Conspiracies are consequential and social, yet online conspiracy groups that consist of individuals (and bots) seeking to explain events or a system have been neglected in sociology. We extract conspiracy talk about the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter and use the biterm topic model (BTM) to provide a descriptive baseline for the discursive and social structure of online conspiracy groups. We find that individuals enter these communities through a gateway conspiracy theory before proceeding to extreme theories, and humans adopt more diverse conspiracy theories than do bots. Event-history analyses show that individuals tweet new conspiracy theories, and tweet inconsistent theories simultaneously, when they face a threat posed by a rising COVID-19 case rate and receive attention from others via retweets. By contrast, bots are less responsive to rising case rates, but they are more consistent, as they mainly tweet about how COVID-19 was deliberately created by sinister agents. These findings suggest human beings are bricoleurs who use conspiracy theories to make sense of COVID-19, whereas bots are designed to create moral panic. Our findings suggest that conspiracy talk by individuals is defensive in nature, whereas bots engage in offense.
AdornoTheodor W.1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Norton.
2.
AllportGordon W.PostmanLeo. 1947. The Psychology of Rumor. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
3.
AlothaliEimanZakiNazarMohamedElfadil A.AlashwalHany. 2018. “Detecting Social Bots on Twitter: A Literature Review.” Pp. 175–80 in 2018 International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology (IIT) (https://doi.org/10.1109/INNOVATIONS.2018.8605995).
4.
Alvarez-MelisDavidSaveskiMartin. 2016. “Topic Modeling in Twitter: Aggregating Tweets by Conversations.” Pp. 519–22 in Proceedings of the Tenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.
5.
AtkinsonMatthewDeWittDarinUscinskiJoseph E.2017. “Conspiracy Theories in the 2016 Election.” Pp. 163–80 in Conventional Wisdom, Parties, and Broken Barriers in the 2016 Election, edited by LucasJ. C.GaldieriC. J.SiscoT. S.New York: Lexington Books.
6.
BailChris. 2021. Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
7.
BarkunMichael. 2003. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
8.
BartlettFrederic C.1932. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
9.
BaumanZygmunt. 2005. Liquid Life. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
10.
BellDavidBennion-NixonLee-Jane. 2001. “The Popular Culture of Conspiracy/The Conspiracy of Popular Culture.” Pp. 133–52 in The Age of Anxiety: Conspiracy Theory and the Human Sciences, edited by PariahJ.ParkerM.Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.
11.
BierwiaczonekKingaKunstJonas R.PichOlivia. 2020. “Belief in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Reduces Social Distancing over Time.” Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being12(4):1270–85.
BleiDavid M.2012. “Probabilistic Topic Models.” Communications of the ACM55(4):77–84.
14.
BorgattiStephen P.2005. “Centrality and Network Flow.” Social Networks27(1):55–71.
15.
Boyd-GraberJordanMimnoDavidNewmanDavid. 2014. “Care and Feeding of Topic Models: Problems, Diagnostics, and Improvements.” Pp. 225–54 in Handbook of Mixed Membership Models and their Applications, edited by AiroldiE. M.BleiD.EroshevaE. A.FienbergS. E.Boca Raton, FL: CRC press.
16.
CampanAlinaAtnafuTobelTrutaTraian MariusNolanJoseph. 2018. “Is Data Collection through Twitter Streaming API Useful for Academic Research?” Pp. 3638–43 in 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data) (https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData.2018.8621898).
17.
CentolaDamon. 2013. “Social Media and the Science of Health Behavior.” Circulation127(21): 2135–44.
18.
ChangJonathanBoyd-GraberJordanGerrishSeanWangChongBleiDavid M.2009. “Reading Tea Leaves: How Humans Interpret Topic Models.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 22, edited by BengioY.SchuurmansD.LaffertyJ.WilliamsC.CulottaA.Curran Associates, Inc.
19.
ChenWeizhengWangJinpengZhangYanYanHongfeiLiXiaoming. 2015. “User Based Aggregation for Biterm Topic Model.” Pp. 489–94 in Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 7th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (Volume 2: Short Papers). Beijing, China: Association for Computational Linguistics.
20.
