Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:31:22.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Part IV - The Role of Communication in Promoting and Limiting QAnon Support

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2023

Monica K. Miller
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
Get access

Summary

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Chapter
Information
The Social Science of QAnon
A New Social and Political Phenomenon
, pp. 193 - 268
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Albert, V. (2020, October 7). Facebook bans QAnon pages, groups, and Instagram accounts. CBS News. www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-bans-qanon-platforms-pages-groups-instagram-accounts/Google Scholar
Allen, J., Howland, B., Mobius, M., Rothschild, D., & Watts, D. J. (2020). Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem. Science Advances, 6(14), eaay3539.Google Scholar
Allington, D., Duffy, B., Wessely, S., Dhavan, N., & Rubin, J. (2020). Health-protective behaviour, social media usage and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Psychological Medicine, 51(10), 17.Google Scholar
Allyn, B. (2020, May 20). Researchers: Nearly half of accounts tweeting about Coronavirus are likely bots. NPR. www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-botsGoogle Scholar
Anthony, A., & Moulding, R. (2019). Breaking the news: Belief in fake news and conspiracist beliefs. Australian Journal of Psychology, 71(2), 154162.Google Scholar
Auxier, B., & Anderson, M. (2021, April 7). Social media use in 2021. Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/Google Scholar
BBC News. (2021, January 12). Twitter suspends 70,000 accounts linked to QAnon. BBC News. www.bbc.com/news/technology-55638558Google Scholar
Berkowitz, R. (2020, September 30). A game designer’s analysis of QAnon. Medium. https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5Google Scholar
Binder, M. (2020, October 28). Facebook shares specifics on how many QAnon accounts it banned. Mashable. https://mashable.com/article/facebook-qanon-account-takedownsGoogle Scholar
Blazakis, J. (2021, February 21). Op-Ed: Why QAnon’s similarity to other cults makes it a significant national security threat. Los Angeles Times. www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-21/qanon-cults-capitol-attack-trump-threatGoogle Scholar
Brewster, J. (2021, May 27). QAnon believers committed nearly 80 conspiracy-motivated crimes, report finds. Forbes. www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/05/27/qanon-believers-committed-nearly-80-conspiracy-motivated-crimes-report-finds/?sh=6ddf2d971840Google Scholar
Brubaker, P. J., & Haigh, M. M. (2017). The religious Facebook experience: Uses and gratifications of faith-based content. Social Media + Society, 3(2), 205630511770372.Google Scholar
Burke, D. (2020, October 15). How QAnon uses religion to lure unsuspecting Christians. CNN. www.cnn.com/2020/10/15/us/qanon-religion-churches/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Chabria, A. (2021, March 18). QAnon’s “collateral damage”: Families struggle to pull loved ones back from the brink. Los Angeles Times. www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-18/post-trump-qanon-conspiracy-side-effects-divide-familiesGoogle Scholar
Collins, B., & Zadrozny, B. (2020, July 21). Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown. NBC News. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-7-000-qanon-accounts-limits-150-000-others-n1234541Google Scholar
Daly, K. (2020, August 18). Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown. NBC News. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-7-000-qanon-accounts-limits-150-000-others-n1234541Google Scholar
de Melo, L. W. S., Passos, M. M., & Salvi, R. F. (2020). Analysis of “Flat-Earther” posts on social media: Reflections for science education from the discursive perspective of Foucault. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências, 20, 295313.Google Scholar
Dickson, E. J. (2021, March 25). Did QAnon drive Chrissy Teigen from Twitter? Rolling Stone. www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/chrissy-teigen-deletes-twitter-qanon-1143259/Google Scholar
Douglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., Cichocka, A., Nefes, T., Ang, C. S., & Deravi, F. (2019). Understanding conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 40(Suppl. 1), 335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrara, E. (2020, October 28). On Twitter, bots spread conspiracy theories and QAnon talking points. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/on-twitter-bots-spread-conspiracy-theories-and-qanon-talking-points-149039Google Scholar
