Going back to the digitally altered photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales, its roots lie in the tragedy of another Princess of Wales, Diana. Diana died in 1997, nearly seven years before she founded Facebook.
Princess Diana’s death after a high-speed chase by photographers in Paris has left a lasting mark on her sons Prince William and Prince Harry. They grew up vowing not to get involved in the sick relationship between the royal family and the press, a relationship they saw as abusive partners.
With the rise of social media, this younger generation of royals has found a way to use popular platforms like Instagram and Twitter to circumvent the tabloids they were slamming, and London newspapers and lurkers. People can now post carefully selected news and images of themselves without being interrupted by paparazzi.
But now they are experiencing the dark side of public life in the western part of the web. The photos of Duchess Kate, posted on social media and featured in newspapers and broadcast stations around the world, echo the rumors that have dogged her since she retreated from the public eye following abdominal surgery two months ago. It’s been engulfed in conspiracy theories.
While Prince William and Prince Harry have battled these forces, the pressure has perhaps been most acute on their wives, Duchess Kate and Meghan, who have taken turns at the center of the online storm. Meghan recently spoke out about the “hateful” treatment she experienced while pregnant with her child.
“This is going to be very difficult to deal with,” said Rasmus Kreis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for Journalism at the University of Oxford. “Women are often the ones exposed to the worst bullying and harassment.”
Of course, Duchess Kate inadvertently added to the conservatory mood by altering a Mother’s Day photo of herself and her three children. This has sparked a new flurry of speculation online, including repurposing Duchess Kate’s head from a 2016 Vogue cover photo and reusing a family shot from last November. People shared their theories about how the images were manipulated.
visual investigator Error exposed Both suggestions didn’t stop the original post from spreading, with one post promoting the Vogue theory racking up more than 45 million views.
Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, has struggled to control her image and is now in a similar predicament as her royal forebears, stalked by online groups as vicious as the photographers who followed Princess Diana in Paris. .
“The royal family and their staff are not paying attention to Meghan’s experience because they think social media allows people to bypass gatekeepers and control the narrative,” Professor Nielsen said.
“These are very ambiguous spaces, where what people want and what people are deeply concerned about are inextricably linked,” he says.
Prince William and Prince Harry first forayed into social media in 2015, opening Twitter and Instagram accounts with Duchess Kate. An early post showed Prince Harry standing on tiptoe next to 7ft 2in former American basketball star Dikembe Mutombo at a youth coaching program.
The following year, when Prince Harry met American actress Meghan, he was exposed as an avid and professional user of social media. Meghan runs a lifestyle blog, The Tig, which she describes as “a hub for people with discerning tastes”. Cosmopolitan magazine previously reported that the wellness brand owned by actress Gwyneth Paltrow is “well on its way to becoming the next Goop.”
Duchess Meghan shut down The Tig after her romance with Prince Harry became public. But she also brought her clever use of social media to the royal family. When the couple announced their plans to step back from royal duties in 2020, they announced the news on Instagram and posted on Sussex Royal, a site designed by the same Toronto-based digital firm that designed The Tig. announced the plan.
When Meghan Markle became the target of online abuse, Prince Harry blamed hostile and racist reporting. In her memoir, Spare, she said relentless tabloid coverage of Meghan in the 18 months leading up to her 2018 marriage “infuriated the trolls who had crawled out of their basements and lairs.” writing.
“Ever since we confirmed we were husband and wife, we have been inundated with racist taunts and death threats on social media,” Harry said.
However, in Duchess Kate’s case, the lack of coverage may have contributed to the rapid increase in rumors online. Kensington Palace, where the Duchess Kate and her husband William have their offices, has maintained a veil of privacy around the Duchess since her surgery, and has provided little information about her condition or recovery, saying only that she will return to work after Easter. Didn’t make it clear.
Peter Hunt, the BBC’s former royal correspondent, said: “The Duchess of Cambridge’s near-silence about her health, which she has every right to observe, has taken the media by surprise and sparked a social media frenzy. “It’s something that caused this and the mainstream media took advantage of it.”
Despite intense reporting on the royal family, some subjects are off-limits. For example, gossip about William and Catherine’s marriage has long penetrated the obscure depths of the web. But it rarely, if ever, surfaces in newspapers that adhere to strict privacy guidelines enforced by Britain’s strong libel laws.
Last week, when grainy photos of the Duchess Kate in a car with her mother were published on American gossip site TMZ, British newspapers praised Kensington Palace’s appeal to allow the Duchess to rest in peace. However, I did not post the photo.
Several tabloids are still rallying to Duchess Kate’s defense after she admitted that she had altered her photos. “Sack Duchess Kate,” read the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, which usually gives generous coverage of the princess. She added, “The attacks on her edited photos are ridiculous.”
The risk to the royal family, experts say, is that Duchess Kate’s photoshopping could cast doubt on other news and images published by the royal family, depriving the royal family of a useful channel to reach young people. Some tabloids were openly skeptical of her. “How did Kate’s photo turn her into a PR disaster?” she asked the Daily Mail. “Kate’s photobomb!” proclaimed the tabloid Metro.
“Social media is a win-win for the Royal Family and should be a way to spread the Royal Family’s message intact and undiluted,” Hunt said. “Most people will probably forgive and forget, but the risk is that trust, which is an important commodity for the monarchy, will be lost.”
It may not just be the royal family’s trust that will be sacrificed. Professor Nielsen pointed out that in a recent survey, 69% of Brits said they were concerned about what was real and what was fake on the internet. And that was before rumors and misinformation swirled about Katherine.
“This could make people even more skeptical of much of what they see in both the news media and social media,” he says. “These are not great days for people’s trust in the information environment.”