ChuangJasonGuptaSonalManningChristopher D.HeerJeffrey. 2013. “Topic Model Diagnostics: Assessing Domain Relevance via Topical Alignment.” P. 9 in Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, Atlanta, GA.
21.
ClarkeSteve. 2002. “Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorizing.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences32(2):131–50.
22.
ClarkeSteve. 2007. “Conspiracy Theories and the Internet: Controlled Demolition and Arrested Develoment.” Episteme4(2):167–70.
23.
CohenStanley. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London, UK: Routledge.
24.
DarwinHannahNeaveNickHolmesJoni. 2011. “Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Role of Paranormal Belief, Paranoid Ideation, and Schizotpy.” Personality and Individual Differences50(8):1289–93.
25.
DavisClayton A.VarolOnurFerrarEmilioFlamminiAlessandroMencerFilippo. 2016. “BotOrNot: A System to Evaluate Social Bots.” Pp. 273–74 in Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web.
26.
DiFonzoNicholas. 2018 “Conspiracy Rumor Pscyhology.” Pp. 257–68 in Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by UsciniskiJ.New York: Oxford University Press.
27.
DiMaggioPaul. 1994. “Culture and Economy.” Pp. 27–57 in Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
28.
DiMaggioPaul. 1997. “Culture and Cognition.” Annual Review of Sociology23(1):263–87.
DouglasKaren M.SuttonRobbie M.CichockaAleksandra. 2017. “The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories.” Current Directions in Psychological Science26(6):538–42.
31.
DouglasKaren M.UscinskiJoseph E.SuttonRobbie M.CichockaAleksandraNefesTurkayAngChee SiangDeraviFarzin. 2019. “Understanding Conspiracy Theories.” Advances in Political Psychology40(1):Suppl. 1.
32.
EcoUmberto. 2017. Chronicles of a Liquid Society. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
33.
ElsterJon. 1998. Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
34.
EndersAdam M.SmallpageSteven M.2018. “On the Measurement of Conspiracy Beliefs.” Research & Politics5(1):1–4.
35.
FerraraEmilioVarolOnurDavisClaytonMenczerFilippoFlamminiAlessandro. 2016. “The Rise of Social Bots.” Communications of the ACM59(7):96–104.
36.
FestingerLeon. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
37.
FineGary AlanTurnerPatricia A.2001. Whispers on the Color Line. Berkeley: University of California Press.
38.
FligsteinNeilBrundageJonah StuartSchultzMichael. 2017. “Seeing Like the Fed: Culture, Cognition, and Framing in the Failure to Anticipate the Financial Crisis of 2008.” American Sociological Review82(5):879–909.
39.
FriedlandRogerAlfordRobert. 1991. “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices and Institutional Contradictions.” Pp. 232–67 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by PowellW.W.DiMaggioP. J.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
40.
GallagherRyan J.DoroshenkoLarissaShugarsSarahLazerDavidWellesBrooke Foucault. 2021. “Sustained Online Amplification of COVID-19 Elites in the United States.” Social Media + Society7(2):1–14.
41.
GawronskiBertram. 2012. “Back to the Future of Dissonance Theory: Cognitive Consistency as a Core Motive.” Social Cognition30(6):652–68.
42.
GawronskiBertramBrannonSkylar M.2019. “What Is Cognitive Consistency, and Why Does It Matter?” Pp. 91–116 in Cognitive Dissonance: Reexamining a Pivotal Theory in Psychology, 2nd ed.Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
43.
GoelSharadWattsDuncan J.GoldsteinDaniel G.2012. “The Structure of Online Diffusion Networks.” Pp. 623–38 in Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, Association for Computing Machinery, New York.
44.
GoodmanJackCarmichaelFlora. 2020. “Coronavirus: 5G and Microchip Conspiracies around the World.” BBC Reality Check, June27 (https://www.bbc.com/news/53191523).
45.
GrantLennyHausmanBernice L.CashionMargaretLucchesiNicholasPatelKelseyRobertsJonathan. 2015. “Vaccine Persuasion Online: A Qualitative Study of Two Provaccine and Two Vaccine-Skeptical Websites.” Journal of Medical Internet Research17(5):e133.
