As far as celebrity court battles go, the six-week legal wrangle in 2022 between Hollywood star Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, was a pop culture tyrant reminiscent of the OJ Simpson murder trial in the 1990s.
The trial, held in a Virginia courtroom, centered on mutual defamation allegations from both parties, stemming from allegations of domestic violence in their relationship. (You can read about the complex case and its outcome here.)
Like the Simpson trial, when the former NFL star was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife and her friend, Depp v. Heard, in 1994, provided fodder for cable news and tabloids alike.
But what distinguishes the Depp-Heard case is something that was not present during the Simpson trial: the powerful and far-reaching influence of social media.
A new podcast examines whether the hype and opinions surrounding the case were orchestrated, in part, by Saudi Arabia-backed online trolls and bots to smear and discredit Heard.
This influence campaign may have influenced public opinion and possibly the fairness of the trial. But not only that, it could also be a warning ahead of dozens of elections scheduled to take place around the world this year, said Alexi Mostros, the investigative journalist behind the podcast. Who is the Amber Troll?, It was produced with producer Xavier Greenwood and released by London-based Tortoise Media.
“In theory, if these people's opinions were manipulated in some way, it would certainly have broader ramifications,” Mastros said in an interview this week with CBC Listen. Front burner.
Front burner25:59Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and a host of Saudi-backed robots
Who really hunted Amber?
Mostros spoke with trial experts, disinformation analysts and a former Canadian spy named Daniel McKee, who spotted something fishy about the phishing wave early on.
Mackey told him it looked like a coordinated effort on Twitter, now known as X.
“There's no way it was completely organic,” Mackey said in the first episode of the show. Who is the Amber Troll?which was released on February 26.
Masros said Front burner Host Jaime Poisson said the pro-Depp and anti-Heard posts began several months before the US trial began and after Depp lost a 2020 libel trial in the UK, against the parent company of The Sun, a tabloid newspaper, over an article referring to him as a “wife beater”. .
Depp was never charged in connection with Heard's alleged abuse. He also accused her of domestic violence.
There was real mockery of Heard during the US trial: Joe Rogan, for example, Referred to He described her as “manipulative and full of shit” on his popular podcast.
But social media was the driving force in turning public opinion against him Aquaman Mesros suggested that the actress and perhaps even the outcome of the trial itself, noting that the jury had not been sequestered.
In the court of public opinion, actor Johnny Depp has the sympathy of social media users who mock his ex-wife Amber Heard and reenact her allegations of abuse for the sake of views. There are fears that the highly publicized court battle, which was broadcast live online, will prevent domestic violence survivors from speaking out.
Working with researchers to comb through about a million tweets sent in the run-up to the US trial, Mostros said they found “inauthentic activity” from accounts operating in remote countries such as Thailand and Spain.
A lot of it seems to come from fans posting about all things Depp – or how much they hate Heard.
Individual posts will be shared thousands of times. The red flag, he said, is that there will be very few responses to those posts.
He said: “No one sends a tweet that gets retweeted 25,000 times and only three people respond to it.”
Mostos conducted a deep dive using the Wayback Machine, a digital archive of the Internet, and found that some of these same accounts deleted hundreds of posts before 2022 that had nothing to do with Depp or Heard.
He said that these publications were in Arabic and contained messages supportive of the Saudi government.
Hollywood star and crown prince
Saudi Arabia is said to have previously used what is known as a troll farm to harass opponents and influence public opinion in its favor.
a The New York Times An October 2018 article profiled one such operation targeting Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi columnist for The Washington Post who was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that month.
But the big question remains: Why does Saudi Arabia care so much? Pirates of the Caribbean Najm will launch a smear campaign against his ex-wife?
Mastros said Depp has some interesting relationships with Saudi investments and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia partially financed, with millions of dollars, the last two films produced by Johnny Depp,” he told Poisson, referring to its Red Sea Film Foundation.
According to a February article from Vanity galleryThe actor's team is in talks with the Saudi government to secure a “seven-figure annual deal to attend events and shoot films in the country.”
Mastros said the relationship is not just professional. It appears that Depp and the Crown Prince “formed a very close personal friendship.”
Although Mostros provided the outlandish connections, he did not explicitly state that Depp, his publicity and legal teams, Mohammed bin Salman or anyone else associated with the Saudi government were actively involved in an online manipulation operation against Heard.
Mesrus is also mentioned in each of his episodes Who is the Amber Troll? The team's attempts to reach Depp for comment were not responded to.
He told Poisson that he had spoken to Heard, but that the conversation was informal.
13:01Depp v. Heard and the defamation case that the world witnessed
Respond to a phishing herd warning
Mostros said it's very easy to set up a hack, even with just a few hundred dollars.
“The more money you have, the more complicated it becomes.”
He said this should raise concerns in an era where disinformation campaigns and deceptive accounts are being used to manipulate opinions in… elections, Wars And Genocide.
He said that this year there are more than 50 national elections around the world in countries inhabited by half the world's population. Canada's federal election is scheduled to be held in 2025.
“It's very frustrating, to be honest.
“It really shows…that it's very difficult to know what's real and what's fake, what's human and what's not on the Internet.”
A jury has ruled that Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, were defamed over allegations of abuse before and during their short marriage.
