Abstract
The coronavirus pandemic has been accompanied by the spread of misinformation on social media. The Plandemic conspiracy theory holds that the pandemic outbreak was planned to create a new social order. This study examines the evolution of this popular conspiracy theory from a dynamic network perspective. Guided by the analytical framework of network evolution, the current study explores drivers of tie changes in the Plandemic communication network among serial participants over a 4-month period. Results show that tie changes are explained by degree-based and closure-based structural features (i.e. tendencies toward transitive closure and shared popularity and tendencies against in-degree activity and transitive reciprocated triplet) and nodal attributes (i.e. bot probability and political preference). However, a participant’s level of anger expression does not predict the evolution of the observed network.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3676-3695 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | New Media and Society |
Volume | 25 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2023 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Communication
- Sociology and Political Science
Keywords
- COVID-19
- Communication networks
- Plandemic
- RSiena
- misinformation
- network analysis
- online discussion