46.
GuessAndrew M.2021. “(Almost) Everything in Moderation: New Evidence on Americans’ Online Media Diets.” American Journal of Political Science65(4):1007–22.
47.
GuessAndrew M.NyhanBrendanLyonsBenjaminReiflerJason. 2018. “Avoiding the Echo Chamber about Echo Chambers.” Knight Foundation2:1–25.
48.
HanniganTimothy R.HaansRichard F. J.VakiliKeyvanTchalianHovigGlaserVern L.WangMilo ShaoqingKaplanSarahJenningsP. Devereaux. 2019. “Topic Modeling in Management Research: Rendering New Theory from Textual Data.” Academy of Management Annals13(2):586–632.
49.
HeathChipBellChrisSternbergEmily. 2001. “Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology81(6):1028–41.
50.
HeiderFritz. 1958. The Naive Analysis of Action. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
51.
Helms MillsJean C.MillsAlbert J.2017. “Rules, Sensemaking, Formative Contexts, and Discourse in the Gendering of Organizational Culture.” Pp. 49–69 in Insights and Research on the Study of Gender and Intersectionality in International Airline Cultures, editedy by MillsA. J.Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited.
52.
HilgartnerStephenBoskCharles L.1988. “The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model.” American Journal of Sociology9(1):53–78.
53.
Himelein-WachowiakMcKenzieGiorgiSalvatoreDevotoAmandaRahmanMuhammadUngarLyleSchwartzH. AndrewEpsteinDavid H.LeggioLorenzoCurtisBrenda. 2021. “Bots and Misinformation Spread on Social Media: Implications for COVID-19.” Journal of Medical Internet Research23(5):e26933.
54.
HofstadterRichard. 1964. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
55.
HongLiangjieDavisonBrian D.2010. “Empirical Study of Topic Modeling in Twitter.” Pp. 80–88 in Proceedings of the First Workshop on Social Media Analytics - SOMA ’10. Washington, DC: ACM Press.
56.
ImhoffRolandLambertyPia. 2018. “How Paranoid Are Conspiracy Believers? Toward a More Fine-Grained Understanding of the Connect and Disconnect between Paranoia and Belief in Conspiracy Theories.” European Journal of Social Psychology48(7):909–26.
57.
JamisonAmeliaBroniatowskiDavid A.SmithMichael C.ParikhKajal S.MalikAdeenaDredzeMarkQuinnSandra C.2020. “Adapting and Extending a Typology to Identify Vaccine Misinformation on Twitter.” American Journal of Public Health110(S3):S331–39.
58.
JungmannStefanie M.WitthöftMichael. 2020. “Health Anxiety, Cyberchondria, and Coping in the Current COVID-19 Pandemic: Which Factors Are Related to Coronavirus Anxiety?” Journal of Anxiety Disorders73 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102239).
59.
KandelDenise. 1975. “Stages in Adolescent Involvement in Drug Use.” Science190(4217):912–14.
60.
KarellDanielFreedmanMichael. 2019. “Rhetorics of Radicalism.” American Sociological Review84(4):726–53.
61.
KashimaYoshihisa. 2000. “Maintaining Cultural Stereotypes in the Serial Reproduction of Narratives.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin26(5):594–604.
62.
KnightPeterButterMichael. 2018. “The History of Conspiracy Theory Research: A Review and Commentary.” Pp. 33–46 in Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by UscinskiJ. E.Oxford, UK: Oxford Academic.
63.
KruglanskiArie W.ShteynbergGarriy. 2012. “Cognitive Consistency as Means to an End: How Subjective Logic Affords Knowledge.” Pp. 245–64 in Cognitive Consistency: A Fundamental Principle in Social Cognition, edited by GawronskiB.StrackF.New York: Guilford Press.
64.
LakatosImre. 1970. “Falsification and the Methodology of Research Programmes.” In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by LakatosI.MusgraveA.Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Levi-StraussClaude. 1996. The Savage Mind. New York: The Free Press.
67.
LizardoOmarStrandMichael. 2010. “Skills, Toolkits, Contexts and Institutions: Clarifying the Relationship between Different Approaches to Cognition in Cultural Sociology.” Poetics38(2):205–28.
