The private life of QAnon: A mixed methods investigation of Americans’ exposure to QAnon content on the web

Abstract

In an increasingly polarized political environment, heightened focus has been placed on the potentially devastating effects of misinformation on democracy. Emblematic of this concern is the viral conspiracy theory QAnon, which began during the Trump presidency and evolved to become a frequent distributor of misinformation. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which Americans are exposed to QAnon, in what contexts, and to what effect. To do so, we employ a mixed methods review of 21 million website visits from a nationally representative sample of 1,238 U.S. adults collected during the 2020 presidential election. We find that: (1) exposure to QAnon is limited and stratified by political affiliation and news consumption; (2) exposure tends to occur within right-wing media ecosystems that align with QAnon beliefs; and (3) mixed methods approaches to analyzing digital trace data can provide rich insights that contextualize quantitative techniques.

Content moderation through removal of service: Content delivery networks and extremist websites

“…One of the most useful outputs of this project is the database of 324 QAnon related websites curated by the authors. Dahlke et al (2022) utilise a mixed-methods approach to ascertain the website consumption of QAnon conspiracy theorists. Specifically, they examined the web-browsing data collected by the survey company YouGov in combination with the database curated by Hanley et al above.…”