COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Discussion on Twitter

Erokhin, Dmitry; Yosipof, Abraham; Komendantova, Nadejda

doi:10.1177/20563051221126051

Cited by 27 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…While tweets citing concerns about benevolence suspected hidden motives, and that the handling of the pandemic was not designed to benefit citizens. Notably, most tweets with conspiratorial content were found in this category, linking to a discourse analyzed elsewhere (e.g., Erokhin et al, 2022). Overall, however, there were few tweets with conspiratorial content, strengthening the finding that Twitter affordances might counteract the spread of conspiracy theories (Theocharis et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Much attention has been devoted to the role of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Issues include for instance how social media has spurred vaccine hesitancy and conspiracy theories (Chadwick et al, 2021; Erokhin et al, 2022; Jiang et al, 2021) and influenced trust in scientific expertise (Mihelj et al, 2022; van Dijck & Alinejad, 2020). In this study, we focus on how the trustworthiness of the public health authorities and political leadership is discussed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Trustworthiness Over Time on Twitter: Three Critical Periods for the Norwegian Health Authorities and Political Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Fiskvik

Bjarkø

Ihlen

2023

Social Media + Society

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Public health authorities and political leaders need to come across as trustworthy in their handling of a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. There is, however, little knowledge about how the affordances and dynamics of social media influence perceptions of trustworthiness, especially during a protracted crisis. In this article, we study how Twitter users were discussing the trustworthiness of the Norwegian health authorities and political leadership throughout three periods of partial lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across all the periods, there was a substantial number of positive comments, but these were outweighed by negative ones. Ability was clearly the most discussed factor for trustworthiness, and many users offered up their lay expertise. Discussions of integrity and benevolence were less frequent and mostly negative when they occurred. An increase in negative comments during the last period might be read as an expression of fatigue, and there was a noted dissatisfaction with the ability of the political leadership. Taken together, the study suggests Twitter to be an arena where users are exposed to arguments and counterarguments in negotiations over ability in particular. Such discussions can intensify as a crisis drags on and are important to grasp for health authorities and political leadership alike. Thus, the study sheds light on the contribution that a socio-technical platform like Twitter makes to the discursive formation of trustworthiness over time, which in turn might function to strengthen or erode public trust in public authorities and political leadership.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trustworthiness Over Time on Twitter: Three Critical Periods for the Norwegian Health Authorities and Political Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Fiskvik

Bjarkø

Ihlen

2023

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Secondarily, conspiracy theories can have many negative consequences, including harmful effects on health-related behaviors [ 78 ]. As stated in the study, the persistence of COVID-19 conspiracy theories may be one of the reasons for global poor acceptability and ambivalence about COVID-19 vaccines [ 79 ]. People’s beliefs about infectious disease conspiracy theories can negatively affect their health behaviors regarding vaccination [ 80 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Opinion Manipulation on Social Media: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Bots during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Weng

Lin

2022

IJERPH

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Social media is not only an essential platform for the dissemination of public health-related information, but also an important channel for people to communicate during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, social bots can interfere with the social media topics that humans follow. We analyzed and visualized Twitter data during the prevalence of the Wuhan lab leak theory and discovered that 29% of the accounts participating in the discussion were social bots. We found evidence that social bots play an essential mediating role in communication networks. Although human accounts have a more direct influence on the information diffusion network, social bots have a more indirect influence. Unverified social bot accounts retweet more, and through multiple levels of diffusion, humans are vulnerable to messages manipulated by bots, driving the spread of unverified messages across social media. These findings show that limiting the use of social bots might be an effective method to minimize the spread of conspiracy theories and hate speech online.

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“…46 This view is partly supported by the finding that the number of new cases in any week is a positive predictor of conspiracy 'tweets' in the following week. 47 Long COVID Over 200 symptoms have been given as a part of long COVID. There is limited understanding of the diagnosis, aetiology, treatment or outcome.…”

Section: Conspiracy Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%