How COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread on Twitter

Abstract

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy theories (CTs) related to the virus have been widely circulated on social media. The uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and available treatment options likely contributed to the wide dissemination of such theories on social media platforms like Twitter. This retrospective study examines the spread of CTs surrounding Bill Gates and COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter and identifies what accounts contributed to their dissemination. Based on the social network analysis of 100,601 Bill Gates and vaccine-related tweets shared by 71,364 users between March 1 and May 31, 2020, the study found that automated and suspended accounts had a significant impact on the spread of CTs around this topic. Their tweets were more likely to be reshared by others than by chance alone. This highlights the need for social media platforms to continue to act against harmful automated accounts, particularly considering recent trends to ease content moderation policies and debunking interventions by social media giants in the post-pandemic era.