Sydney mall stabbing: How disinformation spread like wildfire after attack - The Front Page

Police block a street near a crime scene at Bondi Junction in Sydney on Sunday, April 14 after several people were stabbed to death at a shopping centre on Saturday. Photo / AP

The fatal Sydney mall stabbing over the weekend has been the latest incident to have the narrative hijacked by social media disinformation.

Six people were killed by Joel Cauchi after he went on a stabbing rampage at the Westfield mall in Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon. Another 12 people were injured in the attack, while Cauchi was killed by a police officer at the scene.

As soon as the attack happened, social media lit up with false information about the motivations for the attack.

ABC News reporter Penny Timms told The Front Page that there were initially racial accusations about the attack.

“Bondi Junction has a very high Jewish population, and so there was a lot of concern there in the very beginning where people were very fearful that this was something that was happening related to what we’re seeing in Gaza, for example. As a result, social media did what social media does in its worst elements, and we started to see a lot of Islamophobic [content] starting to be put up, but we also started to see a lot of neo-Nazi-type things as well.”

Police do not currently believe Cauchi acted with any sort of religious ideology, but Timms said that as many of the victims were women, police are now investigating that thread to see if there was a misogynistic motivation.

She said that people also rushed to identify the killer before police had officially named Cauchi.

“That actually got very, very serious. The wrong man was identified. A man in Sydney who happens to have dark hair and a bit of a goatee was identified incorrectly, and his family had said that they’d been inundated with abusive messages, death threats, and the like.

“Unfortunately, a very large broadcaster in Australia also repeated those claims.”

Timms said that people have also been warned about sharing graphic videos filmed at the mall of the attacks and victims, with officials asking people to share any footage they have with police rather than post it to social media.

Tributes have been lain outside the mall, and the local community remains in shock over what happened. Timms said that when she was at the scene, people were clearly emotional and still shaking, and many parents had brought their children to the scene to show them it was safe.

“There was one woman who asked me to speak to her young daughter who had been locked in one of the stores at the time of the attack, and the girl was very worried that it wasn’t just a man by himself. She was fearful that he may have been part of a gang that they might track her down and want to kill her.

“Her parents had brought her down to see the huge police presence so that she could kind of feel safe. And then they were asking me as well, just to explain to her what we knew about this attacker.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about what happened in Sydney.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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