Fisher, M. (2021, May 7). “Belonging is stronger than facts”: The age of misinformation. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/world/asia/misinformation-disinformation-fake-news.htmlGoogle Scholar
Frenkel, S. (2020, December 18). QAnon is still spreading on Facebook, despite a ban. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/technology/qanon-is-still-spreading-on-facebook-despite-a-ban.htmlGoogle Scholar
Frenkel, S., Decker, B., & Alba, D. (2020, May 21). How the “Plandemic” movie and its falsehoods spread widely online. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/technology/plandemic-movie-youtube-facebook-coronavirus.htmlGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media as participatory culture. In Social media: A critical introduction (pp. 5268). SAGE.Google Scholar
Gilbert, D. (2021, March 31). How QAnon is tearing families apart. Vice. www.vice.com/en/article/dy8ayx/how-qanon-is-tearing-families-apartGoogle Scholar
Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15(4), 731742.Google Scholar
Greenspan, R. E. (2020a, May 28). Hilary Duff appeared to respond to baseless QAnon conspiracy theories saying that she was involved in child trafficking. Insider. www.insider.com/hilary-duff-responds-to-qanon-conspiracy-theories-about-child-trafficking-2020-5Google Scholar
Greenspan, R. E. (2020b, December 18). Trump’s description of QAnon as being “against pedophilia” follows its insidious takeover of the “Save The Children” movement. Insider. www.insider.com/qanon-save-the-children-pedophilia-sex-trafficking-paranoia-2020-9Google Scholar
Haimowitz, I. (2020, December 17). No one is immune: The spread of Q-anon through social media and the pandemic. Center for Strategic & International Studies. www.csis.org/blogs/technology-policy-blog/no-one-immune-spread-q-anon-through-social-media-and-pandemicGoogle Scholar
Horwitz, J., & Seetharaman, D. (2020, May 26). Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive. The Wall Street Journal. www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499Google Scholar
Isaac, M., & Ember, S. (2016, November 8). For election day influence, Twitter ruled social media. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/technology/for-election-day-chatter-twitter-ruled-social-media.htmlGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014). The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions. PLoS ONE, 9(2), e89177.Google Scholar
Koumchatzky, N., & Andryeyev, A. (2017, May 9). Using deep learning at scale in Twitter’s timelines. Twitter. https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2017/using-deep-learning-at-scale-in-twitters-timelinesGoogle Scholar
Marwick, A., & Lewis, R. (2017). Media manipulation and disinformation online. Data & Society Research Institute. https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_MediaManipulationAndDisinformationOnline.pdfGoogle Scholar
McNamee, R. (2020, September 30). Op-Ed: Facebook drove QAnon’s mad growth and enhanced its power to poison elections. Los Angeles Times. www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-30/facebook-qanon-conspiracy-social-media-electionGoogle Scholar
Miller, J. M., Saunders, K. L., & Farhart, C. E. (2016). Conspiracy endorsement as motivated reasoning: The moderating roles of political knowledge and trust. American Journal of Political Science, 60(4), 824844.Google Scholar
Mitchell, A., Jurkowitz, M., Oliphant, J. B., & Shearer, E. (2020, July 30). Americans who mainly get their news on social media are less engaged, less knowledgeable. Pew Research Center. www.journalism.org/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/Google Scholar
Morrish, L. (2020, December 3). How QAnon content endures on social media through visuals and code words. First Draft. https://firstdraftnews.org/articles/how-qanon-content-endures-on-social-media-through-visuals-and-code-words/Google Scholar
Nyce, C. M. (2020, May 14). The Atlantic daily: QAnon is a new American religion. The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2020/05/qanon-q-pro-trump-conspiracy/611722/Google Scholar
Ohlheiser, A. (2016, November 11). Mark Zuckerberg denies that fake news on Facebook influenced the elections. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/11/mark-zuckerberg-denies-that-fake-news-on-facebook-influenced-the-elections/Google Scholar
Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 147(12), 18651880.Google Scholar
Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature (London), 592(7855), 590595.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pew Research Center. (2021, April 7). Social media fact sheet. Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/Google Scholar
Raju, M. (2020, December 3). Trump praised QAnon during meeting about keeping the Senate. Insider. www.cnn.com/2020/12/03/politics/donald-trump-qanon/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Robson, K., Plangger, K., Kietzmann, J. H., McCarthy, I., & Pitt, L. (2015). Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification. Business Horizons, 58(4), 411420.Google Scholar
Rogers, K. (2020, December 1). QAnon has become the cult that cries wolf. FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/qanon-has-become-the-cult-that-cries-wolf/Google Scholar
Sahil, P. (2020, December 1). Reddit claims 52 million daily users, revealing a key figure for social-media platforms. The Wall Street Journal. www.wsj.com/articles/reddit-claims-52-million-daily-users-revealing-a-key-figure-for-social-media-platforms-11606822200Google Scholar
Seitz, A. (2020, October 28). QAnon’s “Save The Children” morphs into popular slogan. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-child-trafficking-illinois-morris-aab978bb7e9b89cd2cea151ca13421a0Google Scholar
Sen, A., & Zadrozny, B. (2020, August 10). QAnon groups have millions of members on Facebook, documents show. NBC News. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/qanon-groups-have-millions-members-facebook-documents-show-n1236317Google Scholar
Shearer, E., & Mitchell, A. (2021, January 12). News use across social media platforms in 2020. Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/01/12/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-in-2020/Google Scholar
Siddiqui, F., & Svrluga, S. (2016, December 5). N.C. man told police he went to D.C. pizzeria with gun to investigate conspiracy theory. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-police-respond-to-report-of-a-man-with-a-gun-at-comet-ping-pong-restaurant/Google Scholar
Tankovska, H. (2021a, February 10). Number of Twitter users worldwide from 2019 to 2024. Statista. www.statista.com/statistics/303681/twitter-users-worldwide/Google Scholar
Tankovska, H. (2021c, May 21). Facebook: Number of monthly active users worldwide 2008–2021. Statista. www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/Google Scholar
Teh, C. (2021, May 27). Big tech cracked down on QAnon but its followers are still diving into online rabbit holes to connect and spread dangerous conspiracies. Business Insider. www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-cracked-down-qanon-followers-finding-rabbit-holes-conspiracies-2021-5Google Scholar
Tiffany, K. (2020, September 23). Reddit squashed QAnon by accident. The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/09/reddit-qanon-ban-evasion-policy-moderation-facebook/616442/Google Scholar
Timberg, C., & Dwoskin, E. (2020, October 3). As QAnon grew, Facebook and Twitter missed years of warning signs about the conspiracy theory’s violent nature. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/01/facebook-qanon-conspiracies-trump/Google Scholar
Twitter Safety. (2021, January 12). An update following the riots in Washington, DC. Twitter. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/protecting--the-conversation-following-the-riots-in-washington--Google Scholar
Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American conspiracy theories. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J. W. (2018). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Routledge.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J. W., & Douglas, K. M. (2017). Conspiracy theories as part of history: The role of societal crisis situations. Memory Studies, 10(3), 323333.Google Scholar
Vazquez, M. (2020, October 15). Trump again refuses to denounce QAnon. CNN. www.cnn.com/2020/10/15/politics/donald-trump-qanon-town-hall/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Wakefield, J. (2021, March 25). Google, Facebook Twitter grilled in US on fake news. BBC News. www.bbc.com/news/technology-56523378.Google Scholar
Warzel, C. (2020, August 4). Is QAnon the most dangerous conspiracy theory of the 21st century? The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/opinion/qanon-conspiracy-theory-arg.htmlGoogle Scholar
