From the Fringes to the Mainstream: How COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread across Social and Mainstream Media
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This document summarizes research into how COVID-19 conspiracy theories spread from fringe to mainstream media. It finds that early theories had limited reach but celebrities amplified them by spreading to their large social media followings. Tabloid and entertainment media then reported on celebrity posts without critical fact-checking, helping conspiracy claims spread more widely. The researchers recommend media improve training and standards to avoid irresponsibly disseminating misinformation.
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From the Fringes to the Mainstream: How COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread across Social and Mainstream Media
- 1. CRICOS No.00213J From the Fringes to the Mainstream: How COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread across Social and Mainstream Media Axel Bruns, with Edward Hurcombe and Stephen Harrington a.bruns@qut.edu.au | @snurb_dot_info Guest Professor, IKMZ, University of Zürich QUT Digital Media Research Centre Brisbane, Australia
- 6. CRICOS No.00213J Questions • What claims are circulating? • Who is spreading mis- and disinformation? • How do the media engage with these claims? • Are take-downs effective in reducing the dissemination of problematic content? • Should official actors respond – and if so, how and when should they do so?
- 7. CRICOS No.00213J Approach • Facebook: • Search for (covid,corona,virus,epidemi,pandemi) AND (5g) via CrowdTangle • Timeframe: 1 Jan. 2020 to 12 Apr. 2020 (i.e. after the arson attacks in the UK and elsewhere) • Limitations: only public pages, groups, verified profiles (for short, spaces); availability and use of Facebook differs across countries; Latin alphabet; divergent local terms for the virus (e.g. koronawirus) • 89,664 Posts, including false positives • Media reporting: • Search for (?i)(corona|virus|covid|epidem|pandem|wuhan|hubei) AND (?i)b(5g|fiveg|5-g|five-g)b via GDELT • Timeframe: 1 Jan. 2020 to 12 Apr. 2020 • Limitations: only article titles and URLs; GDELT coverage; Latin alphabet; divergent local terms • 2,812 articles, manually reviewed and coded 1,871 true positives
- 10. CRICOS No.00213J Data Gathering CrowdTangle API accessed via custom Python tool / GDELT on BigQuery Data Storage Google BigQuery Data Analysis Tableau connecting to Google BigQuery
- 11. CRICOS No.00213J Click to edit Master title style Analysis
- 12. CRICOS No.00213J Detailed Results • Facebook: • Bruns, A., Harrington, S., & Hurcombe, E. (2020). ‘Corona? 5G? Or Both?’: The Dynamics of COVID-19/5G Conspiracy Theories on Facebook. Media International Australia, 177(1), 12-29. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1329878X20946113 • Media coverage: • Bruns, A., Hurcombe, E., & Harrington, S. (2021). Covering Conspiracy: Approaches to Reporting the COVID/5G Conspiracy Theory.” Digital Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1968921. • Combined analysis: • Bruns, A., Hurcombe, E., & Harrington, S. (2021). Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories: Tracing Misinformation Trajectories from the Fringes to the Mainstream. In Communicating COVID-19: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Monique Lewis, Kate Holland, and Eliza Govender. London: Palgrave.
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- 15. CRICOS No.00213J Phase 1: Prelude • Generic conspiracy theories (1 to 26 Jan. 2020): • Pre-existing claims about 5G • Vague warnings about coming pandemics, not clearly related to COVID-19 • Overlaps with other theories (vaccines, world government, chemtrails, …) • First explicit COVID/5G link claimed by French blog (20 Jan.): Wuhan as test region for Chinese 5G rollout • Limited reach: Facebook spaces with <100,000 followers • Media coverage: practically non-existent even in fringe news sites
- 16. CRICOS No.00213J Phase 2: The Wuhan-5G Connection Spreads • Multilingual spread (27 Jan. to 24 Feb. 2020): • From French anti-5G blog to German alternative medicine site • English-language version (translation?) in K-Pop fan forum • Further embellishments in English-language conspiracy pages and sites: virus manufactured in Wuhan lab and activated by 5G, … • Possible link to UK permission for Huawei to help build British 5G network – and US criticism (27 Jan. 2020) • Slowly growing reach: ~10% of spaces with 100k to 1m followers • Media coverage: see phase 3
- 17. CRICOS No.00213J Phase 3: Localisation and Embellishment • Substantial diversification (25 Feb. to 11 Mar. 2020): • Depopulation theories (feat. George Soros, Bill Gates, UN, Illuminati, Antichrist, ...) • Alternative medicine theories (5G reduces oxygen absorption, ...) • Virus denialism (COVID-19 does not exist, 5G is the sole cause of illness, ...) • Adjustment of pre-existing conspiracy theories to new pandemic situation • Multilingual spread: Romania, Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy, Spain, France, … • Partial alignment with national lockdowns: more time for doomscrolling? • Little change in reach: still ~70% of spaces with <10,000 followers • Media coverage (phases 2+3): dominated by fringe US outlets • 43 articles only, including 10 fact-check articles from technology / business news sites
