When belief becomes research: conspiracist communities on the social web

Abstract

Introduction
This article explores two QAnon subgroups that were not active during the initial phase of the movement but now epitomize how QAnon has capitalized on social media to reach more people. We examine these smaller communities through the lens of information literacy and other literacies to identify opportunities for librarians and educators.

Results
The communities of conspiracy theorists explored here exhibit information behaviors distinct from the initial QAnon community, presenting opportunities for information professionals to employ new models of information literacy, metaliteracy, and other literacies to combat conspiracy ideation. Notable themes evidenced in both samples include an increasing religiosity affiliated with QAnon, affective states that promote conspiracy ideation, faulty hermeneutics and epistemologies, and specific literacy gaps.

Methods and discussion
We must update our understanding of QAnon and its adherents' shifting priorities and behaviors. Through investigating these smaller subgroups, researchers and educators can address the evolution of the QAnon movement by teaching to literacy gaps and logical fallacies, and acknowledging the troubling emotions that undergird broader belief systems.

Full text

TYPE Original Research
PUBLISHED 28 February 2024
DOI 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1345973
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Christopher T. Conner,
University of Missouri, United States
REVIEWED BY
T. Kenny Fountain,
University of Virginia, United States
Robert Spinelli,
American Baptist College, United States
*CORRESPONDENCE
Katie Greer
greer@oakland.edu
RECEIVED 28 November 2023
ACCEPTED 09 February 2024
PUBLISHED 28 February 2024
CITATION
Greer K and Beene S (2024) When belief
becomes research: conspiracist communities
on the social web.
Front. Commun. 9:1345973.
doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1345973
COPYRIGHT
©2024 Greer and Beene. This is an
open-access article distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY). The use, distribution or
reproduction in other forums is permitted,
provided the original author(s) and the
copyright owner(s) are credited and that the
original publication in this journal is cited, in
accordance with accepted academic practice.
No use, distribution or reproduction is
permitted which does not comply with these
terms.
When belief becomes research:
conspiracist communities on the
social web
Katie Greer1*and Stephanie Beene2
1Kresge Library, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, United States, 2Fine and Performing Arts Library,
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States
Introduction: This article explores two QAnon subgroups that were not active
during the initial phase of the movement but now epitomize how QAnon has
capitalized on social media to reach more people. We examine these smaller
communities through the lens of information literacy and other literacies to
identify opportunities for librarians and educators.
Results: The communities of conspiracy theorists explored here exhibit
information behaviors distinct from the initial QAnon community, presenting
opportunities for information professionals to employ new models of
information literacy, metaliteracy, and other literacies to combat conspiracy
ideation. Notable themes evidenced in both samples include an increasing
religiosity aliated with QAnon, aective states that promote conspiracy
ideation, faulty hermeneutics and epistemologies, and specific literacy gaps.
Methods and discussion: We must update our understanding of QAnon and its
adherents’ shifting priorities and behaviors. Through investigating these smaller
subgroups, researchers and educators can address the evolution of the QAnon
movement by teaching to literacy gaps and logical fallacies, and acknowledging
the troubling emotions that undergird broader belief systems.
KEYWORDS
information literacy, QAnon, metaliteracy, visual literacy, social media, conspiracy
theories
1 Introduction
Librarian educators have spent the past two decades educating learners in information
literacy; however, the current methods and frameworks falter when confronting the
epistemologies that have given rise to QAnon and other conspiracy theories in American
culture. Educators and librarians often feel overwhelmed by individuals or groups acting
on their conspiracy interests, including the rise in book bannings and similar challenges
nationwide (Beene and Greer, 2023;PEN America, 2023). These conspiracies threaten
democratic norms, as illustrated by the January 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol building
(McKay and Tenove, 2021;Fisher, 2022). Thus, information professionals and educators
must understand the current challenges facing internet users who may be drawn into
conspiracy theories to counteract them. As the superconspiracy QAnon has shifted to
absorb other conspiracy theories and proliferated via social media, the movement has
fractured into smaller groups, often led by influencers who have their own agendas
and interests.
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To better understand these smaller social media communities
and the opportunities and challenges they present for librarians
and educators, the authors explored two discrete examples: one
influencer on Facebook with a small following of ∼4,000 people,
and another influencer on Telegram with a much larger following.
Telegram has gained scholarly attention for its unique platform
affordances in spreading conspiracy theories (Garry et al., 2021;
Walther and McCoy, 2021;Peeters and Willaert, 2022), while
Facebook has been explored as a social media platform ideally
situated to wield outsized influence on the spread of hoaxes,
conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation (Yasmin
and Spencer, 2020;Innes and Innes, 2021;Oremus and Merrill,
2021;Marko, 2022;Mont’Alverne et al., 2023). Following these
scholars, we sought to explore the evolution of the QAnon
movement. Our previous research enabled us to more readily
identify original QAnon themes (Beene and Greer, 2021,2023) and
trace emerging trends. In addition, we were interested in observing
the information behaviors, affective states or emotional content,
and cognitive patterns evident in these newer communities.
As information professionals, we were especially interested in
notable literacy gaps (e.g., information, media, digital, visual, and
metaliteracy) and the lessons librarians and educators could glean.
In order to expand our praxis, information professionals must
reckon with networked conspiracy theories, as well as with the role
of emerging cognitive and parasocial authorities in creating and
disseminating information. Investigating these communities will
allow librarians and educators to account holistically for online
information’s cognitive, affective, and social dimensions. While
research has been conducted on the original QAnon movement and
its challenges for information professionals (Beene and Greer, 2021,
2023), this article provides insight into the evolving concerns and
interests of splinter QAnon communities.
In addition to some original themes from the QAnon
movement, we observed religiosity, white supremacy, and
alternative health and wellness philosophies integrated with
QAnon. We also noted a myriad of faulty epistemologies and
hermeneutics that leveraged strong emotions to bypass critical
literacies. This research fills a gap in examining information
practices and discourse within the Q subcommunities. The
themes that surfaced have implications for future pedagogical
interventions or inoculations against conspiracism.
2 Literature review
2.1 The QAnon superconspiracy
In an earlier article (Beene and Greer, 2021), we examined the
rise of QAnon and its implications for information professionals. In
its most basic premise, QAnon posits that a global cabal of Satanic
pedophiles traffic children worldwide. In the QAnon mythology,
Donald Trump plays a pivotal role, working behind the scenes to
fight and expose the cabal in an event known to followers as “the
Storm” or the “Great Awakening.” The initial QAnon movement
was constructed through members of anonymous image posting
boards known as “chans,” where an anonymous user named “Q”
would post daily cryptic messages, which were then scrupulously
analyzed by followers. Soon after its inception, the movement
jumped over to social media platforms like YouTube, where
influencers interpreted Q drops, or posts, for the masses. Over
the last seven years, QAnon has evolved from a single conspiracy
theory into a “superconspiracy,” which Barkun (2003) defined
as complex, evolving, and amorphous, “reflect[ing] conspiratorial
constructs in which multiple conspiracies are believed to be linked
together” and are “joined in complex ways so that conspiracies
come to be nested within one another” (Barkun, 2003, p. 6).
These nested conspiracies became the focus of online and social
media communities.
This super conspiracy has infected popular social media, our
political landscape, and our relationships. Exploring how, exactly,
this happened is nearly impossible; in his analysis of how one
falls down the rabbit hole, Pierre (2023) noted that, due to the
amorphous and complex nature of the conspiracy worldview,
“the process of becoming a QAnon follower can be understood
as an expression of individual psychological vulnerability to
conspiracy belief, cult affiliation, and ARG (alternate-reality game)
engagement” (p. 21). To mitigate this conspiratorial mindset,
researchers and educators must address “myriad subcategories of
(the QAnon) identity and pathways of individuation” (p. 28). The
multiple pathways to QAnon result in a spectrum of conspiracy
ideation, as delineated by Pierre; there can be those who are “fence-
sitters,” or more open to the ideas and questions promulgated by
the Q community, “true believers” who have accepted the tenets and
identify as committed followers, or “activists” who act as evangelists
for the movement. Importantly, Pierre concludes his typology with
“apostates” who have worked their way through the spectrum and
come out on the other side, renouncing their belief in and affiliation
with the community (p. 25–27).
