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We hear from a troll from the Philippines - the "patient zero" of fake news. Experts say the problem is as bad as ever, as a new election looms. Researchers claim that tactics seen playing out in the southeast Asian country have cropped up elsewhere since Rodrigo Duterte rose to power – perhaps most notably in the US in 2016. Now it’s time for Filipinos to return to the polls, and the experts warn...

When Kakwenza Rukirabashaija mocked the Ugandan president’s son on Twitter, he knew he was playing with fire. Within 24 hours, the satirist had been arrested, and says he was tortured before fleeing the country. Throughout the ordeal, he has not stopped tweeting. He wants the world to know what is happening in Uganda before he returns to face trial, risking his life in the process. Kakwenza’s stor...

A number of Ghanaian journalists and influencers have been arrested in recent years – with several recent high-profile cases. Critics say freedom of speech is under serious threat. It wasn’t always this way. In 2018, Ghana was ranked the top country in Africa for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders. But in recent years it has dropped down the table and since the start of 2022 a handful of p...

Myanmar has been engulfed by a civil war which is getting deadlier and more violent as time goes on. Last year the Tatmadaw – the Burmese armed forces – overthrew the civilian-led government, led by Aung Sun Suu Kyi. Now they’re acting with impunity, allegedly committing heinous crimes against those who oppose them. In the past year many Tatmadaw soldiers – thousands, according to the opposition –...

When war broke out in Ukraine, President Zelensky’s plea for financial aid triggered a wave of donations from ordinary people around the world. But scammers also heard the call. They fired into action, spreading emotional appeals into every corner of the internet. On TikTok, unverified war footage is being exploited by fraudsters, pushing viewers to send emoji hearts that can be swapped for hard c...

In the eyes of the Kremlin, global warming is a threat that needs to be dealt with. So, President Putin is taking action: he wants Russia to go carbon neutral by 2060. And yet, Russia remains one of the world’s top producers of fossil fuels: oil and gas that bring in big money into the state’s coffers. And that poses a question: does Moscow mean business when it comes to climate action? If you loo...

Saudi Arabia, one of the world's biggest oil producers, says it’s pivoting to green energy. It has a host of big projects and initiatives. But will reality live up to the country’s rhetoric? And why do some activists say they’ve become victims of the government’s grand plans? We’ve been looking at online chatter and PR campaigns pushing the country’s green credentials. At the same time, experts sa...

Setting the record straight on some of the most common misleading narratives and tactics to explore what future climate change battlegrounds might look like. We look at how fossil fuel interest groups use division as a distraction: either stoking fear that action to tackle climate change will hurt the poor, or attacking the messengers who raise the alarm. And we take you back to the start of 2021,...

At the grand old age of 20, Wikipedia remains one of the world’s most popular websites. The fact that anyone with internet access can edit its pages is a key part of its success. But the website’s openness to the public is also the reason why it has become an unlikely battleground on global warming. Despite the overwhelming body of science proving climate change is real and man-made, deniers are s...

Covid conspiracists are now shifting focus to climate change. An online movement infected with extreme pandemic conspiracies is looking for new territory as debates over lockdowns and vaccines subside in many richer countries. We hear from Matthew in New Zealand. His family is really worried about the future of the planet, but he’s involved in groups where people believe that climate change is a “...

Brazil has pledged to end deforestation within a decade in a pledge signed by more than 100 nations at the COP26 climate summit. But do Brazilian leaders really believe in fighting climate change? Inside the country, climate change disinformation is thriving, while good and credible information is being undermined, even by the country’s own president. Influential voices with connections to the agr...

Is big oil trying to mislead the public about what it’s doing about climate change? Several US states are suing some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, accusing them of “greenwashing”. They claim the fossil fuel industry is deceiving consumers about how much it’s actually doing to tackle climate change. Accusations which are strongly denied by the companies who may face having to make h...

