Anyone who has engaged in a “heated debate” with some friends or relatives will be temporarily informed that reviews may overshadow the facts. , who shot JFK, or whether the U. S. government was “really” on September 11.
Some fringe beliefs, as opposed to known clinical facts, are sometimes referred to as conspiracy theories. There has long been a cottage industry built around books, movie documentaries, newsletters, websites, and even YouTube channels true to those theories. And in many cases, there hasn’t been much damage.
Believing that the world is flat or that Stanley Kubrick simulated moon landings is one thing, but in the age of social media, some conspiracy theories can be more destructive than others.
In fact, this has been the case with the Covid-19 pandemic.
A team of authors from Stanford University, along with Henrich R. Greve, Hayagreeva Roa, Paul Vicinanza, and Echo Yan Zhou, published a new review that tested how theories about covid-19 were shared on Twitter. “Online Conspiracy Groups: Microbloggers, Bots, and Coronavirus Conspiracy Talk on Twitter” published in The American Sociological Review’s December 2022 factor.
The authors collected around 700,000 tweets from 8,000 users, dating from January to July 2020, and followed discussions about the novel coronavirus. The researchers implemented a herbal language processing method called Biterminal Subject Style (BTM). logics of action: one that affirms that the virus is a hoax or an exaggerated risk (for example, the tests give false positives or the hospitals are secretly empty) and another that describes it as a biological weapon propagated behind closed doors (for example, through through Bill Gates, the Chinese, or a faction that controls the world).
The team found that users first retweet conspiracy theories about gateways (the least excessive and the most believable) before moving on to more excessive theories.
“Social media is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories because it comprises an aggregate of information, probably credible misinformation, and excessive misinformation,” Henrich R explained. Greve, Professor of Entrepreneurship and INSEAD Chair in Organizational and Management Theory at Stanford email.
“Seemingly credible information, such as conspiracy theories about the inflated number of infections, becomes gateways that other people enter before embarking on excessive conspiracy theories, such as that of a secret global clique designing Covid-19 and using it as a weapon,” Greve added. .
The authors found more that Americans tended to tweet new conspiracy theories and inconsistent theories when faced with a risk posed by the emerging rate of covid-19 cases and when they drew the attention of others through retweets.
Even far-fetched theories can gain traction if they attract enough people to Twitter, as this can recommend that a lot of other people think it’s true.
“Some other people get straight into excessive and outlandish conspiracy theories they encounter on social media, but for many, the procedure is almost the opposite,” Greve explained. to them. “
Once they start propagating a bridge conspiracy theory and discover that others endorse it (retweeting it), some on social media will spread more conspiracy theories, adding those with even more excessive beliefs.
It’s like an echo chamber where you shout conspiracy theories and hear if others react or not,” Greve said.
The authors also concluded that a key implication of their studies is that classical means of persuasion, marketing, and public relations would likely be useless in the face of conspiracies. Rejecting the content of conspiracy theories treats the symptom, the disease and is unlikely to be effective.