Propagating and Debunking Conspiracy Theories on Twitter During the 2015–2016 Zika Virus Outbreak

Abstract

The present study investigates the characteristics of discussion of conspiracy theories about the Zika virus outbreak of 2015–16 on Twitter. Content and social network analysis of a dataset of 25,162 original Tweets about Zika virus conspiracy theories showed that relative to debunking messages, conspiracy theories spread through a more decentralized network, are more likely to invoke supposedly knowledgeable authorities in making arguments, and ask more rhetorical questions. These trends can be understood in the context of previous work on conspiracy theories, including the “just asking questions” style of rhetoric, the importance of sourcing and authority, and the tendency to simultaneously consider many different potential conspiracies that might underlie an important topic or event.

Systematic Literature Review on the Spread of Health-related Misinformation on Social Media

“…The included articles adopted disparate theoretical approaches in conceptualizing the phenomenon, with the dominant frameworks from the fields of psychology and network science. Theories employed in psychology aimed to explain individual-level cognitive response of misinformation and rumour online (Bode and Vraga, 2018;Bora et al, 2018;Chua and Banerjee, 2018;Li and Sakamoto, 2015;Ozturk et al, 2015), whereas network theories focus on the social mechanism and patterns of misinformation spread (Bessi et al, 2015;Radzikowski et al, 2016;Schmidt et al, 2018;Sicilia et al, 2017;Wood, 2018). Further co-citation analysis on all articles that investigated the phenomenon revealed that the disciplinary landscape concentrates around general science and vaccines/infectious disease, while psychology and communication studies have less cross-citation with the science and medicine literature.…”

“…Authors observe the distribution of useful and misleading information, and the pattern of consumption by different users. Some studies incorporated social network analysis or epidemiological modelling to better explain the dynamics of misinformation spread (Bessi et al, 2015;Ghenai and Mejova, 2017;Harris et al, 2014;Jin et al, 2014;Radzikowski et al, 2016;Wood, 2018). Many designs were also complemented by sentiment measures, for instance, the "antivaccine" sentiment (Bahk et al, 2016;Xu and Guo, 2018).…”

“…The Zika epidemic stimulated considerable activity on Twitter (Wood, 2018) and Facebook (Sharma et al, 2017), as well as spread of news items (Sommariva et al, 2018), images (Seltzer et al, 2017), and videos (Bora et al, 2018) on a range of media. Conspiracy theories directed at institutions feature frequently in these discussions.…”

“…Conspiracy theories directed at institutions feature frequently in these discussions. For instance, the Zika virus was portrayed as a bioweapon, while rumours spread that the Zika vaccine had been developed to depopulate the earth (Sommariva et al, 2018;Wood, 2018). Conspiracist ideation played a crucial role in one's belief in misinformation (Lewandowsky et al, 2013).…”

“…Others have referred to psychological studies around conspiracist ideation, inoculation theory and social conformity in understanding the mechanism behind health misperception on social media (Bode and Vraga, 2018;Bora et al, 2018;Li and Sakamoto, 2015). Contrastingly, the use of system or network theories are aimed at explaining the patterns of social influence, social learning, social contagion and homophily and polarization processes (Bessi et al, 2015;Radzikowski et al, 2016;Schmidt et al, 2018;Sicilia et al, 2017;Wood, 2018). The framework typically assists the subsequent social network analysis.…”