2.2 Information behaviors and discourses
in the QAnon community
Several scholars have analyzed discourses within the QAnon
community, with most focusing on the nascent QAnon
communities that evolved on the 4chan, 8chan, and 8kun
message boards. For example, Packer and Stoneman (2021) noted
QAnon’s unique discursive affordances that “rely heavily on a
communicative strategy of encoding and decoding that bears a
strong resemblance to an esoteric hermeneutic, but one played out
across social media” (p. 256). Q drops, or messages, required active
participation from followers, which set up “an opportunity for
social media celebrity and monetization” (Packer and Stoneman,
2021, p. 263).
Chandler’s 2020 thematic analysis of original Q drops and its
three significant subcategories has been used to frame our analyses:
“(1) anti-elitism and discrediting the establishment; (2) claims
of group marginalization and oppression, and (3) QAnon’s role
in unifying ‘patriotic’ Americans, through covert and, ultimately,
overt actions” (Chandler, 2020, p. 20). We also utilized Hodges’
2023 taxonomy of the QAnon worldview, which reflects “particular
(if problematic) forms of engagement with authentic sources rather
than the result of wholesale fabrication” (p. 129). His taxonomy of
users’ information practices included “close reading, exaggeration,
accusation of ignorance, and deployment of esoteric yet unclear
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arguments” (p. 130). Hodges cautions against casually dismissing
or deriding conspiracy theorists, concluding that
Understanding the relationship between QAnon and
consensus reality more deeply and with greater nuance can
assist in enabling more effective interactions and, potentially,
even interventions between participants and third parties such
as information, library, and media workers (2023, p. 140).
Hodges’ conclusions turn on the nuance of interpretation
as the driving force in the QAnon movement. Indeed, based
upon the nascent QAnon community, some have suggested that
the movement functions as a participatory game (Berkowitz,
2021;Fitzgerald, 2022;Gabriel Gatehouse, 2022) and that QAnon
adherents demonstrate relatively sophisticated information literacy
behaviors (Hartman-Caverly, 2019). We seek to update these earlier
assessments to account for QAnon’s current form on the social web.
2.3 Conspiracy adherents’ epistemologies
and hermeneutics
This debate between hermeneutics and epistemology is not
new and has been explored by scholars in psychology, sociology,
and philosophy, among other fields. For example, Ellis (2015)
explored moral hermeneutics, coherence epistemology, and affect,
while Westphal (2017) discussed the collapse of epistemologies
into a hermeneutical framework. Both scholars complicated the
notion that epistemology is opposing hermeneutics: that is, the
way we construct knowledge is inherently tied up with how
we interpret events – and both of these are inextricable from
affective states. Building on this debate, Dentith (2018) and
Butters (2022) examined these concepts in relation to conspiracy
ideation. While Dentith examined the types of experts and other
cognitive authorities deployed in conspiracy theory arguments,
Butters interrogated how individuals, mainstream news media,
and politicians amplified particular worldviews and ideologies.
Both scholars found that QAnon followers use cherry-picked and
misinterpreted evidence to prop up their worldviews. Thus, it could
be assumed that helping users better understand the underlying
modes of information production and discourse could assist in
dismantling conspiracy interpretation.
QAnon is only one of a spectrum of conspiratorial worldviews,
and recent research provides a greater understanding of conspiracy
ideation in general. Conspiracy theorists, for example, find it
easier to believe in additional conspiracies when they have already
subscribed to one (Brotherton and French, 2015;Brashier, 2022).
Additionally, those who fall prey to conspiracy theories are often
motivated by reasoning and biases that lead them to search for
information confirming their preconceptions, beliefs, and values;
thus, conspiracy theories may seem more trustworthy because
they confirm a particular worldview (Brotherton and French,
2015). As adherents fall deeper into the rabbit hole, they use
motivated reasoning and cherry-picking of evidence, accepting
only information that confirms a pre-existing philosophy and over-
correlating innocuous and disparate events to confirm their beliefs
(Sullivan et al., 2010). Finding like-minded users online essentially
creates an echo chamber – a term that describes how users within an
online community echo, confirm, and reiterate each other’s beliefs
and opinions. Douglas et al. (2019) argue that conspiracy beliefs
are motivated by epistemic, existential, and social needs and not an
innate tendency to simple credulity.
Moreover, there is evidence that the concept of authority
operates differently on social media platforms, including within
QAnon subgroups. Robertson and Amarasingam (2022) discovered
that QAnon adherents often rely upon experiential knowledge
rather than expertise acquired through research (2022, p. 2013).
Their mixed-methods analysis of Telegram examined epistemic
models of authority in right-leaning conspiratorial narratives,
discovering an abundance of reliance on institutions such as the
U.S. and its Constitution (p. 198–201). These narratives center on
epistemic modes like scientific reasoning because they are “most
prevalent in society and ones they need to most vociferously argue
against and dismantle” (p. 198). Most importantly, they found
reiterations of QAnon’s original mantras, such as “The Storm,”
“The Great Awakening,” and “Trust the Plan,” to proliferate in
arguments, commenting that the ambiguity of these terms allows
for broad interpretations, including theological and millennialist
(p. 200). They concluded that evidence and authority predominate
in these communities but only to prop up faulty epistemologies
and hermeneutics.
These findings correlate with scholars’ investigations into how
social media users assess online information, where authority
is conferred through parasocial and cognitive authorities (Rieh,
2010;Badke, 2015;Liebers and Holger, 2019), and second-hand
knowledge (Wilson, 1983). When we do not possess enough
knowledge on a topic, we decide whether or not to trust someone
or something based on their perceived competence and expertise.
For example, most of us have not empirically studied gravity, so we
trust the expertise of those who have (Russo et al., 2019). Rather
than characterizing our Information Age as “Post-Truth,” then, we
might instead think of it as a plethora of competing truth claims.
Because we cannot be experts on each claim, we increasingly trust
others to connect the dots for us – increasingly in online spaces. The
notion of authority is thus dynamic, shifting over time and space. It
has shifted from the source itself to individual belief systems.
2.4 Information literacy and metaliteracy
in an evolving information landscape
Academic librarians utilize as their primary guiding document
the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education,
codified after years of revising the concept of information
literacy (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016).
The document posits an expanded understanding of information
literacy as a “set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective
discovery of information,” with attention to how information is
produced and disseminated through social, economic, and ethical
lenses. The information landscape has evolved tremendously in the
past decade, however. The way we think of and teach information
literacy has shifted to encompass the new ways in which facts,
truth, and trust are challenged by a heightened level of relativism,
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in which information is assessed using highly personal heuristics
(Swanson, 2023).
Compounding the challenges accompanying the evaluation and
use of new types of information, librarians have observed a surge
in conspiracy theories. In a 2021 nationwide survey, we discovered
that American library workers encountered conspiracy ideation in
academic, public, special, and K-12 libraries (Beene and Greer,
2023). Importantly, affective states were evident in both patrons
and library workers, often compounded by the political and social
turmoil of another pandemic year just months after the January
6, 2021, capitol insurrection. Even though the existing literacy
frameworks account for some affective components, we are among
a growing body of researchers seeking to expand them to include a
more holistic accounting of affective states and how they relate to
information assessment, especially that which proliferates online.
Metaliteracy, as a separate framework from those authored
by academic librarians, could serve as a valuable antidote to
misinformation on the social web. Metaliteracy is a unified
understanding of discrete literacies (e.g., information, visual,
digital, media) and employs metacognitive reflective practices
for information evaluation in collaborative online communities
(Mackey and Jacobson, 2011). It includes explicit connections to
the cognitive, behavioral, metacognitive, and affective domains of
learning. As a framework, it addresses some of the shortcomings
in discrete literacy models, seeking to form “an empowered
and self-directed learner who actively creates meaningful content
and effectively participates in a connected world” (Mackey
and Jacobson, 2018, p. 1). This socially constructed online
information ecosystem encourages users to actively create and
produce knowledge.
In many ways, metaliteracy complements the work of other
information literacy theorists who conceive of it as a socio-
cultural practice (Lloyd, 2010). Lloyd reframes information literacy
as a messy, social, participatory, and affective process through
which meaning is made and shared (2010, p. 14–24). Her
conception of an “information landscape,” which she defines as “the
communicative space through which people develop identities and
form relationships based on shared practices and ways of doing and
saying things” (p. 9), is especially salient to this paper, providing a
useful descriptor for how information and meaning are enacted and
interacted within the social web.
Likewise, Swanson (2023) argues that the cognitive and affective
dimensions inform and build upon each other. Indeed, the
mind-gut connection is genuine regarding feelings of knowing.
