of them responded that they were also experiencing headaches and that the pain would come in these waves,” she said.

Some of 42-year-old Chernikhovskaya’s followers then urged her to read about the side effects of radiation from cell phone masts. This was her introduction to the global anti-5G conspiracy movement. Reading hundreds of blog and social media posts from the U.S., U.K. and Europe, she quickly became convinced that there was a connection between the way she felt and what many identified as the catastrophic threat posed by developments in cellular technology.

While often cited as a leading source of global disinformation, Russia has proven fertile ground for this Western-born conspiracy theory. Against a backdrop of uncertainty and fear over the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, the nation’s social media has over the past 12 months experienced a boom in anti-5G content.

Russia’s anti-5G movement is “first and foremost fed by international conspiracy theories in English,” explained Sarkis Darbinyan, founder of the Moscow-based Digital Rights Center during a telephone conversation.

Internationally, the theory’s adherents more or less agree that radiation emitted from cellphone masts leads to an array of health issues including headaches, insomnia, increased heart rate and the death of large numbers of otherwise healthy birds. Some followers also think that 5G towers are being erected as part of a covert scheme to subdue populations or to spread the coronavirus.

For many, including those in Russia, anti-mask narratives and coronavirus denialism go hand in hand with their beliefs. The most universal and foundational position, though, is that state authorities simply cannot be trusted. In many of her YouTube videos, Chernikhovskaya wears a homemade T-shirt bearing a graphic of a medical mask and the slogan “Covid-1984.” 

Soon after she began investigating the movement, Chernikhovskaya — who works as a translator and is fluent in English — found an online prophet. 

David Icke, a British former sports broadcaster, is a superstar of the conspiracy theory world. As the author of more than 20 controversial books, his personal appearances draw large crowds everywhere from the U.S. to Albania. His online videos alone have racked up more than 30 million views. The discovery of his anti-5G material came as a revelation to Chernikhovskaya. 

One strand of the anti-5G movement proposes that Covid-19 lockdown measures were imposed around the world so authorities could install 5G masts without attracting widespread attention. In line with this idea, Chernikhovskaya believed she had identified a pattern between lockdown announcements in the U.K. and Russia and the rollout of the technology.  

“I was really interested in all of this because in Russia we would hear the exact same lockdown announcements as in the U.K., just two days later,” she explained.

Anthropologist Aleksandra Arkhipova and her colleagues at Russian State University for the Humanities have collected and analyzed more than two million anti-5G messages posted on social media since January. Their goal was to examine the intersection between Covid-19 denialist movements and anti-5G activism. 

Arkhipova believes that Russia’s anti-5G movement is largely composed of individuals who have lost jobs during the pandemic. This summer, Russia reported unemployment numbers not seen since 2012 and that the average family income has fallen to a level not seen in the past two decades.

Arkhipova also explained that latching onto the anti-5G movement can be almost “therapeutic” for people dealing with the fallout of the coronavirus, as it creates a “language” for them to speak out against what they see as wider failings of governments to protect society.

In light of what they view as state negligence regarding 5G, some activists have taken matters into their own hands. Dozens of social media groups, largely hosted in the Russian platform VK, now feature instructions as to how to dismantle 5G towers. They clearly reference as examples cases in which activists set fire to masts in Germany and the U.K. In the U.K. alone, more than 70 such structures have been attacked. So far just one has been burned down in Russia. The incident took place in May, in the North Ossetian town of Nogir.

“You look at England and Europe and you see birds falling and dying,” said Anatoli Shatunov, an anti-5G proponent from Shakhti, a city on Russia’s border with Ukraine. “It’s the same thing happening here, it’s radiation.”

In May, activists in the nearby port city of Rostov-on-Don made headlines by linking arms around a newly installed cell tower, refusing to allow technicians to hook it up, for fear that it would spread the coronavirus.

That same month, a woman in Dagestan called for a cellphone mast to be burned down, referring to it as a “second Chernobyl” in an Instagram video that attracted a total of more than 40,000 views. No one took up her cause and she faced no legal consequences for her words. This year, the region has reported a surge in fatalities attributed to pneumonia. Meanwhile authorities have at times reported just two or three coronavirus deaths, stoking doubts over the government’s handling of the pandemic. 

Also prominent in Russian anti-5G circles is the Soviet Patriot movement. Members of this group live in an alternate reality, in which communism never fell. They are regularly arrested by authorities for refusing to pay taxes to the Russian Federation and some still carry Soviet passports as their only form of government ID. The involvement of this tendency follows a well-established pattern of disenfranchised individuals with a deep distrust of the state being particularly susceptible to conspiracy theories.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which Soviet Patriots consider the ruling body of their fictitious state, issued a recent resolution denouncing 5G technology. It explains that “it is paramount to prohibit the installation and use of all mobile cellular technology of the fifth generation, or 5G, across the entire territory of the USSR.” 

