scholarly journals The COVID‐19 pandemic and the search for structure: Social media and conspiracy theories

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. Dow ◽  
Amber L. Johnson ◽  
Cynthia S. Wang ◽  
Jennifer Whitson ◽  
Tanya Menon
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Conspiracy Theories

scholarly journals COVID-19 conspiracy theories

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen M. Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Group Processes ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Potential Impact

Conspiracy theories started to appear on social media immediately after the first news about COVID-19. Is the virus a hoax? Is it a bioweapon designed in a Chinese laboratory? These conspiracy theories typically have an intergroup flavour, blaming one group for having some involvement in either manufacturing the virus or controlling public opinion about it. In this article, I will discuss why people are attracted to conspiracy theories in general, and why conspiracy theories seem to have flourished during the pandemic. I will discuss what the consequences of these conspiracy theories are for individuals, groups, and societies. I will then discuss some potential strategies for addressing the negative consequences of conspiracy theories. Finally, I will consider some open questions for research regarding COVID-19 conspiracy theories, in particular focusing on the potential impact of these conspiracy theories for group processes and intergroup relations.

scholarly journals Faster than warp speed: early attention to COVD-19 by anti-vaccine groups on Facebook

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth C Kalichman ◽  
Lisa A Eaton ◽  
Valerie A Earnshaw ◽  
Natalie Brousseau
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Vaccine Safety ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Vaccine Information

Abstract Background The unprecedented rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines has faced SARS-CoV- (COVID-19) vaccine hesitancy, which is partially fueled by the misinformation and conspiracy theories propagated by anti-vaccine groups on social media. Research is needed to better understand the early COVID-19 anti-vaccine activities on social media. Methods This study chronicles the social media posts concerning COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines by leading anti-vaccine groups (Dr Tenpenny on Vaccines, the National Vaccine Information Center [NVIC] the Vaccination Information Network [VINE]) and Vaccine Machine in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (February–May 2020). Results Analysis of 2060 Facebook posts showed that anti-vaccine groups were discussing COVID-19 in the first week of February 2020 and were specifically discussing COVID-19 vaccines by mid-February 2020. COVID-19 posts by NVIC were more widely disseminated and showed greater influence than non-COVID-19 posts. Early COVID-19 posts concerned mistrust of vaccine safety and conspiracy theories. Conclusion Major anti-vaccine groups were sowing seeds of doubt on Facebook weeks before the US government launched its vaccine development program ‘Operation Warp Speed’. Early anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns outpaced public health messaging and hampered the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

scholarly journals The dangers of blind trust: Examining the interplay among social media news use, misinformation identification, and news trust on conspiracy beliefs

2021 ◽  
pp. 096366252199802
Author(s):  
Xizhu Xiao ◽  
Porismita Borah ◽  
Yan Su
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
News Consumption ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
Moderation Model ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Significant Moderator ◽  
News Use

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation has been circulating on social media and multiple conspiracy theories have since become quite popular. We conducted a U.S. national survey for three main purposes. First, we aim to examine the association between social media news consumption and conspiracy beliefs specific to COVID-19 and general conspiracy beliefs. Second, we investigate the influence of an important moderator, social media news trust, that has been overlooked in prior studies. Third, we further propose a moderated moderation model by including misinformation identification. Our findings show that social media news use was associated with higher conspiracy beliefs, and trust in social media news was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between social media news use and conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, our findings show that misinformation identification moderated the relationship between social media news use and trust. Implications are discussed.

scholarly journals Linguistic drivers of misinformation diffusion on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giandomenico Di Domenico ◽  
Annamaria Tuan ◽  
Marco Visentin
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Textual Cues ◽  
Twitter Users

AbstractIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retweets. In particular, the presence of misinformation plays an interesting role in spreading the tweet on the network. More importantly, the relative influence of the cues suggests that Twitter users actually read a tweet but not necessarily they understand or critically evaluate it before deciding to share it on the social media platform.

scholarly journals The Rise of Political Influencers— Perspectives on a Trend Towards Meaningful Content

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Riedl ◽  
Carsten Schwemmer ◽  
Sandra Ziewiecki ◽  
Lisa M. Ross
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Important Research Topic

