QAnon

Online extremist movements are increasingly using social media communities to share content, spread their ideologies, recruit members, and mobilize offline activities. In recent years, mainstream platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, have adopted policies to remove or deplatform some of these movements. Yet online extremists are well-known for their abilities to adapt, self-censor, and migrate across ...

This paper discusses research on QAnon, a controversial conspiracy movement. Its public engagement mechanisms and discursive practices, focusing on members’ activities on Telegram, are analysed. These activities have elevated concerns about the group’s threat to democracy, prompting intelligence agencies to identify it as a potential risk. This study emphasises the need to understand QAnon’s discursive ...

While the extreme right wing (ERW) has not gained a foothold in local or national Irish politics, the country has witnessed a growth in online activism and harassment, and physical protest and violence. This paper explores a case study based on 4876 unique posts from one Irish-based Telegram group active during six months of the ...

In recent years, radicalization is being increasingly attempted on video-sharing platforms. Previous studies have been proposed to identify online radicalization using generic social context analysis, without taking into account comprehensive viewer traits and how those can affect viewers’ perception of radicalizing content. To address the challenge, we examine QAnon, a conspiracy-based radicalizing group, and have ...

VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...

VOX-Pol Blog post. ...

The presidency of Donald Trump was marked by a period of populist and sometimes extremist right-wing policies and rhetoric, and an escalation of ‘culture wars’ between the left and right in politics and society. He also gained the devoted support of numerous right-wing and so-called alt-right groups, such as QAnon, a conspiracy theory group that ...

The rise of QAnon presents researchers with a number of important questions. While emerging literature provides insights into how QAnon exists online, there is a dearth of theoretical engagement with the questions of why it exists, and what conditions brought it into being. This paper seeks to address this gap by contextualizing QAnon as an ...

The conspiracy theory known as ‘Pizzagate’ gained a cult following on alt-right forums, ultimately prompting one believer to conduct a shooting on the pizzeria identified by online conspiracists. A thematic analysis of 767 tweets referencing Pizzagate selected from five key intervention points in this timeframe reveals several factors influencing Pizzagate’s continued appeal over a four-year ...