QAnon Research: May 16, 2022
Readings, events, and webinars on content moderation, datafication, and epistemology
Content Moderation, Datafication, and Epistemology
We wanted to begin this newsletter by acknowledging how the events of this past month have put misinformation, radicalization, and generally the dangers of the internet at the forefront of national conversations. We hope that you find time to break away from newsfeeds and decompress. Researching these subjects can be taxing, and everyone needs a break. As for this month’s newsletter, there are several great publications, events, and resources, but many touch upon the tragic and disturbing events of the past few days. We recognize the importance of shared resources to think through and analyze such events, but we hope you do so only when you have the capacity to.
Much of the information posted here would be difficult to find without the contributions of our submitters, so we please ask that you submit to our Google form to keep everyone in the loop. We also encourage people to comment on posts on the website and to always feel free to reach out to us. To grow the community, please invite anyone who might be interested by sending out a link to this newsletter:
We look forward to your submissions. Take care!
Publications
“Far-Right Online Radicalization: A Review of the Literature” in The Bulletin of Technology & Public Life [Link]
Alice Marwick, Benjamin Clancy, and Katherine Furl
Abstract: This literature review examines cross-disciplinary work on radicalization to situate, historicize, frame, and better understand the present concerns around online radicalization and far-right extremist and fringe movements. We find that research on radicalization is inextricably linked to the post-9/11 context in which it emerged, and as a result is overly focused on studying the other. Applying this research to the spread of far-right ideas online does not account for the ways in which the far-right’s endorsement of white supremacy and racism holds historical, normative precedent in the United States. Further, radicalization research is rife with uncertainties, ranging from definitional ambiguity to an inability to identify any simplistic, causal models capable of fully explaining the conditions under which radicalization occurs. Instead, there are multiple possible pathways to radicalization, and while the internet does not cause individuals to adopt far-right extremist or fringe beliefs, some technological affordances may aid adoption of these beliefs through gradual processes of socialization. We conclude that the term “radicalization” does not serve as a useful analytical frame for studying the spread of far-right and fringe ideas online. Instead, potential analytical frameworks better suited to studying these phenomena include theories prominent in the study of online communities, conversion, mainstreaming, and sociotechnical theories of media effects.
“‘No Cult Tells You to Think for Yourself’: Discursive Ideology and the Limits of Rationality in Conspiracy Theory QAnon” in American Behavioral Scientist [Link]
Peter Forberg*
*Conflict of interest disclosure: I wrote this
Abstract: What is truth in politics? Movements such as the anti-establishment, internet-born conspiracy theory QAnon are offered as dramatic cases of just how “irrational” people have become in a “post-truth” political world. However, with a growing number of everyday Americans believing in such theories, labeling adherents “irrational” ignores the internally rationalizing logic of conspiracy theories, so we ask the question: how do QAnon followers think through, argue, and rationalize their political truths? This paper establishes a discursive framework that demonstrates how QAnon adherents translate the theory’s paradigmatic political epistemology into personal ideologies. I identify the narrative structures that guide belief, examining how QAnon followers develop a general political plot, set the parameters for conflict, embrace their role in the story, determine what is in the political canon, and relate to the narrative that has been constructed. This analysis highlights the contradictions within the QAnon conspiracy theory—not to pathologize adherents’ irrationality but to demonstrate how people must wrestle with contradiction, paradox, and confusion when developing political ideologies. When framed as the as victims of a brainwashing cult, QAnons routinely respond, “no cult tells you to think for yourself”; instead, their narratives allow them to interpret QAnon in service of developing personalized political truths. Thus, this paper takes their words at face value to see the world as they interpret it. I argue that ideologies are a function of broader political epistemologies such as QAnon; they are embodied, narrativized ways of being in the world that make life livable—despite any inner contradictions—and guide political participation.
