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Disinformed social movements: A large-scale mapping of conspiracy narratives as online harms during the COVID-19 pandemic

  • The COVID-19 pandemic caused high uncertainty regarding appropriate treatments and public policy reactions. This uncertainty provided a perfect breeding ground for spreading conspiratorial anti-science narratives based on disinformation. Disinformation on public health may alter the population’s hesitance to vaccinations, counted among the ten most severe threats to global public health by the United Nations. We understand conspiracy narratives as a combination of disinformation, misinformation, and rumour that are especially effective in drawing people to believe in post-factual claims and form disinformed social movements. Conspiracy narratives provide a pseudo-epistemic background for disinformed social movements that allow for self-identification and cognitive certainty in a rapidly changing information environment. This study monitors two established conspiracy narratives and their communities on Twitter, the anti-vaccination and anti-5G communities, before and during the first UK lockdown. The study finds that, despite content moderation efforts by Twitter, conspiracy groups were able to proliferate their networks and influence broader public discourses on Twitter, such as #Lockdown in the United Kingdom.

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Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Author(s):Philipp DariusORCiD, Michael Urquhart
Parent Title (English):Online Social Networks and Media
Publication year:2021
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.osnem.2021.100174
Release Date:2022/01/11
Tag:Disinformation, Conspiracy theory, Anti-vaccination, Anti-5G, Social network analysis, COVID-19, Social movements, Twitter, Public health, Trust in government
Volume:26
Hertie School Research:Publications PhD Researchers
Centre for Digital Governance
Licence of document (German):Metadaten / metadata
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