The profession needs an “affective turn,” as has taken place in
other disciplines (Zembylas, 2021), which would provide a better
understanding of how the mind parcels content, sifts it for essential
bits, and connects information to feelings, emotions, and other
forces that work upon an individual’s experience of the world. This
understanding would better prepare information professionals to
teach library patrons and students to slow down and evaluate their
feelings and thinking before assessing or using a source.
3 Materials and methods
The authors used opportunistic sampling to observe two
current QAnon-focused social media communities. We settled
on Pastor Chris1and IET after following various conspiracy
theory influencer trails. Pastor Chris provided engagement, a mid-
size number of followers, and a salient example of the ongoing
intersections of evangelicalism and QAnon via Facebook, which is
one of the first mainstream platforms that Q followers congregated
on after the chan boards (Kaplan, 2023). Despite banning overt
QAnon groups in 2019, QAnon still has a very active presence there
through communities like Pastor Chris’. We selected 112 of Pastor
Chris’ posts from the beginning of their account in May 2021,
with additional posts selected from late spring of 2022 and 2023
to illustrate any continuity of themes through time. In addition, ad
hoc posts that offered illustrative material for specific literacy gaps
or identified themes were chosen.
IET provided a more sizable following with his public Telegram
account, whose posts regularly reached over 50,000 views in 2022
and demonstrated regular interactions with his followers. The use
of Telegram was important; the online social movement of QAnon
migrated from platforms like Facebook to alternative social media
platforms such as Telegram, Parler, and Truth Social once QAnon
was banned on them (Mac and Lytvynenko, 2020). He has received
more attention than Pastor Chris, as he has been profiled by Vice
magazine and the Anti-Defamation League; however, he is still
mostly unknown by the mainstream public (Gilbert, 2021b;Anti-
Defamation League, n.d.). As a Christian wellness influencer and
QAnon adherent, he provided a snapshot of the coalescence of
communities, including health and wellness and anti-vaccination
communities, QAnon and MAGA, and evangelical Christianity.
Telegram does not allow screen capture or scraping and requires
that one sign up via their phone number – because of these
limitations, posts were transcribed verbatim into a spreadsheet for
analysis. IET began posting on Telegram in 2021 but gathered
momentum with more views and followers in 2022. For this study,
we selected posts from August 1-5 in 2021 and 2022. 2023 proved
more challenging because he decreased his activity on Telegram,
with no posts for August 2023; therefore, 5 days in late April
2023 were selected for comparison to his earlier activity. Posts
were coded deductively using the taxonomies described below, in
addition to inductively for QAnon behaviors and themes, affiliated
conspiracy theories, affective behaviors, and any literacy gaps.
Each of us took responsibility for one sample group and
coded the posts individually, although both worked from the
same initial codebook. Both deductive and inductive coding were
used. Deductive coding was derived from the Chandler (2020)
and Hodges (2023) QAnon taxonomies to determine if themes
from the early movement were still applicable within these smaller
splinter groups. Inductive coding explored themes that emerged in
each sample:
•QAnon as a superconspiracy: What other conspiracy theories
are being mentioned?
•Affective states: over-confidence, confirmation bias,
encouragement, and emotions.
•Literacy gaps: How are news items or other content being
interpreted (or misinterpreted)?
1 Name has been changed
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•Evangelicalism, exegesis, and Andre’s (2023) five
rhetorical strategies
Along with coding, discourse analysis was used to explore
communication within the communities. Crossley (2021)
explained that discourse “looks at the overall meanings
conveyed by language in context,” with context indicating the
“social, cultural, political, and historical background (which
is) important to take into account to understand underlying
meanings expressed through language” (Crossley, 2021, “What
is discourse analysis?”). The number of reactions and views
to each post were thus recorded, in addition to whether and
how emojis were used in those reactions. The authors also
recorded whether the influencers or users shared stories from
mainstream or dubious news media outlets or other social media
platforms, in addition to noting any cross-posting between groups,
individuals, or other influencers. This practice helped the authors
understand the discursive ecosystem of conspiracy theories on the
social web.
3.1 The pilled pastor
Self-proclaimed Pastor Chris started a small evangelical church
in the southeastern United States in 2009. In their early 60s,
they are most active through a public, personal Facebook profile
directly linked to a church’s website. They currently have around
4,000 followers. A Facebook profile was chosen because Facebook,
until the advent of right-wing focused social media such as
Truth Social and Telegram, served as the main conduit for
the early organization of QAnon followers (Argentino, 2020b).
Facebook has also served as one of the primary news sources
for Americans, with roughly half of Americans getting their
news from social media (Pew Research Center, 2020). Numerous
QAnon influencers have sprung up in this space, developing
communities of highly engaged followers and connecting with
other influencers.
Like many conspiracy theorists active on Facebook, Pastor
Chris initially maintained two accounts in case one was put on
a temporary hold due to content violations–this is a common
practice to avoid disengagement during what are termed “Facebook
jail” periods. Only one account remains active and has been since
2021. They also have accounts on other platforms, but those are not
as active and do not have as many followers.
The discourse of Pastor Chris’ community illustrates how
a charismatic leader functions in a new religious movement.
Although QAnon and Trump are seen as the ultimate authorities,
Pastor Chris’ posts exhort, encourage, and evoke the affective states
of followers. A common refrain is that the benefits of events like the
jubilee or the Storm will be greatest for followers who believe. This
caveat shifts responsibility away from the influencer when things
do not happen as promised. Many posts include long response
threads consisting entirely of “hands praying” emojis, “I believe,”
or the comment “Amen” in response to the pastor’s exhortations
about how God’s plan (enacted by Trump and QAnon) is coming
together. Skeptical posts are often met with statements that negate
the skepticism because the pastor’s belief that something is true
overrules any fact-checking.
What is striking about Pastor Chris’ Facebook activity is the
repetition. The same themes, including that the long-awaited
events of the Storm “could happen soon,” repeat throughout
the years. New dates are added to the timeline and new
secret communications are revealed with each repetition. Those
who start to doubt are excoriated for questioning, despite
the QAnon mantra to “Question Everything.” Pastor Chris
once commented, “If you decide you want to walk away and
quit, do not comment it on [sic] this post, they will be
deleted! Go find a post that’s negative doom and gloom and
stick around for that [sic] but you are not gonna do it on
my post!”
Unlike the original QAnon community, Pastor Chris does not
perform close reading; instead, they share content from others
doing the work. The influencer is a secondary source, a node on
a vast misinformation network that proselytizes the gospel of Q
farther and farther from its locus. They instead contribute personal
prophecies and affirmations of belief to spur others on. Posts that
describe sensing a “major shift” or dream visions that indicate the
conspiracy is coming to light are frequent themes throughout the
months and years.
3.2 The chiropractor conspiracy theorist
IET, a chiropractor and influencer in the health and wellness
industry, is affiliated with the pseudoscience and CrossFit
communities as well as QAnon. IET was “outed” by journalist
David Gilbert of Vice Magazine (Gilbert, 2021a,b), who investigated
other major QAnon influencers and their online presence
(Gilbert, 2023). The story was quickly picked up by other
outlets (Flomberg, 2021;LightWarrior, 2021), including Reddit
communities (Cuicksilver, 2021), various activist sites (Unknown,
2021b;Garber, 2022), and the Anti-Defamation League ((Anti-
Defamation League, n.d.).This spread across alternative and
mainstream networks demonstrates the speed and power of
the social web, features that can be exploited for legitimate
or illegitimate purposes. IET is a good example of influencer
culture and its role in spreading faulty (and harmful) information
across platforms.
IET’s use of Telegram illustrates the role that more niche social
media spaces are playing in American information consumption.
This fact correlates with findings from a 2022 Pew Research
Institute survey on the role alternative social media plays in
Americans’ news and information environment; in it, they found
that a very small percentage (only 6%) of Americans regularly get
their news from such sites, but of that 6%, 65% feel they have found
their community, which is often more pro-Trump, pro-America,
and religious (Stocking et al., 2022). IET’s rhetoric certainly aligns
with a pro-Trump and religious worldview, albeit conspiratorial.
These social media platforms have earned a reputation for their
role in organizing followers for extremist events (Garry et al., 2021;
Walther and McCoy, 2021;Myers and Frenkel, 2022). Users like
IET exploit the secretive nature of Telegram, sometimes opting
to use the disappearing posts feature, whereby posts disintegrate
after an allotted period of time. In addition, Telegram challenges
hackers to try to crack it, with no one succeeding yet. IET posts his
own content in addition to other creators’ content. In particular, he
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favors sharing TikTok videos, which the Pew Research Institute has
recently shown to be a dominant information practice for about a
third of Americans over 30 years old (Matsa, 2023). Like Telegram,
Gab, and Parler, other scholars have also studied the rapid
proliferation of misinformation via TikTok (Michel et al., 2022).
