Disinformed social movements: A large-scale mapping of conspiracy narratives as online harms during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused high uncertainty regarding appropriate treatments and public policy reactions. This uncertainty provided a perfect breeding ground for spreading conspiratorial anti-science narratives based on disinformation. Disinformation on public health may alter the population’s hesitance to vaccinations, counted among the ten most severe threats to global public health by the United Nations. We understand conspiracy narratives as a combination of disinformation, misinformation, and rumour that are especially effective in drawing people to believe in post-factual claims and form disinformed social movements. Conspiracy narratives provide a pseudo-epistemic background for disinformed social movements that allow for self-identification and cognitive certainty in a rapidly changing information environment. This study monitors two established conspiracy narratives and their communities on Twitter, the anti-vaccination and anti-5G communities, before and during the first UK lockdown. The study finds that, despite content moderation efforts by Twitter, conspiracy groups were able to proliferate their networks and influence broader public discourses on Twitter, such as #Lockdown in the United Kingdom.