Wong, J. C. (2020, June 25). Down the rabbit hole: How QAnon conspiracies thrive on Facebook. The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/25/qanon-facebook-conspiracy-theories-algorithmGoogle Scholar
Zadrozny, B., & Collins, B. (2018, August 14). How three conspiracy theorists took “Q” and sparked QAnon. NBC News. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531Google Scholar
Zadrozny, B., & Collins, B. (2020, October 15). YouTube bans QAnon, other conspiracy content that targets individuals. NBC News. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/youtube-bans-qanon-other-conspiracy-content-targets-individuals-n1243525Google Scholar
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2 Pt. 2), 127.Google Scholar

References

Ahmed, W. (2021, May 18). Using Twitter as a data source: An overview of social media research tools (updated for 2021). Impact of Social Sciences Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/05/18/using-twitter-as-a-data-source-an-overview-of-social-media-research-tools-2021/Google Scholar
Ahmed, W., & Lugovic, S. (2019). Social media analytics: Analysis and visualisation of news diffusion using NodeXL. Online Information Review, 43(4), 149160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, W., Bath, P. A., Sbaffi, L., & Demartini, G. (2018). Moral panic through the lens of Twitter: An analysis of infectious disease outbreaks. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society (pp. 217221). Association for Computing Machinery.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, W., Fenton, A., Hardey, M., & Das, R. (2022). Binge watching and the role of social media virality towards promoting Netflix’s Squid Game. IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 11(2), 222234.Google Scholar
Ahmed, W., Seguí, F. L., Vidal-Alaball, J., & Katz, M. S. (2020a). COVID-19 and the “Film Your Hospital” conspiracy theory: Social network analysis of twitter data. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(10), e22374.Google Scholar
Ahmed, W., Vidal-Alaball, J., Downing, J., & Seguí, F. L. (2020b). COVID-19 and the 5G conspiracy theory: Social network analysis of Twitter data. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(5), e19458.Google Scholar
Clauset, A., Newman, M. E. J., & Moore, C. (2004). Finding community structure in very large networks. Physical Review E, 70, 066111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Das, R., & Ahmed, W. (2022). Rethinking fake news: Disinformation and ideology during the time of COVID-19 global pandemic. IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 11(1), 146159.Google Scholar
Hameleers, M., Brosius, A., Marquart, F., Goldberg, A. C., van Elsas, E., & de Vreese, C. H. (2022). Mistake or manipulation? Conceptualizing perceived mis- and disinformation among news consumers in 10 European countries. Communication Research, 49(7), 919941.Google Scholar
Himelboim, I., Smith, M. A., Rainie, L., Shneiderman, B., & Espina, C. (2017). Classifying Twitter topic-networks using social network analysis. Social Media + Society, 3(1), 2056305117691545.Google Scholar
Jordan, K. (2020). Imagined audiences, acceptable identity fragments and merging the personal and professional: How academic online identity is expressed through different social media platforms. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(2), 165178.Google Scholar
Koren, Y., & Harel, D. (2003). Axis-by-axis stress minimization. In International Symposium on Graph Drawing (pp. 450459). Springer.Google Scholar
Olszowski, R., Zabdyr-Jamróz, M., Baran, S., Pięta, P., & Ahmed, W. (2022). A social network analysis of tweets related to mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in Poland. Vaccines, 10(5), 750.Google Scholar
Smith, M. A. (2015). Catalyzing social media scholarship with open tools and data. Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, 14(2), 8796.Google Scholar
Smith, M. A., Himelboim, I., Rainie, L., & Shneiderman, B. (2015). The structures of Twitter crowds and conversations. In Matei, S. A., Russell, M. G., & Bertino, E. (Eds.), Transparency in social media (pp. 67108). Springer.Google Scholar

References

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso Books.Google Scholar
Bak-Coleman, J. B., Alfano, M., Barfuss, W., Bergstrom, C. T., Centeno, M. A., Couzin, I. D., & Weber, E. U. (2021). Stewardship of global collective behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(27), e2025764118.Google Scholar