While the Soviet Patriots may be nostalgic for the authoritarianism of the past, they reject the legitimacy of the Russian Federation and deeply distrust government initiatives, especially when it comes to technology. Some members believe that Moscow’s coronavirus lockdown in the spring was a ruse to keep people off the streets as government officials ran “radiation tests.”

However, Russia’s most popular anti-5G activist is Nikolai Mishustin, a 47-year-old, Moscow-based father of six children. Mishustin is a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and regularly posts lengthy video addresses on a range of topics to his 27,000 VK subscribers. He saves his most vitriolic proclamations for Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who is no relation. The Prime Minister has championed nationwide digital reform as well as Moscow’s smart city program. 

“The digital swindlers are using our president like a marionette doll,” Mishustin says in one of his videos. “The government is abjectly and cynically forcing this digital apocalypse upon us.”

In August, Chernikhovskaya demanded that city technicians check out the antenna in her courtyard. Most Russian municipalities provide residents with a service to check radiation levels near their homes. Outside Chernikhovskaya’s building, radiation proved to be well below average levels, immediately debunking her theories.

“I literally stood right there with them, walked up to the antenna and measured the levels in my apartment,” Chernikhovskaya said. 

The technicians also informed her that there is only one 5G mast in the whole of Russia, located on Moscow’s central Tverskaya Street. It is also not yet operational. The city plans to roll out 5G no earlier than 2022, and there is, as yet, no plan in place for nationwide coverage. 

While Chernikhovskaya is still suspicious about the health implications of 5G, the focus of her YouTube channel has shifted back to coronavirus skepticism. When she posted footage of the radiation inspection, she said she was surprised that the videos got fewer views than her anti-5G videos.

Those who did watch, weren’t happy and made their feelings clear in their comments. 

“I received a flood of criticism, accusing me of being a turncoat, asking me why I was believing these people,” she said.

This reporting was supported by the Russian Language News Exchange.

The post Inside Russia’s anti-5G movement appeared first on Coda Story.

Here are a few narratives — real and fake — that have caught our attention:

A rash of stories are foisting pandemic anxiety into an already hostile environment toward migrants in Serbia. The stories are claiming that migrants are being awarded more government support than citizens during the pandemic. 

• These anti-immigration stories are “spreading like a contagion,” writes the newsroom Raskrikavanje which is running a live blog on Covid-19 disinformation. In at least one case, the country’s Commissioner for Refugees and Migration requested that a Serbian tabloid publish a retraction.

Key regional context: As with a number of other Balkan states, Serbia has been a key crossing point for hundreds of thousands of migrants since 2015. 

In early March before Covid-19 hit the country, President Aleksandr Vučić ordered the closure of national borders in response to a “threat to national security” from an anticipated wave of new migrants, rhetoric that human rights advocates have labeled repressive and inappropriate.

The pandemic’s impact on migration to Europe is already profound. Mediterranean countries are pushing back on enormous pressure to act on overcrowded detention centers. Greek and Turkish security forces have been accused of using violence to push back migrants and asylum seekers trying to enter its closed ports.

The Summer Olympics are postponed but the international competition for the country best able to exploit the coronavirus for national PR gain continues to be waged globally, and perhaps especially in the Middle East:

• China recently delivered four tons of medical aid to Cairo including much-needed masks and respirators. 
• Not surprising that Egyptian newspapers have gone heavy on this story, but with reports making much of the deep relations between the two countries and the spirit of international cooperation such a gesture embodies, this is a clear soft-power win for Xi Jinping and the CCP.

Two incidents from this week underscore an emerging pattern of suppression of free speech in India:

• On Wednesday, a TV news reporter was arrested in Mumbai for spreading “misinformation” by reporting that trains would resume service to transport stranded workers in Bombay back to their villages, after which a crowd of people apparently turned up at a train station in violation of the lockdown. It turns out he had correctly reported the contents of a letter written by a railway official and his TV network said in a statement condemning his arrest that his reporting could not reasonably be held responsible for the gathering at the train station.
• Also on Wednesday, the Indian state of Gujarat issued an FIR (similar to an indictment) against Prashant Bhushan, a prominent human rights lawyer and activist, for a tweet paraphrasing Marx’s adage on religion to criticize the government’s coronavirus response. The Gujarati police inspector didn’t seem to get the reference, telling the press that Bhushan was accused “of using word opium with Ramayana and Mahabharata in a tweet made on March 28 which has hurt the sentiments of many Hindu people.”