- 18. CRICOS No.00213J • Growing media interest (12 to 28 Mar. 2020): • Celebrities spreading conspiracy theories (e.g. R&B singer Keri Hilson, 16 Mar.) • Entertainment and tabloid media adopt humorous and incredulous, but uncritical tone • Celebrities delete conspiracy posts, but celebrity reporting continues to circulate • Spread especially in Africa and Southeast Asia • Amplification for prominent conspiracy theorists (including politicians and journalists) • Growing number of spaces with >10,000 followers (up to 40%) • Media coverage: 98 articles, substantial number of entertainment and lifestyle outlets • Majority of articles contain direct quotes of conspiracists or of celebrities’ social media posts • But also growth in fact-checking articles Phase 4: Celebrity Superspreaders
- 19. CRICOS No.00213J Amplification and Permanence • Impacts: • Celebrity makes post, gets criticised, deletes post: a temporary problem • Celebrity media report post, embed post – or include screenshot: a permanent problem
- 20. CRICOS No.00213J • Evangelists, celebrities, arsonists (29 Mar. to 12 Apr. 2020): • Apocalyptic French-language post in Africa and France (29 Mar., ~28.8m followers) + English versions • Similar content in sermon by Nigerian evangelical pastor: Africa, South Korea, PNG (4 Apr., ~43.6m) • Long African post containing collection of conspiracy theories says “Fire destroys all.” (30 Mar.) • Spread in southern Africa, later also in UK anti-5G spaces (~7.8m) • Whistleblower video from ‘former Vodafone UK executive’, later revealed to be evangelical Zimbabwean pastor based in Luton (2 Apr., ~18m) • UK boxer Amir Khan posts conspiracy video: Give Me Sport page (5 Apr., ~25.7m); Express news site • Up to 60% of posts in spaces with >10,000 followers • More than 60 arson attacks against 5G installations and technicians since early April (UK, later NL, …) • Media coverage: 1,729 articles (92% of our dataset) – 35% on arson attacks, 23% on spread of conspiracy theories, 11% on government responses, 11% on celebrity conspiracy claims • Reduction in direct quoting of conspiracists (76% of articles are plain news reports) Phase 5: Combustion Point They are using the shutdown to build or put in mobile incinerators and morgues to take all the 5G victims. When people start dying in masses from 5G they will call it corona virus. All these technologies need to be destroyed to melt, so they can't keep radiating us. We need to clip all wires and then burn it all in massive bonfires. Fire destroys all.
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- 23. CRICOS No.00213J The Soft Underbelly of the News Industry
- 24. CRICOS No.00213J Precarious Clickworkers or Bad-Faith Actors? • Tabloid and celebrity media content: • Clickbait as a business model • Sensationalist, controversial, sticky content • Stupid celebrities as the perfect content fodder • Tabloid and celebrity media staff: • Precarious, pay-by-the-click freelance positions • Poorly trained journalistic staff • Very limited adherence to journalistic standards • Encouraged to ‘glean’ content from elsewhere https://www.searchenginejournal.com/12-surprising-examples-of-clickbait-headlines-that-work/362688/
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- 27. CRICOS No.00213J What Now? • What can change? • Celebrities will continue to do and say stupid things • Celebrity news sites and tabloids will continue to cover them • Fans will continue to be fans • Incremental change: • Embeds, not screenshots • Reporting, not embeds • Critical reporting and fact-checking, not just stenography • Better journalistic training even for entertainment reporters • Better visibility for fact-checking and debunking in the same media • Better enforcement of press standards on misinformation and plagiarism
- 29. CRICOS No.00213J Observations and Recommendations • Key takeaways: • The immediate impact of conspiracist sites is limited • Hardcore conspiracy theorists are a problem in themselves, but have limited influence • Celebrities can become superspreaders • Their amplification inserts mis- and disinformation into more general conversations • ‘Soft’ newsbeats are journalism’s weak spot • Journalistic ethos less well developed – need to reflect on impact and act more responsibly • Take-downs can delay dissemination – especially amongst ordinary users • Communicative distance between mainstream and fringe groups is critically important – need to avoid news coverage that undermines take-downs by creating more persistent copies • The right time to respond to mis- and disinformation is… when? • Earlier than in the case of 5G conspiracy theories, but not so early that it aids dissemination – need to respond in ways that reach the same audiences: including in celebrity / tabloid media
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- 31. CRICOS No.00213J Future Enhancements • Further opportunities for extending our analysis: • Named Entity Recognition, Natural Language Processing • Automated detection of ‘Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour’ (DMRC toolkit available) • Processing of audiovisual content: • OCR of text in images • Identification of logos, persons, objects • Clustering of images based on similarity (DMRC Image Machine) • Identifying and analysing key images in videos
- 32. CRICOS No.00213J This research is funded in part by the Australian Research Council projects DP200101317 Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation and FT130100703 Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere, and supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision- Making and Society. Facebook data are provided courtesy of CrowdTangle. Acknowledgments