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

Darius, Philipp; Urquhart, Michael

The Coronavirus pandemic was accompanied by uncertainty regarding appropriate treatments and policy reactions, which created a perfect breeding ground for the spread of conspiratorial anti-science narratives based on disinformation. Disinformation on public health may result in deadly consequences and hesitance to vaccinations is counted among the ten most severe threats to global public health by the United Nations. Conspiracy narratives, however, are a combination of disinformation, misinformation and rumour that are especially effective in drawing people to believe in post-factual claims. We monitored two established conspiracy narratives and their communities on Twitter, the anti-vaccination and anti-5G communities, before and during the first UK lockdown to assess whether they were able to grow their reach and influence broader public discourses on Twitter such as #Lockdown in the United Kingdom. Moreover, we make sense of conspiracy narratives as social movements, since they provide an option for self-identification and cognitive certainty in a rapidly changing information environment amid disruptive social distancing measures.