What it means: India’s pandemic trajectory has only begun. Anti-free expression forces are determined to not fall behind.

Coda’s staff reporter Isobel Cockerell is closely following how the pandemic has aroused the suspicions of the anti-5G movement. Find her list of top celebrity 5G/pandemic conspiracy mongers here. 

And here’s her latest reporting:
 

SPOTLIGHT: EUROPEAN 5G MOVEMENTS ᛫ Isobel Cockerell

Conspiracy-fueled arson attacks on cellular towers spread beyond the UK and into the Netherlands this week, as the Hague’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism announced several radio masts had been attacked. The copycat attacks are spreading, spurred on by conspiracy theories and misinformation that tries to tie coronavirus symptoms with the global rollout of 5G networks. 

These theories pose real dangers: according to research by London’s Kings College, those who subscribe to conspiracies that coronavirus is a hoax are less likely to follow social distancing and handwashing practices. 

In a sweeping move, Facebook took decisive action over the past few days by shutting down the UK’s most popular anti-5G campaign group, Stop 5G UK, which had more than 67,000 members before it was shuttered. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, anti-5G conspiracy groups have seen their numbers balloon as people search for easy answers to the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns.

In an online statement by Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen, the company said it had removed thousands of pieces of coronavirus-related misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm. 

But the anti-5G movement is moving fast. Mark Steele, one of the group’s most prominent influencers, said he was transitioning to sharing his content and followers to the encrypted platform Telegram, while other campaigners hurried to set up alternative groups on Facebook. Like so many misinformation stories, it’s becoming a huge game of whack-a-mole: fruitless, and interminable.

The latest across the infodemic:

• A new report by Australia’s Strategic Policy Institute has tracked the range of state and non-state actors exploiting and manipulating Covid-19 news, and has identified an effective Russian influence campaign targeting African countries.
• The criminalization of bad pandemic information is spreading, from serious penalties in South Africa to fines in Vietnam. 
• This video has nothing to do with Covid-19 but I can’t resist sharing this pandemonium of crabs in an airport, which clearly is even better than snakes in a plane.

Stay safe and healthy,

Ilan Greenberg

P.S. Thank you to the many Coda staff who contributed today: Gautama Mehta, Ariam Alula, Isobel Cockerell, Dave Stelfox, Katia Patin, and Alexandra Tyan.

The post The Infodemic: anti-migrant voices in Serbia capitalize on virus; social media platforms play whack-a-mole with 5G conspiracists appeared first on Coda Story.

So who are the leaders of the 5G coronavirus conspiracy game? Here’s a rundown:

Wiz Khalifa

36.2 million followers

It started with a four-word tweet. “Corona? 5G? Or both?.” But it created a storm. Over 41,000 likes later, rapper Khalifa became a Twitter hero of the 5G movement, and, as Twitter investigator Mark Owen Jones pointed out, a central node in the circulation of conspiracy theories on Twitter. But what does Khalifa’s tweet mean? Well, very little to those not well-versed in 5G conspiracy theories. But it sums up - succinctly - where most 5G conspiracy theorists are at. Some believe the coronavirus pandemic is the result of adverse reactions to radiation from 5G installation. Others believe the pandemic to be a cover-up to force people to stay indoors while mobile companies inside the network. Still more believe the virus is being made worse by 5G. Hence “Corona? 5G? Or both?”.

Keri Hilson

4.2 million followers

On March 15, the singer Keri Hilson - famous for feel-good songs like “Knock You Down” and “Pretty Girl Rock” – threw in her own two cents on the coronavirus conspiracy theories. “People have been trying to warn us about 5G for YEARS,” the 37-year-old tweeted to her 4.2 million followers. “What we’re going thru is the affects [sic] of radiation,” She added: “5G launched in CHINA. Nov 1, 2019. People dropped dead. See attached & go to my IG stories for more. TURN OFF 5G by disabling LTE!!!” Later, she told her followers that her management had instructed her to delete the tweets. Her posts divided her fans, who launched into debates about the role of 5G in the Covid-19 pandemic.

M.I.A.

650,100 followers

British rapper M.I.A – real name Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam – is famous for hits like “Paper Planes” and “Bad Girls.” But in March, she became vocal about something else. She tweeted to her 650,000 followers: “if I have to choose the vaccine or chip I’m gonna choose death.” The “chip” she refers to alludes to a fast-developing conspiracy theory – pushed heavily by anti-vaxxers and anti-5G campaigners – that the coronavirus is a ploy to mass-vaccinate the world’s population and implant them with a tracking chip. When asked by her followers if she was anti-vaccine, the singer said she was: “in America they made me vaccinate my child before the school admission. It was the hardest thing. To not have choice over this as a mother. I never wanna feel that again.” Just days after her anti-vaccine tweets, she was back: “Can you love vax and 5G at the same time?” she tweeted, before posting a picture of one of the UK’s many cellphone masts that were set alight by anti-5G arsonists last week: “they should just turn it off till after the pandemic!” she said. In an interview with Rolling Stone at the end of January, M.I.A said that this year she wanted “to get back to using the internet in a positive way. I don’t want to be an influencer. I want to be a truth dispenser.”

Woody Harrelson

60,800 followers

The Academy Award-nominated American actor known for his roles in “Zombieland”, “Cheers” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, began using his Instagram account as a platform to spread misinformation about 5G and CoVid-19, by sharing a video titled: “Meanwhile the Chinese are bringing 5G antennas down.” Harrelson had fallen for a hoax, and his followers were quick to help him out. The footage had in fact been filmed during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. 

Amir Khan

1.3 million followers

Champion British-Pakistani boxer Amir Khan joined the clamor of celebrities promoting conspiracy theories by posting a series of videos to his Instagram account, where he’s followed by more than 1.3 million people. “I think it’s a man-made thing guys it’s been put there for a reason, to keep everyone in while they test for 5G,” he wrote, adding that “it might be for population control.” Khan described how he had been watching a lot of videos about the situation. His post came as YouTube announced it was banning and deleting all conspiracy theories linking 5G to coronavirus after it live-streamed a lengthy interview with conspiracy theorist David Icke last week. 

John Cusack

1.6 million followers

Last week, John Cusack became the latest celebrity to push the 5G conspiracy theory. The Hollywood star tweeted to his 1.6 million followers. "5 -- G wil [sic] be proven to be very very bad for people's health," he wrote. He later deleted the tweet, but not before calling his followers who disagreed with him “just DUMB and fucking sheep”. The referral to people who don’t follow conspiracy theories as “sheep” is a common refrain in conspiracy communities.

Teddy Riley

68,500 followers

American music producer Teddy Riley, famous for producing titans like Mary J Blige, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Mariah Carey, began talking about 5G conspiracy theories on an Instagram live conversation with radio presenter Charlamagne tha God last week. Charlamagne commented about how many people were performing together during Riley’s recent “quarantine concert”, live-streamed from the producer’s home studio last week.  
“I was scared for you at that concert, bro, I’m not gonna lie. None of you were practicing social distancing at all. It was just a bunch of ya’ll all together – ain't nobody had no masks,” Charlamagne said. Riley appeared unconcerned – “I just really feel like we’re being bamboozled, you know what I’m saying? We’re being made to believe so many things that are not the truth,” he said. “It’s really about this new world order that they’re trying to put in with these 5G connections.” Charlamagne quickly moved the subject on. According to a study published last week by King’s College London and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, those who believe in 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories are less likely to comply with social distancing and hand-washing advice.

Amanda Holden

1.9 million followers

Amanda Holden, a judge on hit TV show Britain’s Got Talent, has almost two million Twitter followers. Throughout the lockdown, she’s been posting blast-from-the-past talent show videos, home workouts, and baking tips. Amid all the quarantine fun, last week she added a petition calling on the government to stop 5G. “Symptoms of 5G exposure include respiratory problems, flu-like symptoms (temperature rises, fever, headaches), pneumonia," the petition said. "Very much like the effects of the coronavirus." Holden’s followers were quick to react: “So sorry to hear about Amanda Holden,” one tweeted. “My thoughts are with her brain." The Guardian’s media editor later said he was contacted by Holden’s PRs, who explained that the TV star had accidentally tweeted a link to an anti-5G petition and does not believe in 5G conspiracies.  

The post Meet the celebrities pushing 5G coronavirus conspiracies to millions of fans appeared first on Coda Story.

New Zealand has received much-deserved praise for its handling of the Covid-19 crisis and for managing to not just flatten but actually squash the curve. But the country is not immune to the accompanying infodemic:  

• New Zealand’s social media is full of theories linking 5G to coronavirus 
• Mobile operators have called on police to investigate a string of threats and attacks on cell phone towers in the country, some of which have caused “irreparable damage” at a time when telecommunications is essential
• Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has condemned the conspiracy theories as “just not true” 

Background: Beliefs that 5G suppresses immune systems and causes cancer predate the pandemic, but the spread of Covid-19 has sent 5G conspiracy theorists into overdrive. Earlier this month, we reported on a Stop 5G UK Facebook page, which was  filled with apocalyptic messages and videos, claiming that the “virus is a result of 5G exposure, a mass depopulation project, a plot led by Bill Gates, or a ploy to vaccinate people with a tracking microchip.” 

