Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories Continue To Thrive On Social Media

Anyone who has engaged in a “heated debate” with certain friends or relatives will quickly learn that opinions can overshadow facts. This is even worse for some when the discussion is with someone who doesn’t agree with widely-accepted truths – whether it was about the moon landings, who shot JFK, or whether the U.S. government was “really” behind 9/11.

Certain fringe beliefs, often in opposition to known scientific facts, are typically labeled as conspiracy theories. There has long been a cottage industry built around books, movie documentaries, newsletters, websites, and even YouTube Channels devoted to these theories; and in many cases, there hasn’t been much harm.

Believing the world is flat or that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings is one thing, but in the era of social media, some conspiracy theories can be far more harmful than others.

This was certainly found to be the case during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A team of authors from Stanford University – including Henrich R. Greve, Hayagreeva Roa, Paul Vicinanza, and Echo Yan Zhou – released a new study that looked at how theories around Covid-19 were shared across Twitter. “Online Conspiracy Groups: Micro-Bloggers, Bots, and Coronavirus Conspiracy Talk on Twitter” was published in the December 2022 issue of The American Sociological Review.

The authors collected approximately 700,000 tweets from 8,000 users, dating from January to July 2020, and tracked discussions around the novel coronavirus. The researchers applied a natural language processing methodology called the biterm topic model (BTM). They found that 13 topics fell into two logics of action: one claiming the virus was a hoax or exaggerated threat (e.g., testing gives false positives or hospitals are secretly empty) and another that described it as a bioweapon spread on purpose (e.g., by Bill Gates, the Chinese, or a world-controlling faction).

The team found that users first retweet gateway conspiracy theories – those less extreme and more plausible – before progressing to more extreme ones.

“Social media is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories because it contains a mixture of information, seemingly credible disinformation, and extreme disinformation,” Henrich R. Greve, professor of entrepreneurship, and INSEAD chair in Organization and Management Theory at Stanford explained via an email.

“Seemingly credible disinformation, such as conspiracy theories about inflated infection counts, become gateways that people enter into before proceeding into extreme conspiracy theories, like that of a secretive worldwide cabal designing Covid-19 and using it as a weapon,” added Greve.

The authors further found individuals tended to tweet new conspiracy theories and inconsistent theories simultaneously when they faced a threat posed by the rising Covid-19 case rate and when they receive attention from others via retweets.

Even outlandish theories can gain traction if these get enough people tweeting – as it could suggest a large number of people believe it to be true.

“Some people step right into extreme and outlandish conspiracy theories that they encounter in social media, but for many, the process is nearly the opposite,” Greve explained. “The beginning of conspiracy theory talk is learning about infection statistics and feeling threatened by them.”

Once they start propagating a gateway conspiracy theory and find that others approve of it (by retweeting it), some on social media will further propagate more conspiracy theories, including those with even more extreme beliefs.

It is like an echo chamber with one person shouting conspiracy theories and listening to whether others react to it or not,” warned Greve.

The authors also concluded that a key implication of their research is that traditional means of persuasion, marketing, and public relations would likely be ineffective against conspiracies. Rejecting the content of conspiracy theories treats the symptom, not the illness, and is unlikely to be effective.