142: A Study of QAnon propaganda on Twitter as information warfare

Presenter(s)

Faith Foster

Abstract or Description

The degree to which online spaces have become tools for foreign actors to wield influence and wage information warfare has been poorly understood. In order to gain further insight into the ways foreign actors co-opt and exploit internet technologies for political purposes, we studied Twitter activity related to QAnon − a political belief system mainly demonizing the U.S. Democrats − in the time leading up to the 2020 election. Based on previous media manipulation and propaganda research, we hypothesized that QAnon-related Twitter activity would yield evidence of a mixing of Twitter traffic across overtly pro-QAnon accounts with that of accounts indicating consistencies with identities suspected to be susceptible to QAnon narratives, such as far-right conservatives and interest in New Age or Occult topics. Additionally, we predicted a well-defined hierarchy of influential QAnon and QAnon adjacent networked accounts. Network analyses were used to study interaction traffic across thousands of QAnon and QAnon-adjacent Twitter accounts. Through these analyses, evidence supporting both hypotheses was obtained. The results are interpreted with respect to frameworks surrounding organized persuasive communication campaigns involving deception and coercion as well as recent examples of internet and tech-enabled targeted persuasive messaging. While there is no explicit evidence regarding the national affiliations of most individuals behind the Twitter accounts, patterns in the data yield evidence consistent with the hypothesis that Russia may have played an influential role in organizing or promoting accounts in the QAnon Twitter network in the months leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election.