An interesting development: Looks like Facebook just took down most of Stop5G pages, something the company has refused to do in the past. 

Sweden has remained largely open, keeping most people at work and isolating only the elderly and the vulnerable. The approach has been widely debated and criticized, especially as the number of deaths in Sweden began to climb. 

Over the weekend, Swedish radio ran a story saying that ice rinks might have to be used as morgues if the number of deaths continues to increase.

The report went largely unnoticed in the West, but the Russian state media hopped on the story, spinning it beyond recognition. 

• RT reported that “Sweden using ice rinks and shipping containers as morgues overflow due to Covid-19 deaths.” The article never links back the original sources of the story.
• Sputnik described Sweden’s “overloaded morgues,” and the story is now being picked up by Russian language outlets. 

Why this merits attention: It is a great example of how you can find a grain of truth in all effective disinformation campaigns.

It is also a perfect illustration of how Russia’s state media constructs a narrative around Covid-19 as a geopolitical failure of the West. The disastrous situation in Europe and the United States have given Kremlin-funded outlets plenty of disinformation fodder.  

Here’s another example: many websites are openly blaming the pandemic on the United States. This article, for example, says the virus was developed by USAID-funded research programs. 

Speaking of disinformation fodder: the lack of transparency about Covid-19 in North Korea seems to be fueling a wave of pre-election disinformation in South Korea. 

Coda’s Chaewon Chung has more below, so read on!

SPOTLIGHT: South Korea ᛫ Chaewon Chung

The outside world has praised South Korea’s government for its handling of Covid-19, but inside the country far-right groups are working hard to undermine the success by spreading Covid-19 related fakes ahead of a parliamentary election on Wednesday. 

Far-right influencers and thousands of their supporters have accused the government of blocking people from getting tested until the election and spread the news that President Moon Jae-in had tested positive (he hadn’t).

Many of the fakes also managed to weaponize the lack of transparency around the Covid-19 situation in North Korea. Conservative voters in South Korea have long been skeptical about the Moon administration's more liberal approach to dealings with the North. Covid-19 has allowed South Korea’s disinformation merchants to capitalize on this skepticism. 

On April 5, a far-right YouTuber posted a video that claimed South Korea’s government was producing one million face masks a day for export to North Korea. The video went viral. The comment section filled with angry reactions.

I spoke to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification who said that North Korea has not requested any medical supplies. 

The ministry dismissed the videos as “baseless” and “fake news,” and asked the Korea Communications Standards Commission to request that YouTube pull them. 

What makes the disinformation so potent is that South Koreans can only speculate about what is really happening in the North. 

One Twitter user said, “it is possible that the North Korean government would execute those who are infected to prevent further spread in their country.” 

A Japanese news outlet reported that more than 100 North Korean soldiers died, possibly from Covid-19 near the border with China. 

Pyongyang says it has no cases of coronavirus. The World Health Organization’s representative in North Korea said last week that the country had conducted 709 tests and none were positive. 

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification says they respect North Korea’s self-reporting on Covid-19, but most people are skeptical. 

“It is the nature of a socialist country to cover up information,” said Nam Sung-wook, North Korea studies professor at Korea University. “Throughout history, North Korea has never once admitted the damages made by any disease or virus outbreak. They are afraid to hurt their country’s system. But there is no one who would believe their claims.”

Hungry for more?

I want to give a plug to Reporters without Borders who have launched an impressive Covid-19 tracker looking at how the pandemic is affecting freedom of expression. 

The site is worth checking it out, but it won’t cheer you up. Here are three stories, all from China, RSF is highlighting: 

• Ai Fen, the head of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital and one of the original whistleblowers, has been unreachable since March 29, when she criticized the government's censorship around the epidemic in an interview for Ren Wu magazine.
• Chen Quishi is a lawyer who became well-known last year by making videos of the demonstrations in Hong Kong and who took a train to Wuhan on January 23 to find out what was going on. His video interviews with families and coverage of chaos in hospitals were viewed by hundreds of thousands and censored by China's platforms. But on February 6, his account was deleted and he has been missing since.
• Fang Bin is a textile businessman in Wuhan who documented overcrowded hospitals and showed the bodies of coronavirus victims inside buses turned into makeshift hearses. He has been missing since February 9. 

