The official inquiry into the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing has reminded us of the devastating impact of this terrorist attack which killed 22 people, injured many more and left families bereft.
But to add to their difficulties, a study my team and I conducted for the BBC’s Panorama coverage of the attack reveals that a worrying number of people think the attack never even happened. The show exposed how victims’ families have been harassed by conspiracy theorists who appear to believe the incident was a hoax.
As our study highlights, frightening proportions of the public believe in conspiracy theories that doubt the truth of reported events, even terrorist attacks. In our findings, one in seven respondents believed victims of the Manchester Arena bombing were not really victims at all, but “crisis actors” – essentially, that they were brought in to pretend to be victims of an attack to manipulate public opinion. We also found that one in 20 were convinced the attack in Manchester and the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 were “hoaxes”.
