How did the conspiracy theory that 'there is a research facility for biological weapons in Ukraine' spread?
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the conspiracy theory that 'Ukraine has a research facility for biological weapons funded by the United States' was spread on social media. Timothy Graham, Senior Lecturer at Queensland Institute of Technology, and Daniel Welan-Shamy, Senior Research Assistant, explain how this conspiracy theory spread on social media.
'Ukraine biolabs': how attempts to debunk a conspiracy theory only helped it spread
According to NPR , an independent US media, the conspiracy theory that 'Ukraine was developing biological weapons with the support of the US government' is a far-right social media group, FOX News of conservative media, and QAnon conspiracy theorists. Accepted and spread to. FOX News show host Tucker Carlson said of the conspiracy theory that biological weapons were being developed in Ukraine: 'Clearly the US government is lying. The government hides what they are doing. It can be said that we conducted a fake information campaign because of this, 'he claimed to support the conspiracy theory, but did not provide any concrete evidence to support this claim.
Graham and colleagues retweeted a post that mentions both 'Ukraine' and 'Bioweapons Research Facility' to investigate how the conspiracy theory about this bioweapons research facility was spread on Twitter. I searched. Next, to see how these accounts are connected, we looked to see if the two accounts were retweeting the same thing at the same time.
As a result of the investigation, 1469 accounts and 26,850 links were confirmed. The figure below is a dot visualization of an account that retweets at least one post that mentions both 'Ukraine' and 'Bioweapons Research Facility' using a toolkit . Also, if two accounts retweet the same tweet multiple times within a minute, the accounts are connected by a line. Looking at this figure, you can see that more than 1400 accounts are connected to each other and are divided into several groups (clusters).
According to Graham and colleagues, there are 50 clusters of accounts, 49 of which are 'trying to deny the conspiracy theory of biological weapons research facilities.' And only the remaining one was trying to spread the conspiracy theory. At the heart of the cluster that denies this conspiracy theory are White House spokesman Jen Psaki , the U.S. Department of Defense, Ukraine-related news media Kieu Independent , and the British news channel Sky News . It was said that. And since the clusters that mention conspiracy theories about biological research facilities are the largest, with Saki at the center, Graham et al. Said that Saki's mention of conspiracy theories spread rapidly on Twitter. increase.
We took note of Russia's false claims about alleged US biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine. We've also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) March 9, 2022
The phenomenon of conspiracy theories being spread by clusters that deny conspiracy theories can be explained by a process called ' participatory disinformation ,' Graham said. This participatory disinformation begins with high-profile users such as politicians and celebrities sending news online, and the information spreads as online users respond to the news.
The conspiracy theory about the biological weapons research facility started on Gab, a platform for the alt-right , and was spread on Twitter by QAnon's accounts. However, the conspiracy theory becomes 'news' because the small topic on Twitter was taken up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and Russia and was taken up in the FOX News program. When Twitter users pick up such news, they apply 'unique filters' that are influenced by the media they interact with on a daily basis to build and post their own interpretations of the news. Then another user picks up and filters the news and interpretation. 'This process repeats itself in a self-enhancing feedback loop,' Graham said.
Eventually, the pros and cons of conspiracy theories don't matter, and when White House spokesmen and senior Russian government officials mention conspiracy theories, they unnecessarily spread the conspiracy theories as if they were supplying oxygen to a burning flame. That's why. Graham said, 'While the old conspiracy theory relied on complex theories to justify the claim, the new conspiracy theory is'just getting a lot of attention'. It can be true. '
'We have witnessed many times that conspiracy theories have spread on social media, leading to political bias and undermining the authority of democracy, before further declining confidence in democratic institutions and principles. It's time to rethink the media ecosystem and how it's regulated, 'he said, arguing that global system reforms are needed to discourage platforms that benefit from false alarms and disinformation. At the same time, politicians and senior government officials should be aware that mentioning conspiracy theories can unintentionally help spread.
'Advice for social media users is a rule of thumb before sharing or retweet. If the content has a strong emotional response, it's disinformation. Often, if you really want to share it, it's better to take a screenshot of the content than to interpret the information and post it, as it can break the disinformation provider out of the chain. ' I did.
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