First Monday: Exploring Societal Resilience to Online Polarization and Extremism [Link]
Co-edited by Amy-Louise Watkin, Vivian Gerrand, and Maura Conway
This volume of First Monday houses a number of important and provocative articles on online radicalization, but I’ll highlight one specifically on QAnon below the table of contents:
Table of Contents:
“Communicative Channels for Pro-Social Resilience in an Age of Polarization” by Vivian Gerrand [Link]
“The Name of the Game: Promoting Resilience Against Extremism Through an Online Gaming Campaign” by Daniela Pisoiu, Felix Lippe [Link]
“The Right-Leaning Be Memeing: Extremist Uses of Internet Memes and Insights For CVE Design” by Inés Bolaños Somoano [Link]
“Designing Recommender Systems to Depolarize” by Jonathan Stray [Link]
“Building Social Capital to Counter Polarization and Extremism? A Comparative Analysis of Tech Platforms’ Official Blog Posts” by Amy-Louise Watkin, Maura Conway [Link]
“Understanding the #plandemic: Core Framings on Twitter and What This Tells Us About Countering Online Far Right COVID-19 Conspiracies” by Richard McNeil-Willson [Link]
“Conspiracy, Anxiety, Ontology: Theorising QAnon” by James Fitzgerald [Link]
Abstract: The rise of QAnon presents researchers with a number of important questions. While emerging literature provides insights into how QAnon exists online, there is a dearth of theoretical engagement with the questions of why it exists, and what conditions brought it into being. This paper seeks to address this gap by contextualizing QAnon as an ontological phenomenon underpinned by anxiety, and inquiring into the identity formation strategies employed by the movement. Applying the basic precepts of discourse theory and discourse analysis to a representative canon of QAnon content, it finds that, like other formations of collective identity, QAnon is premised on interconnected dynamics of ontological fulfillment that cannot be explained away by pointing to ‘the algorithm’ or ‘madness’. Nor can it be tackled effectively by the content takedowns and de-platforming strategies currently employed. The paper concludes with a call to explore more empathetic engagement with conspiracy adherents, arguing that until we (re)discover a more inclusive, agonistic politics, QAnon and other fantastical conspiracy movements will continue to arise and some may metastasize into violent action. New forms of resilience to (online) polarization can be built on this principle.
“Experiencing Relative Deprivation as True Crime: Applying Cultural Criminology to the Qanon Superconspiracy Theory” in the International Journal of Criminology and Sociology [Link]
Deirdre Caputo-Levine and Jacob Harris
Abstract: This essay builds upon earlier studies of the QAnon superconspiracy theory by applying cultural criminology as a framework to investigate the significance of QAnon and the events that facilitated the rise of the superconspiracy and the associated political movement. QAnon has had multiple impacts that should be of interest to criminologists. In the United States, QAnon was involved with the 2020 election, as adherents believed messages posted by "Q" referred to President Trump as a messiah and Trump tacitly acknowledged the group. In addition, QAnon has international influence, most recently in the "trucker" convoy in Canada and anti-vaccine protests in New Zealand and Germany. This essay utilizes cultural criminology to introduce the framework of relative deprivation theory and emphasize the importance of the gaze from above and below in structuring relative deprivation. In addition, we discuss the role of cultural understandings of victimization in shaping ideology and physical frameworks used by QAnon.
“The Fingerprints of Misinformation: How Deceptive Content Differs from Reliable Sources in Terms of Cognitive Effort and Appeal to Emotions” in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications [Link]
Carlos Carrasco-Farré
Abstract: Not all misinformation is created equal. It can adopt many different forms like conspiracy theories, fake news, junk science, or rumors among others. However, most of the existing research does not account for these differences. This paper explores the characteristics of misinformation content compared to factual news—the “fingerprints of misinformation”—using 92,112 news articles classified into several categories: clickbait, conspiracy theories, fake news, hate speech, junk science, and rumors. These misinformation categories are compared with factual news measuring the cognitive effort needed to process the content (grammar and lexical complexity) and its emotional evocation (sentiment analysis and appeal to morality). The results show that misinformation, on average, is easier to process in terms of cognitive effort (3% easier to read and 15% less lexically diverse) and more emotional (10 times more relying on negative sentiment and 37% more appealing to morality). This paper is a call for more fine-grained research since these results indicate that we should not treat all misinformation equally since there are significant differences among misinformation categories that are not considered in previous studies.