Despite an increasing information overflow in the era of digital communication, influencers manage to draw the attention of their followers with an authentic and casual appearance. Reaching large audiences on social media, they can be considered as digital opinion leaders. In the past, they predominantly appeared as experts for topics like fashion, sports, or gaming and used their status to cooperate with brands for marketing purposes. However, since recently influencers also turn towards more meaningful and political content. In this article, we share our perspective on the rise of political influencers using examples of sustainability and related topics covered on Instagram. By applying a qualitative observational approach, we illustrate how influencers make political communication look easy, while at the same time seamlessly integrating product promotions in their social media feeds. In this context, we discuss positive aspects of political influencers like contributions to education and political engagement, but also negative aspects such as the potential amplification of radical political ideology or conspiracy theories. We conclude by highlighting political influencers as an important research topic for conceptual and empirical studies in the future.

scholarly journals Infodemiology: Computational Methodologies for quantifying and visualizing key characteristics of the COVID-19 infodemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Ligot ◽  
Frances Claire Tayco ◽  
Mark Toledo ◽  
Carlos Nazareno ◽  
Denise Brennan-Rieder
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Time Varying ◽  
Specific Topic ◽  
False Information ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Heat Maps ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Latent Topics ◽  
Taking Action

Objectives. Infodemics of false information on social media is a growing societal problem, aggravated by the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The development of infodemics has characteristic resemblances to epidemics of infectious diseases. This paper presents several methodologies which aim to measure the extent and development of infodemics through the lens of epidemiology.Methods. Time varying R was used as a measure for the infectiousness of the infodemic, topic modeling was used to create topic clouds and topic similarity heat maps, while network analysis was used to create directed and undirected graphs to identify super-spreader and multiple carrier communities on social media.Results. Forty-two (42) latent topics were discovered. Reproductive trends for a specific topic were observed to have significantly higher peaks (Rt 4-5) than general misinformation (Rt 1-3). From a sample of social media misinformation posts, a total of 385 groups and 804 connections were found within the network, with the largest group having 1,643 shares and 1,063,579 interactions over a 12 month period.Conclusions. These approaches enable the measurement of the infectiousness of an infodemic, comparative analysis of infodemic topics, and identification of likely super-spreaders and multiple carriers on social media. The results of these analyses can form the basis for taking action to stem an ongoing spread of misinformation on social media and mitigate against future infodemics. The methods are not confined to health misinformation and may be applied to other infodemics, such as conspiracy theories, political disinformation, and climate change denial.

scholarly journals Social media and the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-437
Author(s):  
Sarah Gambo ◽  
Woyopwa Shem
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Research Interest ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Outbreak ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
National Orientation ◽  
And Control

Background: Amidst the recent outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there seems to be an avalanche of conspiracy theories that abound on social media platforms, and this subject attracted a lot of research interest. This study aimed to examine the "social media and the spread Covid-19 conspiracy theories in Nigeria" in light of the above.  Methods: The study adopted a qualitative design in order to explore the subject matter thoroughly. Thirty-five participants were conveniently sampled, and interviews were conducted to retrieved data from the participants. Results: Findings of this study revealed that there is a prevalence of conspiracy theories that have saturated social media ever since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was also found that ignorance, religious fanaticism, lack of censorship, and insufficient counter information on social media platforms are some of the possible factors that aided the spread of Covid-19 conspiracy theories among Nigerian social media users. Conclusion: This study recommends, among other things, that there is a swift need to curtail the spread of conspiracy theories through consistent dissemination of counter-information by both individuals and agencies like the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and the Nigerian Centre for Disease and Control (NCDC).

Park’s Supporters Fight Back

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Hyunjin Seo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Psychological Characteristics ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Conspiracy Theories

This chapter examines how supporters of President Park Geun-hye responded to the Park-Choi scandal and impeachment rallies. Park’s diehard supporters organized so-called Taegeukgi rallies suggesting the Park-Choi scandal was a plot by pro–North Korea forces and news media designed to destroy the conservative president. Trafficking in conspiracy theories produced by far-right media outlets, these staunch supporters used social media and physical gatherings to consolidate pro-Park groups. In contrast, some of Park’s early supporters ultimately turned against her, becoming outraged and embarrassed as details of her corruption became widely known. This chapter analyzes information consumption patterns of Park’s diehard supporters along with their demographic and social-psychological characteristics.

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