Tracking The #Plandemic Video By: Nujaimah Kholwadia & Andrew Martinez, Elmhurst University Abstract Results Conclusion COVID-19 is a strain of Coronavirus that emerged in China in December of 2019. • The landscape of conspiracy twitter is Since then, it has socially and economically dominated by QANON and Q-adjacent theories impacted people all over the world. Due to • There exists a neighborhood of QANON and these extreme circumstances, conspiracy COVID conspiracy theorists, largely dominated theories surrounding the origin and severity of by a belief that the pandemic is a hoax the virus have proliferated. This research designed to harm the President and return utilizes social network analysis to investigate control to the “Deep State” twitter data using the #plandemic to explore • Additionally, there is a neighborhood of the extent to which consumers of COVID-19 overlapping anti-vaccination and COVID conspiracy theories are distinct from other conspiracy theorists, who largely assert that the conspiracy theory communities. pandemic is a hoax designed to force vaccination for profit and control • However, many COVID theorists are not following these other accounts, which suggests Background this cluster of theories have reached people • The #plandemic video was released in May 2020 previously uninterested in conspiracy theories. and suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic was a • These data suggest that, while some COVID hoax theorists are integrated in, or have been co- • The #plandemic has come to signify multiple Click to add text opted by, other conspiracy theories, there is a conspiracy theories about the pandemic significant portion of people driven to • A conspiracy theory is defined as “explanatory conspiratorial thinking as a result of the beliefs that involve a number of actors who join enormity of the global pandemic. together in secret agreement and try to achieve a hidden goal that is perceived as unlawful or malevolent” (Van Prooijen and Jostmann). • People tend to believe in conspiracy theories when References they feel frustrated, out of control, or large-scale events do not have similarly large-scale • Van Prooijen, Jan Williem, and Nils B Jostmann. “Belief in explanations (Douglas et al) Conspiracy Theories: The Influence of Uncertainty and Perceived • It is particularly difficult to debunk conspiracy Morality.” ResearchGate, Vol. 43, 2013 theories because they are tied to the identity of the • Uscinski, Joseph E., et al. “What Drives Conspiratorial believe and tend to gain power in like minded Beliefs? The Role of Informational Cues and communities, or echo chambers (Zollo et al) Predispositions.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 1, 2016, pp. 57–71., Methods • Sapountzis, Antonis, and Susan Condor. “Conspiracy Accounts as On June 23 we pulled tweets that mentioned Intergroup Theories: Challenging Dominant Understandings of Social #plandemic and identified the users. Of that Power and Political Legitimacy.” Political Psychology, vol. 34, no. sample, we pulled the top 50 favorited tweets and 5, 2013, pp. 731–752. JSTOR coded the users as focusing on one or more of the • ”Plandemic” Documentary – Elevate (Judy Mikovits & Mikki Willis following topics: COVID-19 conspiracy theories; General conspiratorial thinking; Emphatic support for President Trump; Anti-vaccine sentiments; QAnon supporter Acknowledgements We then mined the followers for this subset of accounts and identified users who followed more • Dr. Carrie Coward Bucher than one of the original accounts. These data were used to create the social network analysis. • Dr. David Brown.