COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories in Social, Fringe, and Mainstream Media: A Trilogy of Articles, and More

I’ve mentioned some of these here before, but I’m very happy to say that my QUT Digital Media Research Centre colleagues Edward Hurcombe, Stephen Harrington, and I have now completed our trilogy of articles that investigated the dissemination of the baseless and nonsensical conspiracy theory that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was somehow related to 5G mobile telephony technology from its origins in obscure conspiracist sites and groups through social and fringe media to mainstream coverage. For a while, such dissemination was so widespread that it even resulted in physical attacks against mobile phone towers and technicians in the UK and elsewhere, in April 2020, and was covered in an episode of the investigative TV programme Four Corners on Australian television (though the eventual episode provide far too much of a platform for the conspiracy theorists themselves to spread their disinformation, unfortunately).

We divided our work on this topic into three segments: our first article, published in Media International Australia in August 2020, examined the dissemination of the conspiracy theory in its constantly evolving forms through public pages and groups on Facebook; here, we observed a number of phase shifts in the transmission of these ideas as they were amplified by increasingly visible and influential participants and communities. A second article, published in Digital Journalism in September 2021, complemented this analysis by examining the fringe and mainstream media coverage of the conspiracy theory, and showed the parallel evolution of that coverage from minor conspiracy-friendly sites through uncritical entertainment and tabloid media coverage to mainstream media reporting. Finally, our book chapter in the excellent new collection Communicating COVID-19, edited by Monique Lewis, Eliza Govender, and Kate Holland, has just been released, and examines these parallels between the social, fringe, and mainstream media coverage. It points especially to the weak spots in journalistic coverage – uncritical entertainment and tabloid reporting that treats celebrities as ready sources of clickbait without considering the damage that such coverage can do – that enable conspiracy theories to travel beyond their obscure communities of true believers, and makes a number of critical observations that should be considered by the journalists, platform operators, and authorities forced to engage with such mis- and disinformation.

Here are those three articles, then – click on each title for a pre-print version, or on the publications for the final published result:

Axel Bruns, Stephen Harrington, and Edward Hurcombe. "‘Corona? 5G? Or Both?’: The Dynamics of COVID-19/5G Conspiracy Theories on Facebook." Media International Australia 177 (2020): 12-29. DOI:10.1177/1329878X20946113.

Axel Bruns, Edward Hurcombe, and Stephen Harrington. "Covering Conspiracy: Approaches to Reporting the COVID/5G Conspiracy Theory" Digital Journalism (2021). DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1968921.

Axel Bruns, Edward Hurcombe, and Stephen Harrington. "Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories: Tracing Misinformation Trajectories from the Fringes to the Mainstream." In Communicating COVID-19: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Monique Lewis, Eliza Govender, and Kate Holland. London: Palgrave, 2021. 229-249. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-79735-5_12.

In addition to the articles themselves, I’ve also presented a number of talks on this research – most recently in invited online presentations at the Center for Computational and Data Sciences at the iSchool at Syracuse University, USA, and the Digital Journalism Research Group at OsloMet University, Norway. My sincere thanks to Jeff Hemsley and Oscar Westlund, respectively, for inviting me to give these talks on behalf of my QUT colleagues and myself. A video of the Syracuse version of the talk was recorded and is now available online, too – I’ve embedded it below.

I end the talk with a tentative analogy between the measures required to quell the infodemic sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the virological response to the pandemic itself; and while I don’t want to push the metaphor too far, I do think there are some valid parallels here. From that perspective, the various measures to reduce the spread of the virus (social distancing, masks, lockdowns, etc.) find their equivalent in the mechanisms that are used to reduce the dissemination of pandemic mis- and disinformation on social media platforms: warning labels, click-through warnings, content takedowns, account suspensions, etc. Both of these address the symptoms of the pandemic by reducing infection rates and speeds: they cannot eradicate the virus itself, and won’t work if people are unwilling to accept these measures or deliberately counteract them, but they play a crucial role in protecting mainstream populations. The real solution, however, is to eradicate the virus itself, rather than just to slow its transmission: for COVID-19 itself, that’s where vaccination is critical; for COVID-related mis- and disinformation, what’s required is a programme of deradicalisation that reduces the availability of willing supporters of conspiracy theories. Just as the development and deployment of vaccines has proven to be an immense challenge, however, such effective deradicalisation and depolarisation will also take considerable time.

Anyway, here is the full video so you can make up your own mind about that analogy:

Axel Bruns, with Edward Hurcombe and Stephen Harrington. “From the Fringes to the Mainstream: How COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread across Social and Mainstream Media.” Invited presentation at Syracuse University, USA, and OsloMet University, Norway, 23/28 Sep. 2021.

Finally, some time earlier I also recorded a podcast for our new ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S; more about that centre and its work in another post) that also discussed the findings of our research into the spread of this conspiracy theory. Here it is, and don’t forget to subscribe to the ADM+S podcast series for further updates: