Measuring the diffusion of conspiracy theories in digital information ecologies

Abstract

Digital platforms and media are fertile breeding grounds for disinformation and conspirational views. They provide a variety of communication venues for a mixed set of actors and foster the diffusion of content between actor groups, across platforms and media, and across languages and geographical spaces. Understanding those diffusion processes requires approaches to measure the prevalence and spread of communicative acts within and across digital platforms. Given the increasing access to digital data, computational methods provide new possibilities to capture this spread and do justice to the interrelated nature and hybridity of online communication. Against this background, the paper focuses on the spread of conspiracy theories in digital information ecologies. It provides a review of recent methodological approaches to measuring conspiracy-related content online regarding the (a) prevalence and (b) diffusion of conspiracy theories. To that end, the paper differentiates between social network analysis approaches and computational techniques of automated text classification. It further discusses how far these and related computational approaches could facilitate studying the diffusion of conspiracy theories across different actor types, languages, topics and platforms. In doing so, it takes the specific nature of online communication and challenges in the field of conspiracy-related content into account.

Radical Mobilization in Times of Crisis: Use and Effects of Appeals and Populist Communication Features in Telegram Channels

“…In the case of mobilization efforts of radical channels on Telegram, we may assume that actors are interested in spreading their messages to the widest possible audience to gain reach and visibility for their concerns (Heft & Buehling, 2022). Therefore, it is in their interest that followers and other channels share their messages and appeals in other channels, which enhances the possibility that users that are not directly connected are reached as well by the appeal.…”

Conspiracy theories in digital environments: Moving the research field forward

“…The opening article from Heft and Buehling (2022) – ‘Measuring the Diffusion of Conspiracy Theories in Digital Information Ecologies’– provides an overview of how the prevalence and dissemination of conspiracy theories online can be empirically measured. The authors review and scrutinise the common methodologies used to measure conspiracy theories in digital environments.…”

“…With a focus on computational techniques, the authors provide a thorough discussion of both their potential and their limitations. Following Heft and Buehling’s (2022) methodological reflection, two empirical studies exemplify how the dissemination of conspiracy theory-related information can be studied across websites and across platforms.…”

The Influence of Lobbies: Analyzing Group Consensus from a Physics Approach

“…More recently, the spread of conspiracy theories [26] on various topics [27], but also on science [28,29] and the social processes underlying their spread [30], show how relevant these phenomena can be to the society. Given the problems of replicability mentioned above, analytical approaches or replicable simulation models can be highly useful.…”