Barzilay, T. (2016). Well poisoning accusations in medieval Europe: 1250–1500 (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University).Google Scholar
Bennett, B. (2007). Hermetic histories: Divine providence and conspiracy theory. Numen, 54(2), 174209.Google Scholar
Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D., & Welch, I. (1992). A theory of fads, fashion, custom, and cultural change as informational cascades. Journal of Political Economy, 100(5), 9921026.Google Scholar
Bodner, J., Welch, W., & Brodie, I. (2020). Covid-19 conspiracy theories: QAnon, 5G, the New World Order and other viral ideas. McFarland.Google Scholar
Burns, W. E. (2003). Witch hunts in Europe and America: An encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Clover, C. (1986). The long prose form. Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 101, 1039.Google Scholar
Davis, C. A., Ciampaglia, G. L., Aiello, L. M., Chung, K., Conover, M. D., Ferrara, E., Flammini, A., Fox, G. C., Gao, X., Gonçalves, B., Grabowicz, P. A., Hong, K., Hui, P.-M., McCaulay, S., McKelvey, K., Meiss, M. R., Patil, S., Kankanamalage, C. P., Pentchev, V., … Menczer, F. (2016). OSoMe: The IUNI Observatory on Social Media. PeerJ Computer Science, 2, e87.Google Scholar
Dean, J. (2000). Theorizing conspiracy theory. Theory & Event, 4(3). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/32599Google Scholar
Dégh, L. (2001). Legend and belief: Dialectics of a folklore genre. Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Dundes, A. (Ed.). (1991). The blood libel legend: A casebook in anti-Semitic folklore. University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, B. (1989). Death by folklore: Ostension, contemporary legend, and murder. Western Folklore, 48(3), 201220.Google Scholar
Fay, B. (2019). The Nazi conspiracy theory: German fantasies and Jewish power in the Third Reich. Library & Information History, 35(2), 7597.Google Scholar
Ferrara, E., Chang, H., Chen, E., Muric, G., & Patel, J. (2020). Characterizing social media manipulation in the 2020 US presidential election. First Monday.Google Scholar
Fine, G. A. (2007). Rumor, trust and civil society: Collective memory and cultures of judgment. Diogenes, 54(1), 518.Google Scholar
Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15(4), 731742.Google Scholar
Gray-Fow, M. J. (1998). Why the Christians? Nero and the great fire. Latomus, 57(Fasc. 3), 595616.Google Scholar
Greimas, A. J. (1968). Sémantique structurale, Paris, 1966. Archiv Orientální, 36, 150152.Google Scholar
Hagen, S., Peeters, S., Jokubauskaitė, E., & de Zeeuw, D. (2020, April 20). Cross-platform mentions of the QAnon conspiracy theory [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3758479Google Scholar
Hofstadter, R. (1964, November). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine. https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/Google Scholar
Holt, J., & Rizzuto, M. (2021, May 26). QAnon’s hallmark catchphrases evaporating from the mainstream internet. Digital Forensic Research Lab. https://medium.com/dfrlab/qanons-hallmark-catchphrases-evaporating-from-the-mainstream-internet-ce90b6dc2c55Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., Rosenfield, A. M., Gandhi, L., & Blaser, T. (2016). Noise: How to overcome the high, hidden cost of inconsistent decision making. Harvard Business Review, 94, 3846.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., Sibony, O., & Sunstein, C. R. (2021). Noise: A flaw in human judgment. Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis. In Helm, J. (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts (pp. 1244). University of Washington Press. Reprinted in Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 3–38 (1997).Google Scholar
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 415444.Google Scholar
Mullen, P. B. (1972). Modern legend and rumor theory. Journal of the Folklore Institute, 9(2/3), 95109.Google Scholar
Munn, L. (2021). More than a mob: Parler as preparatory media for the US Capitol storming. First Monday.Google Scholar
Newman, M. E. (2001). Clustering and preferential attachment in growing networks. Physical Review E, 64(2), 025102.Google Scholar
Nicolaisen, W. F. (1987). The linguistic structure of legends. Perspectives on Contemporary Legend, 2(1), 6167.Google Scholar
O’Connor, C., & Weatherall, J. O. (2019). The misinformation age. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Papasavva, A., Blackburn, J., Stringhini, G., Zannettou, S., & De Cristofaro, E. (2021). “Is it a qoincidence?”: A first step towards understanding and characterizing the QAnon movement on Voat. In Leskovec, J., Grobelnik, M., Najork, M., Tang, J., & Zia, L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021 (pp. 460471). Association for Computing Machinery.Google Scholar
