Fake images of Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez tearing up US constitution spread on social media

Faked images showing the Parkland school shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez tearing up the US constitution have emerged on social media.

The images were doctored from a photo shoot the 18-year-old did showing her tearing up a shooting target as part of her gun control campaign.

The incident is not the first time survivors of the mass shooting, who have since become prominent campaigners for gun control, have been targets of fake news and it has led to calls for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take action.

The false images and gifs come as the 18-year-old led protestors at the March For Our Lives rally over the weekend, which saw hundreds of thousands of people descend on Washington D.C. in one of the biggest demonstrations since the Vietnam War era.

The doctored images and clips of Gonzalez were based on a gif that appeared on Teen Vogue’s Instagram account showing her surrounded by other Parkland students as she tore a shooting practice target in half.

The gif then showed the students fold their arms and the hashtag #NeverAgain appear, which has become one of the rallying cries of the gun control campaign in the aftermath of the school shooting.

The doctored clip that replaced the target with the constitution originally appeared on the anonymous forum 4Chan over the weekend.

It has since been picked up and shared by some influential figures on Twitter, such as  Full Metal Jacket actor Adam Baldwin, who posted the gif to his more than 270,000 followers.

Baldwin, who is an outspoken Conservative, has since defended his posting of the gif, describing it as “political satire”.

The image has led to calls for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take action to stop “fake news” about the Parkland students spreading on the social media network.

The constitution gif is not the first time that the Parkland students who have led the campaign for gun control  have been targeted by fake news smears.

In February a video claiming that survivor David Hogg was a crisis actor planted by anti-Second Amendment activists became the top trending clip on YouTube before being removed.

The video showed Hogg appearing in a Californian local news segment on an unrelated issue last summer, but prompted the 17-year-old to deny that he was an actor in a TV interview.

A number of students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become high profile advocates for gun control after 17 people were killed in the shooting on Valentine’s Day and used social media to mobiles rallies and demonstrations across America.

Gonzalez emerged as one of the leading figures after giving a number of impassioned speeches in the days after the tragedy.

She was again one of the key speakers at the March For Our Lives protest in Washington D.C. and led an emotive tribute to the victims as she stood silent on stage for six minutes and 20 seconds, the amount of time the school shooting took.

Gonzalez was seen shedding tears as thousands of protests then chanted “never again”, a slogan of the post-Parkland movement.