This practice serves as a meditation on the power of multimodal
information in spreading conspiracist ideologies. While IET shuns
“fakebook,” he does have a public account on X (formerly Twitter),
especially after Elon Musk acquired the platform and reinstated
banned accounts (The Associated Press, 2022;Thorbecke and
Catherine, 2022). In this way, he is complementary to Facebook
influencers like Pastor Chris.
IET attracts those users already consuming alternative news
and social media sources; in many cases, his readers follow the same
demagogues. Indeed, his followers are enthusiastically engaged,
and he regularly encourages interaction. The discourse within this
Telegram community demonstrates the construction of knowledge
between and among followers and their influencers, a practice
found in other online communities that capitalize on user’s affective
states (Ziegler et al., 2014).
IET often posts as a wellness influencer, providing a gateway
for followers to learn about Christianity, QAnon, and other
worldviews. For example, IET was interviewed on Rumble,
where he discussed alternative health solutions, including parasite
cleanses, Ivermectin, and venoms, with another influencer who
posts under the headline “The Kate Awakening” (a play on QAnon’s
mantra “The Great Awakening”) (The Kate Awakening - Parasite
Cleanse Part 2 with IET and SSGQ, 2023).
Like Pastor Chris, IET began using Telegram in 2021 to
delve into exegetical readings of the Bible to interpret current
and future events, often linked to QAnon and white supremacist
themes. This practice continued to a lesser extent into 2023. He
seemed to grow his following through a bait-and-switch, where
he acted as a layman’s pastor, interpreting Biblical books for his
followers. In almost every post, he implores his followers to pay
attention to the groundwork he is laying for them and to abide
by his interpretations. The use of capitalization, not unlike former
president Trump’s tweets, serves to highlight his main points;
strategic use of emojis appears in later posts. These close biblical
readings are commonly linked to white supremacist themes, such as
when he exhorts his readers to “keep bloodlines pure.” As he posts,
he becomes emboldened and begins to refer to Kekistan, Pepe, and
anti-Semitic tropes. Through using these memes (Kek and Pepe),
he signals his “insider knowledge” to his followers, as these memes
originated on the chan boards and have been used to mobilize
extremist movements globally (Niewert, 2017;McFall-Johnsen and
Morgan, 2021;Topor, 2022;Pepe the Frog, 2023). For his influence
in this area, he earned a listing in the Anti-Defamation League’s
glossary and other activist sites working to curb fascist ideologies
(Unknown, 2021a).
After being a featured speaker at the Qanon conference, “For
God And Country Patriots’ Roundup,” in Dallas, Texas (Unknown,
2021a), IET skyrocketed in popularity. His posting about QAnon
increased, especially in 2022, which coincides with the QAnon
community’s celebration of Q’s return (Kaplan, 2022). Evidenced
by interactions with and views of his Telegram posts, many of
which garnered up to 50,000 views and hundreds of reactions and
comments, he began to use more explicit conspiracist rhetoric, not
only pertaining to QAnon, but also myriad political conspiracy
theories, anti-vaccination themes, and COVID-19. He used his
newfound popularity to proselytize and peddle various political
conspiracy theories that have become associated with QAnon,
including those surrounding “groomers” and saving the children,
conspiracies involving the Bidens, Obama, and Trump, and those
proliferating about the Ukraine/Russia conflict.
4 Findings
In exploring these two communities, numerous themes became
apparent. Not only were the QAnon themes derived from
the original community still overarching in the discourse, but
additional concerns and information practices have developed.
Partly due to the affordances of the particular social media
platforms we chose, and partly due to the removal in time and
digital space from the original chan boards, these themes highlight
potential new areas for research and intervention.
4.1 Original QAnon themes
Some themes still predominated from original QAnon
communities – for example, conspiracy theories surrounding the
Illuminati and the political elite, the global cabal’s exploitation of
children, and Trump’s role in fighting them. The authors observed
original QAnon motifs such as “white hats” vs. “black hats” and the
QAnon theme of prominent people being fake doubles (because the
real person is locked up already or has been executed).
The taxonomies observed by Chandler (2020) and Hodges
(2023) have been watered down in these spaces. A thread of
anti-elitism and anti-establishmentarianism runs through many of
Paster Chris’ and IET’s posts, but the theme of “QAnon unif[ying]
‘patriotic’ Americans through action” has been supplanted in
favor of passive watching and waiting. Similarly, although Hodges’
categories of “exaggerated interpretation of correlation” and
“esoteric but unclear meaning” occur in some posts, the close
reading of the early QAnon communities is largely done by others
and passed along by Pastor Chris and IET.
4.1.1 QAnon and religion
The QAnon movement has always had Christian overtones;
as early as 2020, several who had been keeping an eye on the
movement began describing it as a religion (LaFrance, 2020).
Amarasingam et al. (2023) analyzed the QAnon movement in terms
of the literature defining new, emerging religious movements,
and “hyperreal religions,” movements that borrow heavily from
popular culture to shape meaning and belief. They concluded that
there is significant overlap between these movements and QAnon,
and that viewing QAnonthrough these lenses allows for deeper
insights into the movement. Andre (2023) noted with concern
that “QAnon is reshaping the topography of many churches” (p.
191), analyzing five overarching rhetorical strategies used by Q in
their posts. According to Andre, these rhetorical strategies align
with Christianity: civil religion, spiritual language, spiritual warfare,
explicitly Christian content, and Christian nationalism (p. 194–
200).
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Journalist Jeff Sharlet delved deeper into the conflation of
Trump, prosperity gospel teachings, and QAnon (2023). He
attended multiple Trump rallies and spoke with attendees,
some of whom were ordained pastors and ministers. Because
of his interactions with devoted Trump followers, many of
them professed Christians, Sharlet began to investigate the
overlaps between the so-called “prosperity gospel” and the
Trump campaign:
The Christian Right that has so long dominated the
political theology of the United States emphasizes a heavenly
reward for righteousness in faith and behavior; the prosperity
gospel is about. . . ”amazing results” you can measure and count.
The old political theology was about the salvation to come; the
Trump religion was about deliverance, here and now (Sharlet,
2023, p. 49, 50).
For example, an attendee named Pastor Sean is quoted as
saying, “‘Secret murders everywhere,’ .. . ‘Pedophiles, and e vil;” in
his conversations with Sharlet, he professed belief that “God had
chosen Trump” (Sharlet, 2023, p. 116). Another attendee, Pastor
Dave, told Sharlet that he had felt a “spiritual drawing” to devote
his life to Trump (Sharlet, 2023, p. 117). Indeed, at the beginning of
every Trump rally, a pastor would lead the crowd in prayer (Sharlet,
2023;Hassan and Johnson, 2024).
Lundsko and MacMillen (2023) explored the notion of QAnon
as a religion or “replacement reality” extensively. Their assertion
that “Psuedo-religion-seeking-certainty fuels conspiratorial
thinking and is imbued in a certain type of propagandistic
rendering of religion” (p. 59) reflects the rhetoric of Pastor
Chris’ and IET’s communities. Pastor Chris, for example,
exhorts followers to “innerstand,” a play on “understand” that
emphasizes one’s internal and affective epistemological constructs.
Their posts frequently reference spiritual warfare and Christian
nationalism, echoing the rhetorical strategies of Q. The battle
between good and evil is Biblical; God is an American. Posts
shared by Pastor Chris from cognitive authorities such as “Prophet
Jeff Johnson” state things such as “The season of dancing in
the streets is upon us as the TRUMP [sic] is sounding and
the time of Presidential occupation is here.” Here, the Biblical
trumpet of Revelation has been conflated with former president
Trump, who, in other posts and comments, has been declared “a
decedent [sic] of King David’s line of Judah.” Frequently posted
in these communities are generative-AI-produced images of
Trump with Jesus, including iconography that communicates his
divine appointment.
In this evolving iteration of QAnon, interpretive practices
honed in Bible study are interwoven with a conspiracist lens. Most
of IET’s 2021 Telegram activity was devoted to an asynchronous,
online Bible study, in which he would transcribe Biblical verses,
interpreting them for his followers. After one such post, he
bracketed his Bible reading with:
The same evil tactics then are the same evil tactics now -
their playbook hasn’t changed in millennia. These satanic POS’s
are so evil and disgusting!! Be grateful that God woke you up for
such a HISTORIC time as this. . . Pray for those still asleep. . . It’s
going to be rough for them as all comes out.
