ABSTRACT
QAnon is an umbrella conspiracy theory that encompasses a wide spectrum of people. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped raise the QAnon conspiracy theory to a wide-spreading movement, especially in the US. Here, we study users' dynamics on Twitter related to the QAnon movement (i.e., pro-/anti-QAnon and less-leaning users) in the context of the COVID-19 infodemic and the topics involved using a simple network-based approach. We found that pro- and anti-leaning users show different population dynamics and that late less-leaning users were mostly antiQAnon. These trends might have been affected by Twitter's suspension strategies. We also found that QAnon clusters include many bot users. Furthermore, our results suggest that QAnon continues to evolve amid the infodemic and does not limit itself to its original idea but instead extends its reach to create a much larger umbrella conspiracy theory. The network-based approach in this study is important for nowcasting the evolution of the QAnon movement.
ABSTRACT
Currently, the significance of social media in disseminating noteworthy information on topics such as health, politics, and the economy is indisputable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaxxers have used social media to distribute fake news and anxiety-provoking information about the vaccine. Such social media practice may harm the public. Here, we characterise the psycho-linguistic features of anti-vaxxers on the online social network Twitter. For this, we collected COVID-19 related tweets from February 2020 to June 2021 to analyse vaccination stance, linguistic features, and social network characteristics. Our results demonstrated that, compared to pro-vaxxers, anti-vaxxers tend to have more negative emotions, narrative thinking, and immoral tendencies. Furthermore, we found a tighter network structure in anti-vaxxers even after mass vaccination. This study can advance our understanding of the online anti-vaccination movement, and become critical for social media management and policy action during and after the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
Recently, the viral propagation of mis/disinformation has raised significant concerns from both academia and industry. This problem is particularly difficult because on the one hand, rapidly evolving technology makes it much cheaper and easier to manipulate and propagate social media information. On the other hand, the complexity of human psychology and sociology makes the understanding, prediction and prevention of users' involvement in mis/disinformation propagation very difficult. This themed series on "Multi-Disciplinary Dis/Misinformation Analysis and Countermeasures" aims to bring the attention and efforts from researchers in relevant disciplines together to tackle this challenging problem. In addition, on October 20th, 2021, and March 7th 2022, some of the guest editorial team members organized two panel discussions on "Social Media Disinformation and its Impact on Public Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic," and on "Dis/Misinformation Analysis and Countermeasures - A Computational Viewpoint." This article summarizes the key discussion items at these two panels and hopes to shed light on the future directions.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about several challenges in addition to the virus itself. The rise of Islamophobic hate speech on social media is one such challenge. As countries were coping with economic collapse due to mass lockdown, hateful people, especially those associated with far-right groups, were targeting and blaming Muslims for the spread of the coronavirus. In India, where intense religious/communal polarization is taking place under the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, one such prominent instance of Islamophobia—the “Tablighi Jamaat Controversy” (TJC)—occurred. This article analyzes Facebook posts by public groups over a 5-month period (March–August 2020) to find the major actors and track their link-sharing behavior. We found that the Pro-BJP groups with a right-wing ideology spread Islamophobic hate speech, while other groups (anti-hate) worked to counter the hate. We also found that the hate disseminators were extremely active (three times faster) in sharing their content as compared with the anti-hate groups. Finally, our research indicated that the links most widely shared by the hate spreaders were mostly misinformation. These results explain the use of the Facebook platform to spread hate and misinformation, demonstrating how BJP’s pro-Hindu ideology and its attitude toward Muslims is directly and indirectly enabling these actors to spew hate against Muslims with no legal consequences. © The Author(s) 2022.
ABSTRACT
Although the online campaigns of anti-vaccine advocates, or anti-vaxxers, severely threaten efforts for herd immunity, their reply behavior - -the form of directed messaging that can be sent beyond follow-follower relationships-remains poorly understood. Here, we examined the characteristics of anti-vaxxers' reply behavior on Twitter to attempt to comprehend their characteristics of spreading their beliefs in terms of interaction frequency, content, and targets. Among the results, anti-vaxxers more frequently conducted reply behavior with other clusters, especially neutral accounts. Anti-vaxxers' replies were significantly more toxic than those from neutral accounts and pro-vaxxers, and their toxicity, in particular, was higher with regard to the rollout of vaccines. Anti-vaxxers' replies were more persuasive than the others in terms of the emotional aspect, rather than linguistical styles. The targets of anti-vaxxers' replies tend to be accounts with larger numbers of followers and posts, including accounts that relate to health care or represent scientists, policy-makers, or media figures or outlets. We discussed how their reply behaviors are effective in spreading their beliefs, as well as possible countermeasures to restrain them. These findings should prove useful for pro-vaxxers and platformers to promote trusted information while reducing the effect of vaccine disinformation. © 2021 ACM.