“Rewiring What-to-Watch-Next Recommendations to Reduce Radicalization Pathways” in Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2022 [Link]
Francesco Fabbri, Yanhao Wang, Francesco Bonchi, Carlos Castillo, and Michael Mathioudakis
Abstract: Recommender systems typically suggest to users content similar to what they consumed in the past. If a user happens to be exposed to strongly polarized content, she might subsequently receive recommendations which may steer her towards more and more radicalized content, eventually being trapped in what we call a “radicalization pathway”. In this paper, we study the problem of mitigating radicalization pathways using a graph-based approach. Specifically, we model the set of recommendations of a “what-to-watch-next” recommender as a d-regular directed graph where nodes correspond to content items, links to recommendations, and paths to possible user sessions.
We measure the “segregation” score of a node representing radicalized content as the expected length of a random walk from that node to any node representing non-radicalized content. High segregation scores are associated to larger chances to get users trapped in radicalization pathways. Hence, we define the problem of reducing the prevalence of radicalization pathways by selecting a small number of edges to “rewire”, so to minimize the maximum of segregation scores among all radicalized nodes, while maintaining the relevance of the recommendations.
We prove that the problem of finding the optimal set of recommendations to rewire is NP-hard and NP-hard to approximate within any factor. Therefore, we turn our attention to heuristics, and propose an efficient yet effective greedy algorithm based on the absorbing random walk theory. Our experiments on real-world datasets in the context of video and news recommendations confirm the effectiveness of our proposal.
Events
Webinar: Conversations on The Datafied State Part Three: Race, Surveillance, Resistance [Link]
When: May 25th, 2022, 1pm ET / 12pm CT / 10am PT
Registration: Online
As per the website, “This panel focuses attention on how datafication processes are related to social control and surveillance, whether policing and the criminal punishment system or credit scoring systems and monitoring the use of cash. State power is expanded through the widening net of surveillance and the use of tools of automated detection and enforcement, which maintains racial and class hierarchies. Our panel also examines how communities and organizations are resisting the datafied state and its particular impact on Black and people of color communities, including efforts to regulate data collection, politically organize against harmful data initiatives, or propose policies that attempt more ethical data processes.”
Webinar: Moderation Online: Beyond Content [Link]
When: May 24, 2022, 12pm ET / 11am CT / 9am PT
Registration: Online
As per the website, “For our May webinar of the 2022 [Tech Against Terrorism] & [Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism] e-learning series, we take an in-depth look into how terrorist and violent extremist actors use technology services for operational purposes. Terrorist and violent extremist use of the internet for operational purposes, such as internal communication and attack planning, presents a new set of challenges for counterterrorism practitioners and tech platforms. This operational use often occurs more covertly than external messaging, generally in private online spaces. In this webinar, we will discuss how terrorist and violent extremist actors use a range of tech platforms and their features for operational use, such as internal communication and coordination. We will also discuss the challenges in effectively countering terrorist and violent extremist use of the internet, while safeguarding human rights.”
Webinar: Going Nativist: How to Interview the Radical Right? [Link]
When: June 9, 2022, 9am ET / 8am CT / 6am PT
Registration: Online
As per the website, “This webinar is part of the series 'Researching the far right: methods and ethics', co-organized by C-REX and PERIL (American University).
This webinar series aims to initiate and facilitate a much needed discussion about the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional issues and challenges that arise when researching far right parties, protest movements, and violent actions.”
Call for Papers
International Journal of Public Opinion Research Special Issue on Global Misinformation and Disinformation [Link]
Abstracts due November 5, 2022.
As per the website, “This special issue of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research highlights research on global misinformation and disinformation, and its relationship with public opinion. This includes (but is not limited to) the spread of mis/disinformation across countries, the effects (or lack thereof) of mis/disinformation on public opinion, and solutions for combating mis/disinformation. Papers must be theoretically motivated, globally conscious, and must make use of empirical methods (including, but not limited to, survey research, experimentation, and content analysis).”
Research Resources & Training
Data: Patriot Front Data Drop [Link]
Unicorn Riot has added to their database on the fascist militia Patriot Front with 17 hours of leaked meeting audio. As per the website, “Among many themes in these recordings: prominent members share tips on avoiding trouble with authorities and set up interstate trips to recruit, practice field group maneuvers and try to intimidate the public by attacking symbols of tolerance like community murals. Less formal voice chat sessions dwell on racist, antisemitic and homophobic themes. Florida Network Director Stephen Trimboli […] encourages members to take their girlfriends along on racist vandalism missions so they can create ‘blackmail’ leverage against them.”