While evangelizing, he alludes to QAnon by referring to Satanic
actors, linking them inextricably with Biblical truth. In addition,
his rhetoric around being “awakened” refers to being “red-pilled”
(a reference to the Matrix movie in which choosing the red pill
awakens characters to the reality of their world) as well as “The
Great Awakening,” when undeniable truth will “be rough” on
those “still asleep.” In this way, he exemplifies Argentino (2020a)
finding that “QAnon conspiracy theories are reinterpreted through
the Bible. In turn, QAnon conspiracy theories serve as a lens to
interpret the Bible itself” (para. 4).
Both Paster Chris and IET function in these spaces as
QAnon evangelists; they spread the word of QAnon authorities,
provide their own literary glosses on the revelations of the day,
and function as what Pierre (2023) termed “Activists” on his
typology of conspiracy belief—they have adopted the conspiracy
worldview in its entirety and “have decided that they must
act on beliefs in order to defend them or to fight for the
cause” (p. 26).
4.1.2 QAnon and white supremacy
Although the overlap between right-wing politics,
conspiracism, and white supremacy may seem new, it is as old as
the founding of America (Barkun, 2003;Walker, 2013;Uscinski
and Parent, 2014;Kendi, 2016;Cooke, 2021;Hirschbein and Asfari,
2023). What is new is how the superconspiracy QAnon subsumes
and manifests these long-standing conspiracy theories serving to
justify white power structures and systemic oppression. Sharlet
(2023) examined the emerging overlap between Trump followers
and conspiracy theorists, including those who adhere to the “great
replacement theory,” driven by white anxiety and consisting of an
ideology of scarcity, as BIPOC peoples and immigrants outnumber
whites. For example, in his chapter “Whole Bottle of Red Pills,”
Sharlet visited with men’s rights activists; he observed how their
ideology dovetails with racism, Trumpism, and QAnon (Sharlet,
2023). The people he interviewed espoused components of the
“great replacement theory,” expanding racist claims to include
men being ruled by feminism and women. Their rhetoric is
palpably violent; such conspiracy ideation is linked to extremist
violence, xenophobia, misogynoir, and Neo-Naziism (Rousis et al.,
2020;Bailey, 2021;Gonzalez, 2022;Lovelace, 2022;Topor, 2022;
Hernandez Aguilar, 2023). Indeed, the overlap between QAnon
conspiracism and fascism cannot be ignored; for instance, Connor
ties QAnon to “fascist movements dating back to the Nazis,” which
“have a long history of co-opting popular cultural movements
in order to gain membership, draw widespread attention, and
to normalize talking about ideas couched in racist ideology (i.e.,
questions and debates over who really controls society are little
more than anti-Semitic dog whistling)” (Conner, 2023, para.
6). Although their posts are not overtly white supremacist or
anti-Semitic, dog whistles about “bankers,” “the Rothschilds,” and
Holocaust denialism all point to a worldview that tolerates, if not
actively encourages, darker suppositions. For example, in a post
from May 4, 2021, since deleted, Pastor Chris shared a post from
“Mr. Patriot” referencing the “hiding of God” through denial of the
Flat Earth and commented, “Wow what I am learning about God
Creator, earth, holocaust [sic].”
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In an assessment of how the Australian manifestation of
QAnon coalesced with nationalism and conspiracy theories
targeting marginalized communities, Jones (2023) asserted that
QAnon promoted violent activism and support for right-wing
politicians to bring about “The Storm” (a moral and legal
reckoning) and “The Great Awakening” (unavoidable reality to the
masses). Similarly, scholars who research how white supremacy
has shifted through time have traced how the proliferation of
“The Big Lie” is linked to past propaganda such as Mein Kampf,
with devastating consequences (Neely and Montañez, 2022, p.
13, n. 6). Meanwhile, Indigenous scholar and activist Julian
Brave NoiseCat has drawn parallels between QAnon rhetoric
and white colonizers’ historical and ongoing oppression of
Indigenous peoples (Remski and Brave NoiseCat, 2023). Brave
NoiseCat posited that the fear of ritualized child kidnapping and
abuse in the QAnon worldview reflects the historical reality of
Indigenous children being forcibly removed from their homes
to be indoctrinated in colonial boarding schools. In yet another
example, the sublimation of the term “groomer” in QAnon
ideology is tied to the historical and contemporary threats to
LGBTQIA+affiliated communities (Mogul et al., 2011;Martiny
and Lawrence, 2023). IET perpetuates such threats through his
promotion of the “groomer” rhetoric and affiliated conspiracy
theories, even challenging his followers to argue with him by
posting an unattributed definition of “groomer” and stating,
“If your official and legally documented actions match this
description then being called a groomer isn’t libel or slander:
it’s a fact.” Unsurprisingly, given QAnon’s mantras and its use
of terms like “The Great Awakening” and “The Storm,” it
has attracted and absorbed adherents whose views align with
white supremacists, extrajudicial violence, and policies that target
marginalized communities.
In our research that surveyed library workers encountering
conspiracy theorists over the fall of 2021, participants described
potent examples of conspiracy theories, often tied to QAnon,
targeting ethnic, religious, and racial categories of people (Beene
and Greer, 2023). Most common in the data was conspiracism
surrounding Holocaust denial or other anti-Semitic conspiracies, a
finding tied to scholarly discussions of conspiracy theories targeting
Jews (Barkun, 2003;Hirschbein and Asfari, 2023). There were also
instances of patrons adhering to conspiratorial plots perpetrated
by the Chinese and Chinese-Americans, usually involving the
COVID-19 pandemic. Participants described conspiracy ideation
that targeted Black people; for instance, those conspiracy theories
surrounding the murders of George Floyd and other unarmed
Black men, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the NAACP.
A subset of respondents noted conspiracy theories involving
immigrants or Indigenous peoples linked rhetorically to the
“great replacement theory.” These and affiliated conspiracies
are now more enmeshed with QAnon and mainstream right-
wing rhetoric (McFall-Johnsen and Morgan, 2021;Zihiri et al.,
2022).
Of the two case studies, IET exemplifies the intermingling of
anti-Semitism and white supremacy. For example, he references
“Kek” while disseminating a conspiracy theory about former
President Obama and his finances:
These people are evil.
They’re also stupid.
We see everything
When you see it, post it in the comments
Also, what [sic] are they broke? Kek... Where did their
money go?
But who, or what, is Kek? As the Roose (2020) explains,
Kek “is bandied about on social media. . . where alt-right activists
and avid Donald Trump supporters lurk” and is “a ‘deity’ of a
semi-ironic ‘religion’ the white nationalist movement has created
for itself online” (para. 1-2). Originating in gaming culture
and spreading to the chan boards, Kek came to symbolize
chaos and darkness and is invoked when signaling to others
online that one is “awakened” and that destroying the world
order is necessary to bring about an enlightened race. Kekistan
is thus the mythical country that asserts a satirical ethnicity,
most often affiliated with white supremacy; indeed, the flag of
Kekistan is based on the Nazi war flag (Pepe the Frog, 2023).
When IET reiterates to his followers to “keep bloodlines pure,”
or when he refers to “Kek” or “Kekistan” and employs Pepe
memes, he is signaling his bona fides in an explicitly racist,
destructionist ideology.
4.1.3 QAnon, wellness culture, and COVID-19
The overlap between yoga and fitness industries, alternative
health philosophies, and conspiracy theories has been well-
documented in both news media and scholarly literature. For
example, Conner (2023) analyzed the overlap between wellness,
fitness and yoga instructors, finding that a “‘soft[er]’ version of
QAnon helped draw in those. . . wanting to get more physically fit,
those seeking alternative forms of therapy when modern medicine
has failed them, and still for others a search for both a community
of likeminded individuals and a spirituality that resonated with
them” (para. 34). Monroe (2017) discussed how essential oils
became a cure-all for our “Age of Anxiety,” while Asprem and
Dyrendal (2015) chronicle the confluence between conspirituality
and conspiracy ideation, arguing that this confluence can be traced
“deep into the history of Western esotericism” (abstract). So, while
this coalescence may seem new, it is more likely that QAnon
infiltrated an area already ripe with conspiracism (CBS News,
2021).
Social media has provided the gateway for QAnon ideology
to seep into otherwise domestic spaces on platforms such as
Instagram. Influencers promoting yoga, CrossFit, and alternative
health have interwoven posts about child trafficking, for example,
or used a hashtag associated with QAnon (e.g., #greatawakening).