As RSF puts it, “without the censorship imposed by Beijing, the Chinese media would have informed the public about the gravity of the epidemic much sooner, sparing thousands of lives and possibly avoiding the pandemic.” 

Stay healthy,

Natalia

P.S. Many thanks to Coda’s Anastasia Ghviniashvili and Caitlin Thompson who helped to pull this newsletter together.

The post The Infodemic: North Korea’s lack of transparency on Covid-19 feeds disinfo in South Korea; New Zealand is not immune to 5G conspiracies appeared first on Coda Story.

Yesterday, a Facebook video rapidly spread through COVID-19-related community WhatsApp groups in London. “We know that they’re wanting a new world order,” a British man named Jason Nota said to the camera, before recounting theories from the far-right conspiracy QAnon, which claim the virus is a hoax. “The coronavirus is nothing but a smokescreen.” 

The video attracted more than two million views and 80,000 shares before it was removed, along with Nota’s profile. It offered a doorway into a panicked online world, filled with competing positions, all racing to fit the global proliferation of the virus into a shadowy alternate reality of secret cabals and elaborate world domination schemes.

Some of the loudest voices are found within anti-5G groups — a movement Coda Story reported on last month. The Stop 5G UK Facebook page has more than 30,000 members and generates around 1,600 posts a day. Its feed is filled with apocalyptic messages and videos, claiming that the virus is a result of 5G exposure, a mass depopulation project, a plot led by Bill Gates, or a ploy to vaccinate people with a tracking microchip.

One of the most popular conspiracies circulating on the Stop 5G UK group is that COVID-19 was manufactured in a lab. This narrative, which Coda Story reported on earlier this week, has also been pushed heavily in recent months by Russian and Chinese state media. The strategy appears to be working. According to research published this week by the Pew Research Center, 29% of Americans now subscribe to this theory. 

Meanwhile, others believe the COVID-19 pandemic to be a mass reaction to new wireless technology. “Do you Know the Corona virus is not a fuckin virus ???????????? it’s 5G that’s actually killing people and not a ‘virus,’” wrote one Stop 5G UK member on March 10. The post was shared more than 1300 times. 

Daniel Jolley is a social psychologist at Northumbria University who studies conspiracy theorists. In an interview with Coda Story, he explained that, as governments around the world struggle to slow the spread of COVID-19, confusion and fear are driving many people to search for answers elsewhere. 

“People are going to be feeling more uncertain, more anxious so they’re going to be drawn to more conspiracy theory narratives,” Jolley said. He added that researchers observed similar patterns during the Zika virus outbreak of 2015-16. “The conspiracy narrative emerged as a way to deal with extreme anxiety.” 

On the Stop 5G UK Facebook page, one post by Bree Long, 47, from Devon, stands out. “I'm feeling pretty freaked out,” she writes. “So many people are not seeing this for what it is. The divide feels bigger and more gaping than ever before and I'm really struggling.”

When we spoke, Long admitted that her participation in Facebook groups often exacerbates her worries about the world around her. “It makes me feel worse for sure — the amount of times I’ve said, ‘I need to get off Facebook, I need to get off Facebook,’” she said. 

But for Long, who has a deeply held distrust of mainstream media, the internet allows her to be part of a like-minded community. “You almost want to stay connected, because if you’re not connected you’d get pulled in by the other stuff — the mainstream stuff.”

On Thursday, Facebook’s head of health, Kang-Xing Jin, put out a lengthy statement about limiting misinformation on the platform. “We will also start to remove content with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities that could cause harm to people who believe them,” it read. The company placed a ban on misleading coronavirus ads, but is yet to tackle the issue of conspiracy theory groups, which are often private and, like the Stop 5G pages, inundated with thousands of posts every day. 

One of the most prominent advocates of the theory that COVID-19 is a side effect of 5G is Mark Steele, 59, from Gateshead, in northern England. In 2018, Steele made national headlines in the British press with claims that his local council was causing women to miscarry by installing high-tech street lamps fitted with 5G technology. The council rejected the allegations. 

“I’ve seen a lot of actors on the TV who say they’re being polluted with this so-called virus. They’re actors. That’s what they do — they act,” Steele told Coda Story. He added that he was disturbed by the government’s measures to combat COVID-19. “This planned self isolation — it’s imprisonment,” he said. “We’re being forced into this sheep mentality.” 

According to Jolley, the dangers of such beliefs are very real. “People who believe in medical conspiracies are unlikely to believe in official sources of information,” he said, explaining that they are therefore unlikely to follow established health recommendations, including regular hand-washing and social distancing. 