Papasavva, A., Aliapoulios, M., Ballard, C., De Cristofaro, E., Stringhini, G., Zannettou, S., & Blackburn, J. (2022). The gospel according to Q: Understanding the QAnon conspiracy from the perspective of canonical information. In Budak, C., Cha, M., & Quercia, D. (Eds.), Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (vol. 16, pp. 735746). AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, W. (2019). It wasn’t just the trolls: Early internet culture, “fun,” and the fires of exclusionary laughter. Social Media + Society, 5(3), 2056305119849493.Google Scholar
Rosenblum, N. L., & Muirhead, R. (2020). A lot of people are saying. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rosnow, R. L. (1980). Psychology of rumor reconsidered. Psychological Bulletin, 87(3), 578591.Google Scholar
Shahsavari, S., Holur, P., Wang, T., Tangherlini, T. R., & Roychowdhury, V. (2020). Conspiracy in the time of corona: Automatic detection of emerging COVID-19 conspiracy theories in social media and the news. Journal of Computational Social Science, 3(2), 279317.Google Scholar
Shao, C., Ciampaglia, G. L., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2016). Hoaxy: A platform for tracking online misinformation. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web (pp. 745750). IW3C3.Google Scholar
Tangherlini, T. R. (1990). “It happened not too far from here…”: A survey of legend theory and characterization. Western Folklore, 49(4), 371390.Google Scholar
Tangherlini, T. R. (2018). Toward a generative model of legend: Pizzas, bridges, vaccines, and witches. Humanities, 7(1), 1.Google Scholar
Tangherlini, T. R. (2021). A conspiracy of witches. In Glauser, J. & Hermann, P. (Eds.), Myth, magic, and memory in early Scandinavian narrative culture (pp. 181193). Brepols.Google Scholar
Tangherlini, T. R., Roychowdhury, V., Glenn, B., Crespi, C. M., Bandari, R., Wadia, A., Falahi, M., Ebrahimzadeh, E., & Bastani, R. (2016). “Mommy blogs” and the vaccination exemption narrative: Results from a machine-learning approach for story aggregation on parenting social media sites. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2(2), e6586.Google Scholar
Tangherlini, T. R., Shahsavari, S., Shahbazi, B., Ebrahimzadeh, E., & Roychowdhury, V. (2020). An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web. PLoS ONE, 15(6), e0233879.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J. W. (2020). An existential threat model of conspiracy theories. European Psychologist, 25(1), 1625.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J. W., & Douglas, K. M. (2017). Conspiracy theories as part of history: The role of societal crisis situations. Memory Studies, 10(3), 323333.Google Scholar
Zimmer, F., & Reich, A. (2018). What is truth? Fake news and their uncovering by the audience. In Cunnane, V. & Corcoran, N. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Social Media (pp. 374381). Academic Conferences and Publishing International.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, E. (2019). QAnon and the emergence of the unreal. Journal of Design and Science, 6, 114.Google Scholar

References

Banas, J. A. (2020). Inoculation theory. In The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology (pp. 18). John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Banas, J. A., & Miller, G. (2013). Inducing resistance to conspiracy theory propaganda: Testing inoculation and meta-inoculation strategies. Human Communication Research, 40, 124.Google Scholar
Banas, J. A., & Rains, S. A. (2010). A meta-analysis of research on inoculation theory. Communication Monographs, 77, 281311.Google Scholar
Banas, J. A., & Richards, A. (2017). Apprehension or motivation to defend attitudes? Exploring the underlying threat mechanism in inoculation-induced resistance to persuasion. Communication Monographs, 84, 164178.Google Scholar
Banas, J. A., Bessarabova, E., Adame, B., & Robertson, K. (2015). The role of emotion in inoculating against conspiracy media. Paper presented at the 65th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 21–25.Google Scholar
Basol, M., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Good news about Bad News: Gamified inoculation boosts confidence and cultivates cognitive immunity against fake news. Journal of Cognition, 3, 19.Google Scholar
