At 10.29am on 9 October 2019, Coleen Rooney posted a statement on Twitter. It was crafted with all the narrative tension and dramatic flair of a classic whodunnit. “For a few years now,” it read, a follower on her private Instagram account had been sharing details of her posts with The Sun newspaper. After puzzling over the case for “a long time”, she developed a hunch as to “who it could be” – to prove it, she constructed a simple but dazzlingly effective social media sting operation.
Rooney, the wife of former England captain Wayne, blocked all but one account from viewing her Instagram Stories, then cooked up a handful of fake news titbits: one claimed she was considering flying to Mexico to investigate gender selection treatment, another hinted at a return to TV and a third bemoaned a (fictional) flood at the Rooneys’ new home. These stories made their way into the pages of The Sun – and Coleen “saved and screenshotted all the…
