>>11060549 (pb)
the real Melanie Smith does not like us.
at all.
https://twitter.com/melaniefsmith?lang=en
https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_report_interpreting_social_qs.pdf
The past few months have seen a wealth of mainstream news reporting on the conspiratorial social media movement known as QAnon. Some of these news pieces have charted its growth in the Covid-19 era, documented the presence of its supporters on Twitter and Facebook and covered the recent actions taken by these platforms to restrict its influence.
Graphika has been analyzing the QAnon community on an ongoing basis for over two years, developing a set of network maps that allow for an understanding of how this movement has changed over time. This includes regular assessments of the movement’s potential to cause real-world harm as a result of its involvement in topics like Covid-19 and the worldwide protests that began after the murder of George Floyd. Frequently discussed in publications about QAnon is the FBI’s decision to designate the movement a domestic terrorism threat in August of last year - while Graphika understands the majority of QAnon content to be innocuous, there are a number of situations in which this potential harm has become realized.
When we first mapped the network of QAnon supporters in June 2018, it was the most dense conspiratorial network Graphika had ever studied.This means that accounts engaged in QAnon theories at the time had an astounding rate of mutual followership and represented an extremely tight-knit online community. The likelihood with a community this dense is that accounts are exposed to, and engage with, very similar content to each other. Despite its significant growth and undeniable ‘mainstreaming’ over the past two years, QAnon continues to be exactly such a community.
Conclusion
QAnon remains the most densely interconnected conspiratorial network that Graphika has studied. The evolution of this movement over the past two years indicates an increasing autonomy from mainstream right-wing online groups in the US, however network analysis suggests that these groups still prove useful for the amplification of QAnon messaging. As the US election draws closer, and public debate over Covid-19 continues, QAnon is likely to appeal to a number of distinct online communities with similar messaging. This will make it increasingly difficult to detect and disambiguate content and activity specific to the QAnon movement. Even in
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the past few weeks, there have been well-attended rallies and demonstrations centered around QAnon-adjacent causes taking place in many US cities. This appetite for offline participation raises security concerns and will likely entail a spike in exposure for QAnon slogans and rallying cries.
QAnon’s highly malleable ideology, coupled with its capacity for rapid content dissemination, allows the movement to appeal to new members by blending current events in the news cycle into an overarching anti-government worldview. This adaptability presents an opportunity for foreign actors to leverage the community by manipulating specific narratives that align with their interests. While no significant attempts to take advantage of the QAnon community for specific US election outcomes have been observed as of yet, this continues to be a possibility.
Meanwhile, QAnon theories and causes are finding purchase outside of the US as new national communities begin to apply these concepts to their local political landscapes and figures. The development of these relatively independent online ecosystems, which often have their own distinct influencers and terminologies, warrants greater attention. The international chapters of QAnon present a concern not only for democratic processes worldwide but also for the deterioration of trust in institutions.