How much do disinformation and new forms of climate change denial threaten the fight to save the planet? In the first episode of a special new series running around the COP26 climate conference, BBC Trending speaks to a leading scientist who says the battle to prevent catastrophe may depend on winning the information war. Professor Michael Mann first made headlines in 1998 when he published the pi...

When an Ethiopian woman called Eleni disappeared amid the chaos of the Beirut blast there seemed little hope of discovering what had happened to her. In the wake of the explosion that devastated the Lebanese capital, rescuers searched through the rubble to try to locate hundreds of dead and missing people. As the death toll mounted, the only clue to Eleni’s fate was a pool of blood on her employer...

If a lazy student in London or New York goes online to pay somebody to do their essay, the chances are the work will actually end up being done by somebody in Kenya. So who are the African ghost writers who are paid to help wealthy foreigners fake their way to unearned success, and what do they think about what they do? Kenya has become a key hub in the international cheating industry, because it...

Could your favourite song be used to cover up the misdeeds of the police? Officers across the US have been filmed playing music - out loud - on their phones in public. They weren’t hoping this unusual display would make them go viral on social media. In fact, the aim was quite the opposite. Some officers believe that by blasting music while being filmed, the videos would get blocked by automatic c...

Nesara is a decades-old conspiracy theory whose followers believe all their debts will be magically cancelled in a radical reset of the world’s economic system. It’s a bizarre and baseless idea whose promoters peddle a vision of a financial neverneverland that is always just round the corner. Many of those who get sucked in, develop an almost cult-like belief in Nesara that inspires them to make h...

Think you’re safe being an anonymous TikTok troll or cyber bully? Think again. The Great Londini could be your worst nightmare come true. You might think you’re anonymous - but if you leave a threatening, racist or homophobic comment on someone’s video, Londini will find out who you are. If you’re a kid, he’ll contact your parents or your school. If you’re an adult, he'll really tell on you. In ju...

As the pandemic progresses, some opponents of Covid-19 vaccines are taking things one step further. An emerging international grassroots movement is seeking to create online and offline communities away from the vaccinated world. Trending meets the people who are setting up dating sites, house share groups, even blood banks specifically for the unvaccinated only. Underpinning many of these efforts...

TikTok became successful by being the app for watching viral dance videos. But with global downloads of the app recently topping three billion, it’s also increasingly a place where users are also going to find news - though not any old news. While traditional media organisations are struggling to gain a foothold on the platform, a wave of fresh and diverse creators are finding innovative ways to p...

Who was behind a secret plot to pay social media stars to falsely discredit the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine? Trending investigates an attempt to weaponise the power of influencer marketing in the online disinformation war over the pandemic. In May this year a marketing agency contacted influencers in several countries with an extraordinary offer. A mystery client was offering big money if the influ...

Nicole is a paediatrician in Ohio who was shocked when she received a ton of nasty comments on one of her online videos. Her “mistake” was providing reliable, evidence-based information about vaccines. It meant that anti-vaccine activists targeted her. But with the help of a group of volunteer medical professionals called Shots Heard Around the World, she led a fight back against abuse and disinfo...

A helicopter carrying vaccines is greeted in a by a crowd in an indigenous village – and the villagers are armed with bows and arrows. It’s just one, thankfully rare incident. But it’s a symptom of the creeping misinformation hitting some of Brazil’s most remote communities. But rather than being a vestige of traditional ideas or village life, rumours about health and vaccines are being spread in...

As India struggles with a surge in Covid-19 cases, it is also dealing with a wave of misinformation about the virus and vaccines. Although now banned from Facebook and YouTube, self-proclaimed nutritionist Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury built his social media stardom by claiming that conventional medicine is almost entirely wrong about coronavirus. Labelled a dangerous “quack” by his critics, Chowdhury h...

Catherine’s family believed in alternative medicine and she grew up in relatively poor, fringe communities that didn’t have much to do with mainstream science or Britain’s national health system. And when social media became a big part of her life, she started believing in all sorts of wild conspiracy theories. But when she slowly realised that she was being conned by some of the pseudoscientists...