68.
LoschMary E.CacioppoJohn T.1990. “Cognitive Dissonance May Enhance Sympathetic Tonus, but Attitudes Are Changed to Reduce Negative Affect Rather Than Arousal.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology26(4):289–304.
69.
LowenthalLeoGutermanNorbert. 1949. Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator. New York: Harper and Brothers.
70.
LuceriLucaDebAshokBadawyAdamFerraraEmilio. 2019. “Red Bots Do It Better: Comparative Analysis of Social Bot Partisan Behavior.” Pp. 1007–12 in Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference. San Francisco, CA: ACM.
71.
MimnoDavidWallachHannaTalleyEdmundLeendersMiriamMcCallumAndrew. 2011. “Optimizing Semantic Coherence in Topic Models.” Pp. 262–72 in Proceedings of the 2011 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. Edinburgh, Scotland.
72.
MosherClaytonAkinsScott. 2014. Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alternation, 2nd ed.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
73.
MungerKevinPhillipsJoseph. 2022. “Right-Wing YouTube: A Supply and Demand Perspective.” The International Journal of Press/Politics27(1):186–219 (https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220964767).
NelsonLaura K.2021. “Cycles of Conflict, a Century of Continuity: The Impact of Persistent Place-Based Political Logics on Social Movement Strategy.” American Journal of Sociology127(1):1–59.
76.
OliverJ. EricWoodThomas. 2014. “Medical Conspiracy Theories and Health Behaviors in the United States.” JAMA Internal Medicine174(5):817–18.
77.
OlmstedKathryn S.2009. Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. New York: Oxford University Press.
78.
OsmundsenMathiasBorAlexanderVahlstrupPeter BjerregaardBechmannAnjaPetersenMichael Bang. 2021. “Partisan Polarization Is the Primary Psychological Motivation behind Political Fake News Sharing on Twitter.” American Political Science Review115(3):999–1015.
79.
PattersonOrlando. 2014. “Making Sense of Culture.” Annual Review of Sociology40(1):1–30.
80.
PennycookGordonRandDavid G.2021. “The Psychology of Fake News.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences25(5):388–402.
81.
PummererLotteBöhmRobertLilleholtLauWinterKevenZettlerIngoSassenbergKai. 2022. “Conspiracy Theories and Their Societal Effects during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Social Psychological and Personality Science13(1):49–59.
82.
PyszczynskiTomLockettMcKenzieGreenbergJeffSolomonSheldon. 2021. “Terror Management Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology61(2):173–89.
83.
RöderMichaelBothAndreasHinneburgAlexander. 2015. “Exploring the Space of Topic Coherence Measures.” Pp. 399–408 in Proceedings of the Eighth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining. Shanghai, China: ACM.
RosnowRalph. 1991. “Inside Rumor: A Personal Journey.” American Psychologist46:484–96.
86.
SalgeCarolina Alves De LimaKarahannaElena. 2018. “Protesting Corruption on Twitter: Is It a Bot or Is It a Person?” Academy of Management Discoveries4(1):32–49.
87.
SchallerMark. 2011. “The Behavioural Immune System and the Psychology of Human Sociality.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences366(1583):3418–26.
88.
SchallerMarkMurrayDamian R.2011. “Infectious Disease and the Creation of Culture.” Pp. 99–151 in Advances in Culture and Psychology, edited by GelfandM. J.ChiuC.-y.HongY.-y.Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
89.
SchallerMarkNeubergSteven L.2012. “Danger, Disease, and the Nature of Prejudice(s).” Pp. 1–54 in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 46, edited by OlsonJ. M.ZannaM. P.Cambridge, MA: Academic Press.
90.
ShaoChengchengCiampagliaGiovanni LucaVarolOnurYangKai-ChengFlamminiAlessandroMenczerFilippo. 2018. “The Spread of Low-Credability Context by Social Bots.” Nature Communications9(1):1–9.
91.
SkinnerJonathan. 2001. “Taking Conspiracy Seriously: Fantastic Narratives and Mr Grey the Pan-Afrikanist on Montserrat.” The Sociological Review48(2_suppl):94–111.