Indeed, the idea of an “awakening” can be deployed for
New Age spirituality just as readily as it can for QAnon or
Christianity (Meltzer, 2021;Conner, 2023). A casual user of
social media, dabbling in New Ageism, yoga, or alternative
health may receive targeted advertising or see pretty Instagram
posts promoting QAnon and other conspiracy theories, thereby
drawing them in (Chang, 2021;Baker, 2022;Hermanová, 2022).
Such infiltration has not gone unnoticed in fitness circles. For
instance, CrossFit distanced itself from the avid practitioner and
congressional representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is also a
QAnon evangelist (Brooks and Jamieson, 2021). Meanwhile, yoga
instructors began speaking out about QAnon and other conspiracy
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theories infiltrating their communities (Roose, 2020;CBS News,
2021).
While anti-vaccination sentiment is not new, QAnon
influencers capitalized on the outbreak of the COVID-19
pandemic, with online misinformation spreading to offline
decisions and actions. Pastor Chris has been particularly
vituperative about the COVID-19 vaccine, linking it with other
conspiracies relevant to Big Pharma. Commenting on their own
post from May 3, 2021, they appear to have copied content from
“TheDonaldUS” Telegram account entitled “10 Reasons why
President Trump had to approve these deaths” (excerpted below)
that served to position pandemic deaths and COVID-19 vaccines
(“the shot”) as part of a much larger plan:
With the approval of the shots (but placing realistic
information in the sights of alternative news), the deep state
shot was to remain Experimental and NOT MANDATORY
(which was NOT part of their plan). In war, you sometimes
have to choose between two bad options.
Considering the strategy of the globalists, the DJT and the
military have chosen the path with the fewest casualties,
namely to continue the facade of public approval of the toxic
(but NOT OBLIGATORY) shot.
The alternative FAR would have been more deadly to all of
us in many ways. If the Deep State had created an approved
BINDING shot, it would have killed millions more.
Is this virus fictitious? If it cannot be separated and there is no
scientific trace, does it exist? Only in the minds of the masses!!!
As evidenced by these two small communities spearheaded
by IET and Pastor Chris, much of the recent scholarly
attention has focused on how the QAnon worldview has unified
suspicions against vaccinations or the capitalist inclinations of the
pharmaceutical industry with a broader conspiracist mindset.
For IET, a certified chiropractor and CrossFit enthusiast,
blending alternative health philosophies, New Ageism, Christianity,
QAnon, and anti-vaccination rhetoric (especially as it pertains to
the COVID-19 pandemic) seems to come easily. Whether this
practice serves to promote his own businesses or beliefs or to
share posts from other social media influencers and platforms, IET
peddles conspiracist worldviews. Throughout his Telegram, one
can find references to a global cabal pushing Big Pharma policies,
valorization of resisting vaccinations, and promotion of alternative
health solutions. He interacts and encourages his followers through
comments and posts, reinforcing the concept of a community
fighting the mainstream. Threaded between various political and
scientific conspiracy theories are posts directly linking followers to
QAnon. For instance, earlier this year, he shared an interview he
conducted in July 2019 on Conspyre.tv, dubiously titled “The 2nd
American Revolution,” in which he outlines “WHY [he] supports
Donald Trump and WHY [he] believes in the Q Operation,”
encouraging followers to watch and comment. This post received
over 42,000 views and 600 interactions and comments. In this
way, he provides a gateway for those followers who may not have
heard of QAnon, or those who harbor doubts, while reinforcing
a particular conspiracist worldview. Indeed, the comments from
this post praise his research, referring to him and other community
members as “true Patriots.”
Public health scholarship has long devoted research to
combatting vaccine hesitancy, including how misinformation and
conspiracy theories can hinder public health outcomes (Larson,
2020;Sobo, 2021;Enders et al., 2022;Farhart et al., 2022;
Seddig et al., 2022). A few sources have explicitly discussed the
commingling of the QAnon and anti-vaccination movements,
highlighting that the ideologies behind both movements emphasize
fighting big institutions and mainstream experts by doing one’s
own research to inform personal decisions (Dickinson, 2021;
Inform, 2023). Such anti-science belief can “act as an affective
epistemological hinge for other forms of conspiratorial thought”
(Fitzgerald, 2022, p.8); once one accepts that a public health
campaign is hiding something and working to subvert the truth, it
is easier to then accept other scientific conspiracies (e.g., flat earth).
Lewandowsky has devoted his research to this overlap, finding that
conspiracist ideation and worldviews predict a broader rejection of
science (Lewandowsky et al., 2013a).
4.1.4 Observed information practices,
hermeneutics, and epistemologies
As creators on new platforms such as TikTok spin ever-
more-fantastical suppositions, they are shared with excitement
by both IET and Pastor Chris, with their followers accepting
these new conspiracies as gospel. The phenomena of parasociality
and cognitive authority function in these spaces to propel and
reaffirm conspiracy beliefs. Logical fallacies abound, but specific
examples stand out: the conjunction fallacy, the non sequitur
fallacy, the divine fallacy, and false attribution. The conjunction
fallacy presupposes that two or more conclusions are likelier
than any of them on their own, defying the laws of probability,
while the non sequitur fallacy is an illogical conclusion based on
preceding statements or tangents in conversations. The divine
fallacy was apparent whenever followers assumed causality from
divine intervention or supernatural force, either because they
did not know how to explain the phenomenon or because they
were driven by faith to assume so. False attributions or falsely
exaggerated correlations were constructed from the close reading of
signs and communications, leading followers to see collusion where
there was none and results that did not follow a straight causal path.
The information practices observed in these communities
reaffirm the religiosity of these spaces, most notably, complete
credulity and deference to prophecy or authority. Indeed, scholars
have noted how hard-right Christian groups expect their followers
to accept everything, with no questions asked (e.g., the literal truth
of the Bible) – this same ideology has been applied to the Trumpist
MAGA movement (D’Angelo, 2024;Hassan and Johnson, 2024).
In Pastor Chris’ feed, the most outlandish assertions are accepted
without hesitation, such as planes running on air, cars running
on water, and MedBeds that will make us all young and perfect.
Followers are bullied for any sign of skepticism; they must accept
everything Pastor Chris posts or they are removed and blocked
from participating in the community. In one post from May 2023,
Pastor Chris summarizes “intel” received from “Bruce,” one of
the cognitive authorities they often reference, about the coming
Nesara/Gesara wealth transfers, a financial conspiracy theory that
has been integrated into QAnon. After reporting on Bruce’s call,
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Pastor Chris exhorts followers to continue praying and believing
to enact the coming “Heavenly blessing. . . It might also be at
the time of. . . those days of dis closure and lockdowns,” referring
to the original QAnon Storm. In this and other posts, logical
fallacies abound alongside a cognitive authority (Bruce) acting as
a substitute for truth.
In addition to logical fallacies, these communities exemplify
echo chambers of emotions and confirmation biases. A post from
IET in April 2023 shared one of his tweets that coalesces COVID-
19 conspiracy theories, political conspiracy theories, and QAnon.
In this post, he exhibited an exaggerated correlation of actual and
imagined events, drumming up fervor among his readers:
Look at the list of current events now front and center
habbening [sic]: 1. COVID jabs being removed from market 2.
Hunter Biden investigation 3. Bio weapons [sic] in Ukraine 4.
Biden financial dealings busted open 5. J6 fedsurrection [sic]
6. Fauci files 7. [clown emoji] IC agents being exposed. All at
once.” Underneath this screenshot, he shared a meme of Pepe
the Frog with glasses, reading a book entitled “1001 I Told
You So’s.”
This post was viewed 45,000 times, with over 750 reactions and
80 comments from followers. Comments ranged from disheartened
resignation over the fact that “normies” are not “awake” and
following the signs to those who added conspiracy theories to
the list (too much acclaim from other followers). In a seamless
blending of fact (Hunter Biden and January 6th investigations) with
conspiracy theories (Biden financial dealings, Fauci files, COVID-
19 vaccines, Ukraine bioweapons, and IC agents), IET exemplifies a
faulty hermeneutics, mingling established record with supposition
to weave a conspiratorial narrative.
In both communication groups, belief is prioritized over
empirical evidence – it surpasses reality. Truth is relational, and
belief is the only metric of import. Teleologism is evident as
disparate theories are linked in a web of conspiracy. Followers prop
up each other’s comments and reactions, reinforcing the notion of
a community fighting against a normative, mainstream, and false
understanding of events.