Bush, J. G., Johnson, H. M., & Seifert, C. M. (1994). The implications of corrections: Then why did you mention it? In Ram, A. & Eiselt, K. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 112117). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Center for Media Literacy. (2021). Media literacy: A definition and more. Center for Media Literacy. www.medialit.org/media-literacy-definition-and-moreGoogle Scholar
Cialdini, R. (2016). Pre-suasion: A revolutionary way to influence and persuade. Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Compton, J. (2013). Inoculation theory. In Dillard, J. P. & Shen, L. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of persuasion: Developments in theory and practice (2nd ed., pp. 220236). SAGE.Google Scholar
Cook, J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. (2017). Neutralizing misinformation through inoculation: Exposing misleading argumentation techniques reduces their influence. PLoS ONE, 12, e0175799.Google Scholar
Craft, S., Ashley, S., & Maksl, A. (2017). News media literacy and conspiracy theory endorsement. Communication and the Public, 2(4), 388401.Google Scholar
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26, 538542.Google Scholar
Dwoskin, E., & Timberg, C. (2021, January 16). Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump and some allies. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/16/misinformation-trump-twitter/Google Scholar
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Apai, J. (2011a). Terrorists brought down the plane! – No, actually it was a technical fault: Processing corrections of emotive information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 283310.Google Scholar
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Swire, B., & Chang, D. (2011b). Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 570578.Google Scholar
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Tang, D. T. W. (2010). Explicit warnings reduce but do not eliminate the continued influence of misinformation. Memory & Cognition, 38, 10871100.Google Scholar
Hasson, U., Simmons, J. P., & Todorov, A. (2005). Believe it or not: On the possibility of suspending belief. Psychological Science, 16, 566571.Google Scholar
Healy, J. (2021, January 11). These are the 5 people who died in the Capitol riot. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.htmlGoogle Scholar
Johnson, H. M., & Siefert, C. M. (1994). Sources of the continued influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later inferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 14201436.Google Scholar
Johnson, H. M., & Siefert, C. M. (1998). Updating accounts following a correction of misinformation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 14831494.Google Scholar
Johnson, H. M., & Siefert, C. M. (1999). Modifying mental representations: Comprehending corrections. In van Oostendorp, H. & Goldman, S. R. (Eds.), The construction of mental representations during reading (pp. 303318). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014). The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions. PLoS ONE, 9, e89177.Google Scholar
Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P. J., Jerit, J., Schwieder, D., & Rich, R. F. (2000). Misinformation and the currency of democratic citizenship. Journal of Politics, 62, 790816.Google Scholar
Lee, B. Y. (2021, January 30). Did Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blame a “space laser” for wildfires? Here’s the response. Forbes. www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/01/30/did-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-blame-a-space-laser-for-wildfires-heres-the-response/?sh=7db907a1e44aGoogle Scholar
Levine, T. R. (2019). Duped: Truth-default theory and the social science of lying and deception. University Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the “post-truth” era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353369.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106131.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Oberauer, K. (2013a). The role of conspiracist ideation and worldviews in predicting rejection of science. PLoS ONE, 8(10), e75637.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013b). NASA faked the moon landing, therefore, (climate) science is a hoax. An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24, 622633.Google Scholar
Lombrozo, T. (2006). The structure and function of explanations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 464470.Google Scholar