92.
SmallMario LuisHardingDavid J.LamontMichèle. 2010. “Reconsidering Culture and Poverty.” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science629(1):6–27.
93.
SmithSteven T.KaoEdward K.MackinErika D.ShahDanelle C.SimekOlgaRubinDonald B.2021. “Automatic Detection of Influential Actors in Disinformation Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences118(4) (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2011216118).
94.
SolomonSheldonGreenbergJeffPyszczynskiTom. 2015. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. New York: Random House Publishing Group.
95.
SperberDan. 1996. Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
96.
StevensHannah R.OhYoo JungTaylorLaramie R.2021. “Desensitization to Fear-Inducing COVID-19 Health News on Twitter: Obseravtional Study.” JMIR Infodemiology1(1) (https://doi.org/10.2196/26876).
97.
SubrahmanianVenkatramanan S.AzariaAmosDurstSkylarKaganVadimGalstyanAramLermanKristinaZhuLinhongFerraraEmilioFlamminiAlessandroMenczerFilippo. 2016. “The DARPA Twitter Bot Challenge.” Computer49(6):38–46.
98.
SunsteinCass R.VermeuleCornelius Adrian. 2009. “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.” Journal of Political Philosophy17(2):202–27.
99.
SwamiVirenColesRebeccaStiegerStefanPietschnigJakobFurnhamAdrianRehimSherryVoracekMartin. 2011. “Conspiracist Ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a Monological Belief System and Associations between Individual Psychological Differences and Real-World and Fictitious Conspiracy Theories.” British Journal of Psychology102(3):443–63.
100.
SwidlerAnne. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review51(2):273–86.
101.
SwidlerAnne. 2003. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
102.
TörnbergPetter. 2018. “Echo Chambers and Viral Misinformation: Modeling Fake News as Complex Contagion.” PloS One13(9): e0203958.
103.
UscinskiJoseph E.2018. Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them. New York: Oxford University Press.
104.
UscinskiJoseph E.EndersAdam M.KlofstadCaseySeeligMichelleFunchionJohnEverettCalebWuchtyStefanPremaratneKamalMurtiManohar. 2020. “Why Do People Believe COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories?” Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review (https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-015).
105.
UscinskiJoseph E.ParentJoseph M.2014. American Conspiracy Theories. New York: Oxford University Press.
106.
Van ProoijenJan-WillemDouglasKaren M.2018. “Belief in Conspiracy Theories: Basic Principles of an Emerging Research Domain.” European Journal of Social Psychology48(7):897–908.
107.
Van ProoijenJan-WillemDouglasKaren M.De InocencioClara. 2018. “Connecting the Dots: Illusory Pattern Perception Predicts Belief in Conspiracies and the Supernatural.” European Journal of Social Psychology48(3):320–35.
108.
VosoughiSoroushRoyDebAralSinan. 2018. “The Spread of True and False News Online.” Science359(6380):1146–51.
109.
WalkerCharles J.1996. “Perceived Control in Wish and Dread Rumors.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, March, Washington, DC.
110.
WalshJames P.2020. “Social Media and Moral Panics: Assessing the Effects of Technological Change on Societal Reaction.” International Journal of Cultural Studies23(6):840–59.
111.
WalterDrorOphirYotamJamiesonKathleen Hall. 2020. “Russian Twitter Accounts and the Partisan Polarization of Vaccine Discourse, 2015–2017.” American Journal of Public Health110(5):718–24.
112.
WeickKarl E.1995Sensemaking in Organizations, Vol. 3. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
113.
WestHarry G.SandersTodd, eds. 2003. Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
114.
WhitsonJennifer A.GalinskyAdam D.KayAaron. 2015. “The Emotional Roots of Conspiratorial Perceptions, System Justification, and Belief in the Paranormal.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology56:89–95.
115.
WoodMichael J.DouglasKaren M.SuttonRobbie M.2012. “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.” Social Psychology and Personality Science3(6):767–73.
116.
YanXiaohuiGuoJiafengLanYanyanChengXueqi. 2013. “A Biterm Topic Model for Short Texts.” Pp. 1445–56 in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on World Wide Web. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
