Conspiracy in the time of corona: automatic detection of emerging COVID-19 conspiracy theories in social media and the n
- PDF / 3,876,999 Bytes
- 39 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 28 Downloads / 187 Views
Conspiracy in the time of corona: automatic detection of emerging COVID‑19 conspiracy theories in social media and the news Shadi Shahsavari, et al. [full author details at the end of the article] Received: 15 July 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Abstract Rumors and conspiracy theories thrive in environments of low confidence and low trust. Consequently, it is not surprising that ones related to the COVID-19 pandemic are proliferating given the lack of scientific consensus on the virus’s spread and containment, or on the long-term social and economic ramifications of the pandemic. Among the stories currently circulating in US-focused social media forums are ones suggesting that the 5G telecommunication network activates the virus, that the pandemic is a hoax perpetrated by a global cabal, that the virus is a bio-weapon released deliberately by the Chinese, or that Bill Gates is using it as cover to launch a broad vaccination program to facilitate a global surveillance regime. While some may be quick to dismiss these stories as having little impact on real-world behavior, recent events including the destruction of cell phone towers, racially fueled attacks against Asian Americans, demonstrations espousing resistance to public health orders, and wide-scale defiance of scientifically sound public mandates such as those to wear masks and practice social distancing, countermand such conclusions. Inspired by narrative theory, we crawl social media sites and news reports and, through the application of automated machine-learning methods, discover the underlying narrative frameworks supporting the generation of rumors and conspiracy theories. We show how the various narrative frameworks fueling these stories rely on the alignment of otherwise disparate domains of knowledge, and consider how they attach to the broader reporting on the pandemic. These alignments and attachments, which can be monitored in near real time, may be useful for identifying areas in the news that are particularly vulnerable to reinterpretation by conspiracy theorists. Understanding the dynamics of storytelling on social media and the narrative frameworks that provide the generative basis for these stories may also be helpful for devising methods to disrupt their spread. Keywords COVID-19 · Corona virus · Conspiracy theories · 5G · Bill Gates · China · Bio-weapons · Social media · 4Chan · Reddit · News · Rumor · Narrative · Machine learning · Networks · Data visualization
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Computational Social Science
Introduction As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its unrelenting global march, stories about its origins, possible cures and vaccines, and appropriate responses are tearing through social media and dominating the news cycle. While many of the stories in the news media are the product of fact-based reporting, many of those circulating on social media are anecdotal and the product of speculation, wishful thinking, or conspiratorial fantasy. Given the lack of a strong scien
Data Loading...
