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EXCLUSIVE with @mariannaspring

A misleading story about Jo Swinson is spreading like wildfire on Facebook. We tracked down the Welshman, Englishmen and 'Italian Henry VIII' who turned an obscure tweet into one of this election's biggest online stories.
bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-tre…
@mariannaspring Swinson's husband Duncan Hames works for an NGO which got a €4m grant from the EU. But through online Chinese whispers, loads of people are now saying Swinson opposes Brexit because she personally profits from the EU - which is wrong.

The numbers on these stories are huge...
@mariannaspring It all kicked off with this tweet five weeks ago. We spoke to the author who claims to be an Italian man living in North Wales. A few days later the story got shared on Facebook and things got really wild... we've interviewed others who wrote viral posts..
bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-tre…
@mariannaspring This viral post on 'Nye Bevan News' contains inaccuracies - it says Transparency International is a 'family company', 'owned by' Hames. We met the man behind the page which has a ~huge~ reach on Facebook but is barely known in Westminster.
@mariannaspring
bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-tre…
@mariannaspring It's not just Swinson who has been accused of personally profiting from her Brexit stance. This video with 4m+ views is a joke, but it advances a dubious theory about Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, which went viral in Remainer circles a few weeks ago.
bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-tre…
@mariannaspring We talk about 'fake news' but stuff is more likely to fly online if it takes genuine facts and presents them in a misleading way. We saw this in 2017 with the Tories and ivory. Ordinary Brits are highly engaged in politics again, so expect more of this!
bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-tre…
@mariannaspring Also if you're not following @mariannaspring you're doing Election 2019 wrong! @BBCtrending
bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-tre…
@mariannaspring @BBCtrending Our DMs/emails are open - we're interested in the viral stuff your friends and family are sharing, rather than party ads, which colleagues are doing a great job of covering.

We've been digging at Swinson for two weeks but this is when we really realised it was a big deal:
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More from @josephmdurso see all

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Joey D'Urso
@josephmdurso
(1/9)
Bermondsey Street v Blaneau Gwent, a thread

@ONS data shows places in England and Wales where households earn over £60,000 before tax, from Pay As You Earn income and benefits - excluding self-assessed income. Limited dataset but a fascinating one..
ons.gov.uk/census/censust…
(2/9)
Here are the local authorities with the highest proportion of households earning £60k+ from PAYE income and benefits. Fairly unsurprising but note for virtually all areas it's pretty low, less than 1 in 8 (although richer areas will have far more people on self-assessment).
(3/9)
Here are the areas with the lowest. Lots in the north and Midlands yes. But loads of Wales - Blaenau Gwent is bottom. A fair few in the South West. Also Barking, just a few tube stops from the City of London...
Read 9 tweets
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Joey D'Urso
@josephmdurso
These maps are really great. They also show why it's good to avoid describing whole cities or counties as 'Leave' or 'Remain' - most places were pretty close, and if you arbitrarily tweak one boundary in the suburbs you can flip it. HT @undertheraedar
statsmapsnpix.com/2019/04/suffer…
Here's a good example. Stroud and Cotswold were slightly Remain, Wilshire and South Gloucestershire slightly Leave. But all were 45-55 or narrower - pretty much half and half. Conventional maps can make Britain seem a lot more divided than it really is.
There really aren't that many places that are overwhelmingly one or the other - but those places are generally pro-Remain..
Read 8 tweets
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Joey D'Urso
@josephmdurso
1/ I've noticed this trend quite a lot recently - campaigners publicly calling out on Twitter for a meeting with a politician at short notice, then publicly shaming them when they don't get it.
2/ Pro-EU youth group OFOC has 50,000 followers so that tweet got a lot of traction. Kevin Foster, Conservative MP for Torbay, has 5,000 so his reply didn't get as much. But this seems like a fairly decent excuse...
3/ Foster is a Conservative who voted for May's deal. Thangam Debbonaire is a Labour MP who voted against it...
Read 11 tweets

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Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna
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Mercedes Stephenson
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How much more obvious can any of this be?
Think LifeLog dump.
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Sarah Donaldson
@sarah_donaldson
#Facebook thread:
Ahead of Zuckerberg's Congress testimony, a quick revision guide.
All you need to know about Facebook (and why you should be concerned), brought to you by the Observer/Guardian's investigation into data and democracy...
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Ann Foster
@annfosterwriter
It’s Valentines Day and it’s Wednesday which is an interesting confluence that means its time for a #SixWivesNoHenry #ValentinesDay special edition! Because where more romantic than feminist Tudor history...?
So I dug around a bit to try and find a story that doesn’t end with beheading or adultery and found the perfect Valentines story: Mary Tudor Won’t Stop Til She Gets Her Man.
So! The Mary in question is Henry VIII’s baby sister, who was a cool and fun and smart sort of person whose life suddenly changed when her brother/King decided she had to marry the French King. Mary was 19, the king was 52.
Read 24 tweets

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