When I put this to Steele on Wednesday, he said that he was ignoring UK government advice and attempting to continue life as normal. That includes uploading “coronavirus hoax” YouTube videos to his Facebook page up to twice a day. “I was in a restaurant yesterday,” he added. “I didn’t have any problems getting a table.” 

The post Coronavirus has conspiracy theorists and anti-5G campaigners working overtime appeared first on Coda Story.

Suddenly, the detector starts to emit a squealing sound. “Is your phone not on flight mode?” he asks. 

Before we can continue with the interview, I quickly adjust the settings on my cell phone.

In an increasingly networked world, Ganjavi is one of a growing number of people who consider themselves acutely sensitive to the technology used to provide wireless and cellular internet connections. The condition is sometimes called “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” or EHS. 

“High-frequency electromagnetic fields have been shown through thousands of studies to cause biological damage,” he explains.

Accordingly, Ganjavi takes great pains to ensure that his home is completely free of pollution from electromagnetic fields.

Ganjavi is not willing to share information about his age or nationality. He uses only wired internet at home and says that his everyday life has been restricted. 

“I still go to the city, I have to,” he says. “But I completely avoid riding the train and I prefer not to fly, as some airlines have WiFi, and people use Bluetooth.” Ganjavi continued: “I used to go to the middle of Zurich to play guitar, or just hang out. I avoid doing that now. If I go to downtown Zurich, it’s so polluted, [my radiation detector] goes through the roof. And I feel it. I get disoriented and I get headaches.”

And Ganjavi’s problems are set to get worse. At present, countries around the world are preparing to launch new 5G data networks. With speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second, they will be 10 times faster than existing 4G ones. 

Telecoms companies claim that this technological leap will revolutionize our lives. But Ganjavi takes a starkly opposing view. He says that 5G will have a disastrous effect on his health and the health of everyone who is exposed to it. 

In order to halt its global rollout, Ganjavi manages two Facebook groups—Stop5G International and Stop5G Switzerland. While there are similar groups around the world, from New Zealand to the UK, Stop5G International is the only truly global one. 

Created in 2017, Stop5G International now has nearly 25,000 members, and it gathers somewhere in the region of a hundred more each week. According to Ganjavi, who has been an activist in this field since 2016, the group is made up of people who are “genuinely worried and concerned about being microwaved around the clock, about our cities turning into microwave ovens.”

“The main problem is that 5G has not been tested for safety,” he says. “It’s also completely unnecessary. The industry is trying to convince people that they need faster download or the internet of things. They don’t.” 

Stop 5G International was originally founded in the Netherlands by a man named John Kuhles. Kuhles has been responsible for several “alternative news” websites and YouTube channels, including Whynotnews and ExomatrixTV, which have posted text and video on crisis actors, chemtrails and a number of other widely debunked conspiracy theories. 

As Stop 5G’s membership grew, Kuhles started looking for someone to help him deal with the increasing workload.

“I met John when I joined the group. We became friends and gained each others' trust. We respected each others' level of engagement and vision, so he took me as a co-administrator, says Ganjavi. 

The group’s purpose is to raise awareness among its members of the reported side effects of wireless technology on human health and inform them of the varying status of 5G deployment around the globe. Ordinarily, such a project would present few causes for concern. The problem is that many of the articles posted in the Stop 5G International group come from highly dubious sources.

Fringe media and sensationalism

According to Nika Aleksejeva, a lead researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, the topic of 5G has provoked animated online discussion for some time. 

In early October, Aleksejeva and her team at the Disinformation Lab in Latvia used a content marketing research tool named BuzzSumo to find out which stories about 5G drew the most engagement on social media over the past 12 months.

According to the study’s findings, the five most popular articles each month opposed the new technology. The topics included cities instituting bans, experts and even reports of animals dying after exposure to 5G.

The most common sources of anti-5G coverage in English were YouTube and websites Collective Evolution and Waking Times, both of which have been labeled as conspiracy-pseudoscience media outlets by The Media Bias/Fact Check project.

“We found out that sensational stories, often based on misrepresented facts, against 5G drive more engagement on social media than stories that are either pro-5G or simply neutral,” says Aleksejeva. “Both Collective Evolution and Waking Times are well known for spreading sensationalist stories with little scientific basis.”

Another similar outlet, Health Nut News, published a story about hundreds of birds dying during 5G testing in the Netherlands. The fact-checking website Snopes later shed more light on the origins of that story. 

Although hundreds of starlings did die in mysterious circumstances in The Hague in October 2018, the only nearby 5G test took place in June 2019. According to researchers at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and Wageningen University, the birds died after hitting objects like tree branches while in flight. 

