A New Report Has Found That Chappell Roan Was The Target Of A Bot-Driven Online Attack

It looks like the recent backlash against Chappell Roan was exacerbated by a targeted online campaign.

On March 21, Brazilian soccer star Jorginho called out the singer in a lengthy Instagram statement. In it, he claimed that his 11-year-old was having breakfast in the same hotel restaurant as the singer. He said that the girl walked past Chappell to ensure it was really her — only to be chastized by an “extremely aggressive” security guard who left the girl in tears. His wife specifically claimed that the security guard was with Chappell.

Now, much of the criticism aimed at Chappell essentially asserted that she was behind the security guard incident. Chappell herself did then speak out and clarify that it wasn’t her security guard who approached the family, and that she “didn’t even see a woman and a child.” Earlier today, the security guard backed up this account by posting, “The actions I took were not on behalf of Chappell Roan, her personal security team, her management, or any other individuals.”

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There are reasons why Chappell is genuinely controversial in today’s climate. She’s openly a lesbian, has advocated for Palestine, and left her talent agency earlier this year due to the founder’s ties with Epstein. Still, you’d be forgiven for thinking that perhaps the barrage of posts questioning her character in the wake of the incident might be a little…disproportionate.

BuzzFeed spoke with GUDEA, a research company that previously made headlines for its report that found that Taylor Swift was also subject to a coordinated online attack. They looked at 100,030 posts generated by 54,334 unique users across seven platforms between March 20 to March 22.

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They found that 4.2% of users contributing to the Chappell conversation at this time were “non-typical” — i.e. were very likely to be bots. As well as that being a high percentage of bots in and of itself, they accounted for *over 23%* of the posts.

“The incident prompted intense personal attacks on Chappell Roan, calls for boycotts, and significant misinformation (including satirical/fictional embellishment spreading as fact),” their report reads. “Discourse ranged from legitimate fan criticism and debate about celebrity privacy vs. fan treatment, to coordinated attack campaigns and considerable satirical/humorous content that blurred the line with misinformation.”

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Basically, even though there was a real incident at the heart of this…it sure looks like there was a coordinated outside effort to fan the flames.

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