Lombrozo, T. (2007). Simplicity and probability in causal explanation. Cognitive Psychology, 55, 232257.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lutzke, L., Drummond, C., Slovic, P., & Arvai, J. (2019). Priming critical thinking: Simple interventions limit the influence of fake news about climate change on Facebook. Global Environmental Change, 58, 101964.Google Scholar
Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 27(1), 116.Google Scholar
McGuire, W. J. (1964). Inducing resistance to persuasion. Some contemporary approaches. In Berkowitz, L. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 191229). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mena, P. (2020). Cleaning up social media: The effect of warning labels on likelihood of sharing false news on Facebook. Policy & Internet, 12, 165183.Google Scholar
Pfau, M. W. (2005). Evaluating conspiracy: Narrative, argument, and ideology in Lincoln’s ‘‘House Divided’’ speech. Argumentation and Advocacy, 42, 5773.Google Scholar
Raab, M. H., Ortlieb, S., Auer, N., Guthmann, K., & Carbon, C. C. (2013). Thirty shades of truth: Conspiracy theories as stories of individuation, not of pathological delusion. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 406.Google Scholar
Rapp, D. N., & Kendeou, P. (2007). Revisiting what readers know: Updating text representations during narrative comprehension. Memory & Cognition, 35, 20192023.Google Scholar
Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2019). The fake news game: Actively inoculating against the risk of misinformation. Journal of Risk Research, 22, 570580.Google Scholar
Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., & Nygren, T. (2020). Prebunking interventions based on “inoculation” theory can reduce susceptibility to misinformation across cultures. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 1, 123.Google Scholar
Rose, J. (2020, December 30). Even if it’s “bonkers,” poll finds many believe QAnon and other conspiracy theories. NPR. www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951095644/even-if-its-bonkers-poll-finds-many-believe-qanon-and-other-conspiracy-theoriesGoogle Scholar
Sapountzis, A., & Condor, S. (2013). Conspiracy accounts as intergroup theories: Challenging dominant understandings of social power and political legitimacy. Political Psychology, 34, 731752.Google Scholar
Schul, Y., Mayo, R., & Burnstein, E. (2008). The value of distrust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 12931302.Google Scholar
Schwarz, N., Sanna, L. J., Skurnik, I., & Yoon, C. (2007). Metacognitive experiences and the intricacies of setting people straight: Implications for debiasing and public information campaigns. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 127161.Google Scholar
Smith, N., & Leiserowitz, A. A. (2012). The rise of global warming skepticism: Exploring affective image associations in the United States over time. Risk Analysis, 32, 10211032.Google Scholar
Tenney, E. R., Clearly, H. M. D., & Spellman, B. A. (2009). Unpacking the doubt in “beyond a reasonable doubt”: Plausible alternative stories increase not guilty verdicts. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 31, 18.Google Scholar
van Oostendorp, H., & Bonebakker, C. (1999). Difficulties in updating mental representations during reading news reports. In van Oostendorp, H. & Goldman, S. R. (eds.), The construction of mental representations during reading (pp. 319339). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Vraga, E. K., & Bode, L. (2020). Defining misinformation and understanding its bounded nature: Using expertise and evidence for describing misinformation. Political Communication, 37, 136144.Google Scholar
Vraga, E. K., & Tully, M. (2021). News literacy, social media behaviors, and skepticism toward information on social media. Information, Communication, & Society, 24, 150166.Google Scholar
Vraga, E. K., Kim, S. C., Cook, J., & Bode, L. (2020). Testing the effectiveness of correction placement and type on Instagram. International Journal of Press/Politics, 25, 632652.Google Scholar
Wilkes, A. L., & Leatherbarrow, M. (1988). Editing episodic memory following the identification of error. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 40, 361387.Google Scholar
Wilkes, A. L., & Reynolds, D. J. (1999). On certain limitations accompanying readers’ interpretations of corrections in episodic text. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 52, 165183.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×