"Gateway Conspiracy”: Distrust of the COVID-19 pandemic as a gateway to conspiracy theories.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.188.145-164Keywords:
Network Analysis, Big Data , Misinformation, Social Networks, Sociology, Conspiracy Theories, TwitterAbstract
The article examines how distrust towards the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a catalyst for the diffusion of conspiracy theories. It discusses the nature of conspiracy theories, their relationship to institutional distrust, and their representation in social media. The study's methodology includes analyzing hashtags from over two million tweets, through network analysis, in order to understand how different conspiracy theories relate to each other and how certain theories act as "gateways" to others. The findings suggest that there are logical connections between different conspiracy theories, influenced by distrust towards specific institutions and amplified by the COVID-19 crisis. It concludes that the combination of conspiracy theories is not random, but follows an internal logic based on distrust, since they are interconnected in an internally coherent way in the context of the pandemic.
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