How a peripheral ideology becomes mainstream: Strategic performance, audience reaction, and news media amplification in the case of QAnon Twitter accounts

Abstract

Social media platforms have been used by various actors to bypass traditional media gatekeepers to share messages, draw attention, and accumulate influence. We study how actors from peripheral groups gain influence on social media and how their social media behaviors evolve over time. Integrating online strategic performance and hybrid media literature, we hypothesize that peripheral groups perform group identities to spur social media audience reaction and news media amplification, to which they further adapt their performance. By analyzing 242 QAnon Twitter accounts using topic modeling and time series modeling, we find that their in-group solidarity and out-group animosity tweets boost retweets, but not followers; increased retweets and followers drive news media amplification largely undertaken by right-wing outlets and motivate future performance of group identity, particularly of out-group animosity. The implications of social media and news media for the growth of peripheral actors and ideologies are discussed.