International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis researchers have analyzed the discussion on eight different conspiracy theories that was spread widely on Twitter during the pandemic.
In their paper just published in Social Media and Society, the researchers set out to analyze the changes that occurred in the discussion of different COVID-19 conspiracy theories on Twitter. Rather than measuring the number of conspiracy tweets relative to the total number of tweets as examined in previous studies, the researchers wanted to analyze the discussions around conspiracy tweets themselves: what specific theories were discussed, to what extent, and how the discussion frequency changed over time.
To do this, the team collected a data set of almost 1.3 million tweets associated with discussions on conspiracy theories between January 2020 and November 2021. The data set includes tweets related to eight conspiracy theories: the 5G, Big Pharma, Bill Gates, biological weapon, exaggeration, Film Your Hospital, Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), and vaccines conspiracies. The search criteria included all tweets that contain one or more COVID-19 related keywords, and conspiracy-specific keywords, according to research articles.
The researchers found that conspiracy theories differed in terms of their development. Some peaked at the beginning of the pandemic such as the 5G conspiracy and the “Film Your Hospital” conspiracy; some grew throughout the pandemic, such as vaccine-related conspiracies and the Big Pharma conspiracy; others remained persistent throughout the pandemic such as the Bill Gates conspiracy and the exaggeration conspiracy; while some had two peaks such as the GMO conspiracy and the biological weapon conspiracy. Interestingly, the number of active COVID cases was a significant predictor for the frequency of conspiracy tweets a week later for seven out of the eight conspiracies.