4.1.5 Emotions in the echo chamber
These communities define authority differently than
mainstream societal definitions. Those who follow QAnon and its
more outlandish offshoots strongly reject “elitist” knowledge (i.e.,
academic information) as part of their worldview, so traditional
epistemologies and pedagogies cannot function alone to dislodge
the conspiracy worldview. In-group trust is central to QAnon’s
mantra, encouraging those who doubt or falter to hold steady:
“Trust the plan.” For example, whenever a follower questioned a
comment by a fellow follower, or worse, a post by the influencer,
they were vehemently attacked or removed from the community.
Those allowed to remain were treated with disdain, accused of
being outsider trolls, or told they did not believe enough. Tribalism
is thus reinforced: Are you with us or against us? Such shaming
reinforces the behavior and belief in conspiracy ideation, as
those who are there to fulfill psychological and affective needs
will ensure that their behavior submits to group norms. Thus,
various emotions promote conspiracy theorizing within these
online communities, including the subgroups of QAnon that have
splintered and spread across social media platforms.
Moreover, followers of conspiracy influencers like Pastor Chris
and IET recognize them as cognitive authorities with whom
they have developed a parasocial relationship, or psychological
relationships between influencers and their audience; often driven
by strong emotions, followers come to consider these personalities
as friends. Emotions are powerful motivators for engagement
with conspiracy theories, including anxiety, hopelessness, isolation,
anger, and shock (Douglas et al., 2019;Green et al., 2023). In
addition to negative emotions, positive affect has also been shown
to subvert critical cognitive processing and influence credulity;
when we are calm and happy, we are more trusting (Forgas, 2019).
Such affective states drive users’ information-seeking behaviors and
their ability to effectively evaluate faulty information, providing
epistemic closure. Since followers consider IET and Pastor Chris
to be parasocial cognitive authorities, these influencers appear
as savvy manipulators of their followers’ emotions, using emojis
and capital letters to call attention to potent ideas and themes.
They encourage their followers and prolong their engagement,
supporting positive affective states in their followers, and increasing
followers’ trust and confidence in the information IET and Pastor
Chris provided. Some of this work is the work of a competent
influencer. IET, for example, could also seek to prolong engagement
with his followers in order to promote his businesses and sell
products; while it is unclear how much he believes of what he
posts, his work as an influencer includes a careful calculation for
monetizating his worldview. Influencers such as IET have been
researched by others who have surveyed QAnon, alternative health,
and celebrity influencers (Bloom and Moskalenko, 2021;Yallop,
2021;Petersen, 2023).
Prolonging engagement not only serves the influencer, but the
community as well, reinforcing a sense of solidarity. Meanwhile,
arousing rhetoric or inflammatory posts keeps their followers
engaged and enraged. This is typified in a post from May 2, 2023:
The real crash is the Kilbal system, they lose everything,
but WE GAIN EVERYTHING! Never underestimate ur
GOD!
This post from Pastor Chris received 31 comments, with
most posting affirmative GIFs or “Amen/Hallelujah.” To one who
expressed a loss of hope due to the extended timeline, Pastor Chris
exhorted them to
think how tired the children who [sic] been trafficking and
those who have been in hiding to help bring freedom to those
children and to humanity! When u realize this then our wait
is nothing compared to that! This is the real tribulation that
is happening and we are about to come out into real Freedom
from God the Source God the Creator!
This comment illustrated the closed-off trust system developed
within these communities, which can make it extremely hard
to break through. Any questioning or nudges from skeptics are
met with disdain, counterpoints from the in-group, or, as in the
comment above, appeals to emotion.
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As additional conspiracies are subsumed into the QAnon
movement and promulgated via the social web, QAnon could
be considered an overarching superconspiracy (Beene and Greer,
2023). For instance, one of Pastor Chris’s followers commented
on the absolute trust that the community has in former
president Trump to enact the financial blessings wrought by the
Nesara/Gesara conspiracy:
This is the way I look at it, [sic] I don’t think for 1 min
that DJT would let us all lose our money while he rides around
on his golf cart living large, [sic] there must be a plan. Do you
honestly think that anyone would support him or the plan, if he
let us all lose our money in the process of doing so? NO, all he
has gained from the MAGA movement would be gone, poof, if
we all went broke and lost our life savings.
This comment illustrates the vulnerability of the community
members and their absolute trust in Trump, an affective state
that the influencers exploit. Through actively encouraging the
continued belief in things like all debt being wiped out, Pastor
Chris and their ilk engender a hope that will only lead to
greater disappointment or financial ruin as some choose to forego
payments because their loans are seen as illegal, connected again to
the global cabal, under the gospel of the conspiracy.
The conspiracy phenomenon of “MedBeds” serves as perhaps
the most heartbreaking example of this exploitation. Often
included as part of the supposed Nesara/Gesara reveals, MedBeds
present a combination of conspiracy (hidden technologies),
scientific illiteracy, and magical thinking. These beds, sometimes
attributed to Elon Musk and Tesla, sometimes rumored to be
military technology, have numerous benefits, as elucidated in
a lengthy post widely shared among conspiracy communities
throughout 2023. Illustrative of the magical thinking and misplaced
hope of this particular conspiracy, enumerated among the
purported abilities of the Medbeds was the regrowth of organs
and teeth, the cure of all physical and mental ailments, changing
hair and eye color at will, and “downloading languages” and other
knowledge to one’s brain.
Through constant encouragement and repeated appeals
of their soon-to-be-announced availability, the conspiracy
influencers prime the vulnerable for exploitation. Followers echo
the influencers’ overconfidence, enthusiasm, and excitement.
Comments abound with people announcing they have stopped
their medications, quit going to doctors, or lamenting that the
MedBeds did not come soon enough for their loved ones.
4.1.6 (il)literacies
The following examples illustrate information literacy and
other literacy gaps linked to information behaviors relevant to
these groups. Educators and librarians can close these gaps
by first recognizing them. Through an exploration of these
communities’ behaviors, we believe there are many opportunities
for better education.
4.1.6.1 Visual and media literacy
Furthering visual and media literacies is a crucial endeavor
for these communities, since much of the content community
members share consists of unattributed and decontextualized
images, viral memes, and questionable videos. Hodges (2023)
summarized recent conspiracy theory literature findings that
“present-day conspiracy narratives spread in large part through the
networked circulation of decontextualized digital images, which
accrue new narrative significance as they enter new contexts
and arrangements, traveling further from their authentic sources
and meanings over time” (p. 132). This networked circulation
of decontextualized imagery does not just happen in conspiracy
communities. Palmer (2019) analyzed the common practice in
online media of reusing images, videos, or screenshots outside
of their original contexts to reshape a narrative, a phenomenon
he termed the intersemiotic contextual misrepresentation of
photojournalism (p. 104). Sharing bits from mainstream media
sources or dubious news outlets helps spread misinformation.
This practice was evident in both samples. In 2022, IET posted
a YouTube video from “We The Media (William Scott)” -
“The Unvaccinated will be Vindicated,” From The Highwire, a
dubious news outlet profiting from misinformation. This post,
which paints the unvaccinated as heroes working to expose and
vanquish the Deep State, was viewed by over 46,000 and garnered
over 1,000 reactions and 100 comments. One commenter said,
“Very powerful. And some people says [sic] Trump pushed this
vaccine. Trump tricked the Deep state epic move,” while another
commented that posting this video “got me 30 days in fakebook
jail.” For that commenter, the “time out” forced upon them did
not result in a critical analysis of the video and why it may have
sparked the ban but rather reinforced the idea that the Deep State
is out to get the truth-tellers. With each new edit and share of news
media clips, the visual material takes on additional meanings and
wilder interpretations.
The human mind processes and creates meaning from images
far quicker than text (Palmer, 2019, p. 107); underscoring this
reality, Palmer describes the image as “the juggernaut in the
perceptual process” (p. 123). This cognitive reality shaped the
Framework for Visual Literacy for Higher Education’s (Association
of College and Research Libraries, 2016) knowledge practices and
dispositions, with knowledge practices including:
•Interpret visuals within their disseminated context by
considering related information such as captions, credits, and
other types of metadata.
•Question whether a visual could be considered authoritative or
credible in a particular context, which can include comparing
it to similar visuals, tracking it to its original source, analyzing
its embedded metadata, and engaging in similar evaluative
methods. (p. 8)
Multimodal media can present an even greater challenge for
educators looking to debunk conspiracy theories, as the multiple
channels of information can lend credibility to what otherwise
could be doubted if the information was shared purely through one
mode (e.g., image, text, audio, etc.) (Serafini, 2013,2022;Campbell
and Olteanu, 2023;Neylan et al., 2023). Neylan et al. (2023), writing
for PubMed, examined techniques to inoculate online users against
multimodal misinformation, including games and gamification;
however, they found that multimodal misinformation is uniquely
resilient to inoculation.
