Spring's conspiracy journey

THE central narrative of Marianna Spring’s Among the trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland focuses on the author’s claims of bullying, trolling, and even murder threats.

- SHANE FUDGE

Spring was appointed as the BBC’s first disinformation and social media correspondent in March 2020 – mirroring similarly appointed roles in the U.S. media at CNN and NBC.

She claims it was her role of ‘upholding the integrity of contemporary journalism’ that sparked most of the abuse.

The cover offers a good indication of what the contents will be. Spring is depicted as an artistic representation, in the middle of a group of people (diversely represented, of course), with the individuals in the scene looking as if they are a) about to kick off, b) are in the middle of hurling vitriolic abuse to all and sundry, or c) are caught somewhere in between the two and about to suffer a nervous breakdown as a result.

She says her journey into ‘conspiracyland’ began during 9/11. Aged five, her innate journalistic qualities prompted her to question an event so selfexplanatory that she now reasons: ‘I couldn’t get my head around how people might think that something like that could happen deliberately. It was terrifying.’