QAnon and the Emergence of the Unreal

Zuckerman, Ethan

doi:10.21428/7808da6b.6b8a82b9

Cited by 60 publications

(68 citation statements)

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“…One of these communities is redolent of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories related to Hollywood, which are common in other conspiracy theory forums, and may indicate the existence of conversations that propose links between Pizzagate and these broader conspiracy theories [19]. The rise of QAnon, which includes both anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, suggests that this may be the case [100]. Another small nucleation relates to suspicions that the Red Cross traffics in human organs.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web

Tangherlini¹,

Shahsavari

Shahbazi

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Although a great deal of attention has been paid to how conspiracy theories circulate on social media, and the deleterious effect that they, and their factual counterpart conspiracies, have on political institutions, there has been little computational work done on describing their narrative structures. Predicating our work on narrative theory, we present an automated pipeline for the discovery and description of the generative narrative frameworks of conspiracy theories that circulate on social media, and actual conspiracies reported in the news media. We base this work on two separate comprehensive repositories of blog posts and news articles describing the well-known conspiracy theory Pizzagate from 2016, and the New Jersey political conspiracy Bridgegate from 2013. Inspired by the qualitative narrative theory of Greimas, we formulate a graphical generative machine learning model where nodes represent actors/actants, and multi-edges and self-loops among nodes capture context-specific relationships. Posts and news items are viewed as samples of subgraphs of the hidden narrative framework network. The problem of reconstructing the underlying narrative structure is then posed as a latent model estimation problem. To derive the narrative frameworks in our target corpora, we automatically extract and aggregate the actants (people, places, objects) and their relationships from the posts and articles. We capture context specific actants and interactant relationships by developing a system of supernodes and subnodes. We use these to construct an actant-relationship network, which constitutes the underlying generative narrative framework for each of the corpora. We show how the Pizzagate framework relies on the conspiracy theorists' interpretation of "hidden knowledge" to link otherwise unlinked domains of human interaction, and hypothesize that this multidomain focus is an important feature of conspiracy theories. We contrast this to the single domain focus of an actual conspiracy. While Pizzagate relies on the alignment of multiple domains, Bridgegate remains firmly rooted in the single domain of New Jersey politics. We hypothesize that the narrative framework of a conspiracy theory might stabilize quickly in contrast to the narrative framework of an actual conspiracy, which might develop more

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Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web

Tangherlini¹,

Shahsavari

Shahbazi

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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show abstract

“…Public services -like health, social care, criminal justice, and law and order -already underfunded, will be further undermined because of the need to make major cuts to pay for exceptional levels of national debt, and just at a time when demand on those services is likely to soar. The vulnerability of people with mental health problems is increasing, and so is the allure of extremist ideologies (e.g., Zuckerman, 2019). Therefore, as a direct result of coronavirus, our collective capacity to address the long-term problems it has given rise to may be diminished because we may not have adequate means to respond.…”

Section: The Challenge Of Our Time: the Relevance Of Coronavirus To Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Risk assessment and management in violent extremism: a primer for mental health practitioners

Logan

Sellers

2020

The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology

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“…Studies show that emphasizing the original source of misinformation online does not dissuade people from sharing or believing the content (Dias, Pennycook, & Rand, 2020). Research on antivaccine advocates (Ortiz-Sánchez et al, 2020), climate change deniers (Krishna, 2021), and QAnon conspiracy theorists (Zuckerman, 2019) demonstrates that exposing truths is not sufficient to dispel false information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Propaganda, obviously: How propaganda analysis fixates on the hidden and misses the conspicuous

Wood

2021

HKS Misinfo Review

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Propaganda analysis has long focused on revealing the rhetorical tricks and hidden special interests behind persuasion campaigns. But what are critics to do when propaganda is obvious? In the late 1930s the Institute for Propaganda Analysis faced this question while investigating the public poli-ticking of A&P, then the largest retailer in the United States. While contemporary critics lambasted A&P for their secretive campaign, particularly their use of front groups, A&P used many relatively overt methods of propaganda to win political victories. Propaganda analysis then, as now, fixated on the concealed, failing to adequately critique conspicuous communicative power.

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QAnon and the Emergence of the Unreal

Cited by 60 publications

References 0 publications

An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web

An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web

Risk assessment and management in violent extremism: a primer for mental health practitioners

Propaganda, obviously: How propaganda analysis fixates on the hidden and misses the conspicuous

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