How COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread on Twitter

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dc.contributor.authorGruzd, Anatoliy
dc.contributor.authorGhenai, Amira
dc.contributor.authorMai, Philip
dc.date.accessioned2023-12-26T18:38:36Z
dc.date.available2023-12-26T18:38:36Z
dc.date.issued2024-01-03
dc.identifier.doi10.24251/HICSS.2024.300
dc.identifier.isbn978-0-9981331-7-1
dc.identifier.otherbd6823f2-238e-48d8-b4ac-b76d9223cf63
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/106682
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofProceedings of the 57th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectData Analytics, Data Mining, and Machine Learning for Social Media
dc.subjectconspiracy theories
dc.subjectcovid-19
dc.subjectsocial media
dc.subjecttwitter
dc.subjectvaccine hesitancy
dc.titleHow COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread on Twitter
dc.typeConference Paper
dc.type.dcmiText
dcterms.abstractSince 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.
dcterms.extent10 pages
prism.startingpage2465

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