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Both Pastor Chris and IET populate their feeds with
multimodal imagery. For IET, sharing YouTube and TikTok videos
is a powerful rhetorical tool that instantly communicates to
followers. For example, in a Telegram post-dated 2 August 2022,
IET shared a TikTok video, which quickly explains that Satan
is driving illnesses and the pharmaceutical companies that profit
from them, including through vaccines; near the end of the video,
hospital logos are visually compared to Satanic symbols. This post
garnered 163 comments, ranging from “I knew it!” to “I never
noticed this, but it makes sense.” By sharing a popular form of
online video, IET only needs to bracket it with his own rhetoric,
which he does through a headline that says, “This world isn’t
what it seems, Let me explain,” and his one comment underneath:
“Preach!” For Pastor Chris, images are often posted from the
White House webcam, with additional textual glosses praising any
movement or change in scenery as a clear sign that conspiracies are
being revealed.
Thus, the power of the shared videos and images in these
communities is enhanced through the influencers’ commentary.
Because of the challenges that occur with reading and evaluating
multimodal imagery, Campbell and Olteanu (2023) advocate for a
new post-digital literacy to combat mis- and disinformation spread
through multimodal means; they argue that a new, embodied
form of meaning-making is deeply embedded within the digital
information ecosystem. A new framework for literacy is both
necessary and compelling.
4.1.6.2 Digital literacy
Another area ripe for further investigation is the lack of
digital literacy evident within these communities. While there
is not one definition of digital literacy, strides are being made
by educators and researchers (Tinmaz et al., 2022;Marín and
Castaneda, 2023;Palmer, 2023). At its most basic, digital literacy
entails understanding the online information environment – how
information is created, shared, and repurposed through systems
and platforms. In conspiracist communities, there is often a lack of
understanding of how information travels and changes online. This
is another departure from the early QAnon community, which was
comprised of coders and gamers; newer conspiracist communities,
such as the groups explored here, display more misunderstanding
of how digital information is created and changed online.
A great example of this misunderstanding is Paster Chris’ post
from November, 2023, where they posted excitedly that the White
House was up for sale. They followed up this post with another
that included a screenshot from the real estate website Zillow that
purportedly showed the White House up for sale (Figure 1).
Although clearly labeled “Off-market,” a standard stub
placeholder listing on Zillow was enough proof for Pastor Chris
and many of their followers. In comments, Pastor Chris elaborated:
“I sense the white hat will sell it, get the money, put it into the
treasury to get back to the people [sic] and then the rods of God will
come along and destroy it. Not sure how it all will play out [sic] but
you did see a Q drop about the white house for sale.” Commenters
pointing out that it was off-market were met with rumors of it
already being sold or teleological reasoning such as one follower’s
note that “yes, I seen [sic] it was off market. However, which third
party placed it there? There appears to always be a reason for such
events that reveal something. . . just what... Who knows?”
This example illustrates an all-too-common problem within
conspiracy communities: users must understand the ever-growing
and ever-sophisticated systems built to populate the internet
with content. The conspiracy theory surrounding Wayfair, an
online furniture company, provides another example: out-of-stock
products like storage cabinets were assigned random names by
the company, sometimes resembling human names. The QAnon
community circulated rumors that the products were actually codes
for children being trafficked and that the products were being used
to store the children (Spring, 2020); the theory spread across social
media, leading to digital warriors interrupting with and subverting
actual child trafficking work (Contrera, 2021). Literacy training
that includes basic knowledge about the purposes for online
information and how it flows through systems would be beneficial.
4.1.6.3 Science literacy
Scientific illiteracy and conspiracism have been well-studied,
especially among climate change scholars (Lewandowsky et al.,
2013a,b;Scheufele and Krause, 2019;McIntyre, 2021). Scientific
disinformation is rampant in these communities and reflects a lack
of knowledge and a willingness to set aside one’s knowledge for the
more desirable “hidden truths.” For example, Pastor Chris shared a
post in May 2023 from the group “PLANET X FOR REAL”:
I can’t believe people are so blind they don’t even see their
freaking moon is doing a cartwheel all over the sky and rising
and setting all over the place. . . .Yet the dumb trolls/ NCPs in
here will say yeah [sic] that’s normal. Don’t listen to people who
don’t even look up while they are too busy looking down [sic]
sitting on their couch [sic] buying into all other distractions.
Those are the same people who took the [emoji of a syringe]
The group’s reference to “Planet X” refers to an actual
hypothesized additional planet in the solar system (Kauffman,
2016); the group’s posts, however, promote the conspiracy theory
that Planet X and other celestial bodies have been hidden from the
public. The post shared by Pastor Chris seems to reference a flat
earth theory that states that the moon is hung in the sky above the
earth in a sealed dome (Modern Flat Earth Beliefs, n.d.). At the end
of the post, a jab at those vaccinated against COVID-19 illustrates
how adherence to one scientific conspiracy theory quickly begets
adherence to another.
The motivations for such beliefs are complicated, but like all
others, they stem from affective states and psychological needs.
Centralized, government-backed scientific institutions, researchers,
and the academic elite are prime targets for mistrust. The
scientific method is misunderstood, with changing scientific
recommendations portrayed in these communities not as evidence
of a growing body of knowledge but as evidence of malfeasance,
fraud, or stupidity: “These idiots have no idea what they are doing.”
This mindset was common during the COVID-19 pandemic. These
communities promote their own scientific experts and cognitive
authorities to counteract those that mainstream “normies” accept.
For example, IET has promoted creators on alternative news
podcasts, others on Telegram, and even creators on TikTok to draw
attention to “what’s really happening” and “the truth,” each instance
of which is applauded and cheered by his followers, who sometimes
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FIGURE 1
Screenshot of Zillow listing of the white house.
comment that they, too, have been following these influencers for
some time – alongside IET, of course.
Evident in IET’s Telegram posts and Rumble interviews are
many of the anti-pharmaceutical, anti-vaccation, and anti-science
stances. Alongside a libertarian, individualist stance in making
and facilitating one’s own medical decisions is the promotion
of debunked cures such as “parasite cleanses,” Ivermectin and
hydroxychloroquine use, and assorted alternative health theories.
Concurrent with these views is a hardened stance against scientific
expertise, especially those who mandate or recommend COVID-
19 vaccinations. These stances have been well-documented in the
scholarly literature (Larson, 2020;Voinea et al., 2023). And while
many of the fears and associated beliefs around vaccination are
warranted, especially in marginalized communities with a distrust
of authorities (Stein et al., 2021;Bilewicz, 2022;Cortina and
Rottinghaus, 2022;Fredericks et al., 2022), conspiracy ideation also
plays an outsized role (Mylan and Hardman, 2021;Enders et al.,
2022;Farhart et al., 2022;Seddig et al., 2022). The consequences
of distrust have many detrimental effects, notably on public health.
For example, vaccine hesitancy has led to a resurgence of measles,
which had been nearly eradicated in the United States (Orenstein
et al., 2004). A 2020 report on a recent outbreak noted that 9%
of the infected required hospitalization, with one death (Feemster
and Claire, 2020). Fear of the COVID-19 vaccines, due to either
previous vaccine hesitancy or fear of the new mRNA technology
used in the vaccines, led to a number of conspiracies and lower
vaccine uptakes, with one report estimating that the Delta variant
was 11% more fatal for those who were unvaccinated (Dyer, 2021).
Therefore, we must strengthen a basic understanding of science
and work toward a holistic scientific literacy – one that begins with
understanding the scientific method and how scientific discourse
evolves and ends with a fundamental insight into (and respect for)
scientific authorities and authoritative bodies. As educators, the
health of future generations depends on it.
5 Discussion: lessons for educators
Conspiracy adherents most likely lack the skills and knowledge
to evaluate conspiracy claims critically, and many suffer from
logical fallacies (e.g., correlation, not causation), teleogism, and
other types of misinterpretation. As the well-known “Dunning-
Kruger effect” (Kruger and Dunning, 1999) stipulates, those who
do not have sufficient knowledge in a subject area will tend to
overestimate their abilities and cannot recognize their cognitive
and epistemic deficits until they have further training. The deficit
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model is not the only answer, although it does play a part
in these communities. What seems to be happening in these
influencer groups is a combination of literacy deficits, maladaptive
heuristics, and, as Hodges