An analysis by Coda Story of Stop5G International’s Facebook postings from October 3 to November 23 mirrors Aleksejeva’s findings. Of the last 1,500 posts in the group, 596 featured a media link. Out of those, by far the most common source was YouTube (linked in 278 posts), followed by Waking Times (13), the Daily Mail (12), Scientific American (9), Oasisana, an Italian health news site founded by one of the leaders of Italy’s anti-5G movement Maurizio Martucci, (8) and Collective Evolution (6).

Ganjavi says that he cares more about the information itself rather than the source.

“I judge entities by what they say. There are many parties out there that want to suppress the anti-5G movement,” he explains. He cites a partnership between The New York Times and the telecommunications giant Verizon to expand mobile digital access into schools as a way of educating new readers. “We are talking entities like the New York Times—they are in bed with the industry; just look at the collaboration between the NYT and [the U.S. telecoms company] Verizon.”

Science studies and health concerns

Does the fact that the online 5G debate has been heavily infiltrated by fringe media outlets mean that there is no scientific basis for related health concerns? 

Professor Lennart Hardell, a retired oncologist and former professor at Orebro University Hospital in Sweden, has been studying the effects of electromagnetic fields on human health for over 20 years. He is convinced of the detrimental effects of wireless radiation.

“There are now more than 1,000 studies that show some harmful effects of wireless radiation on human health,” he says.

Hardell has authored more than 350 scientific articles and has been cited more than 12,000 times in academic papers. The studies of his scientific group have consistently shown statistically significant risks of brain tumor development associated with wireless phone use.

“It was only natural for us to look into 5G as well,” says Hardell. “We started asking ourselves basic questions. Is there something fundamentally different about the technology? Could the risks be different?”

Hardell says that since 5G networks will need more base stations located in close proximity to residential buildings in order to operate properly, people’s exposure to electromagnetic fields will be higher than they have previously.

“We already know that this type of exposure is a possible human carcinogen. Why on earth would we want to increase that exposure,” says Hardell.

Hardell felt so strongly about the issue that, in 2017, he teamed up with the Finnish professor Rainer Nyberg to author a document titled 5g Appeal.eu. The appeal calls on the European Union to stop the rollout of 5G, owing to serious potential public health risks. To date, it has been signed by 268 scientists and medical doctors. 

The appeal was submitted to the European Commission in September 2017, urging the institution to “halt the 5G expansion until independent scientists can assure that the technology will not be harmful for EU-citizens.” 

Hardell is not alone in his efforts. In 2015, a similar appeal was submitted to the World Health Organization and United Nations Environment Program. Titled the International EMF Scientist Appeal, it has been signed by 252 scientists who have published peer-reviewed papers on the biological and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields.

The current safety guidelines for exposure to wireless radiation have been set at 100 MHz to 300 GHz by the Munich-based International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). Existing 4G networks operate at frequencies up to 2500 mhz; 5G networks are projected to operate at frequencies up to 52 GHz. Hardell and hundreds of other scientists believe these limits to be too high to adequately safeguard human health.

The chairman of the ICNIRP, Dr. Eric van Rongen, refutes such claims, saying that the organization’s calculations provide sufficient protection.

“The primary effects on which the guidelines are based are heating of the body and tissue. With the guidelines, we aim to prevent overheating,” he says. “There is a large degree of conservatism that goes into the guidelines; even if the limits are exceeded to a minor extent, it won’t immediately lead to a health effect as a result of overheating.”

However, in 5g Appeal.eu, the document which calls on the EU to halt the rollout of the new network, Hardell says that “there are numerous recent scientific publications that have shown that electromagnetic fields affect living organisms at levels well below the limits of most international guidelines.”

The largest studies looking into the carcinogenic potential of long-term exposure to wireless radiation of recent years have been those carried out by the U.S. National Toxicology Program and the Italian cancer prevention research body the Ramazzini Institute, both published in 2018.

In the studies, researchers in the U.S. and Italy exposed more than 2,500 rats to the kind of electromagnetic radiation emitted by cellular networks over a two-year time period. Both studies showed a statistically significant increase in the incidence of brain and heart cancer at levels of exposure below the guidelines formulated by the ICNIRP.

Van Rongen says that his team reviewed both studies and concluded that there is no need to change the current limits. The ICNIRP’s full statement can be read here. 

The fact that no opposition to 5G currently exists on a governmental level means that little stands in the way of technology’s rollout. It also leaves the task of arguing against the global deployment of 5G in the hands of a few activists and committed scientists. 

Ganjavi, for one, is determined not to stand idle while the new networks are launched in Switzerland. 

“I will fight it with all my might,” he says.

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