ArticleSocial media + society
COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Discussion on Twitter.
Article in Social media + society. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- An Exploratory Typology of Tobacco-Related Misleading Content on Social Media: Qualitative Analysis of Instagram and TikTok.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Internet health information-seeking behavior and the use of traditional and complementary medicine: the role of online engagement and perceived information usefulness and reliability.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2025Article
- The role of evidence-based medicine in the media: misinformation and the COVID-19 lesson.European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2025Article
- Prevalence of pharmaceutical industry conspiracy theories among the polish population.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A role for qualitative methods in researching Twitter data on a popular science article's communication.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2024Article
- GMO discussion on Twitter.GM crops & food · 2023Article
- Dynamics and characteristics of misinformation related to earthquake predictions on Twitter.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- From Conspiracy to Hesitancy: The Longitudinal Impact of COVID-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Perceived Vaccine Effectiveness.Vaccines · 2023Article
- Exploring the vaccine conversation on TikTok in Italy: beyond classic vaccine stances.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Article
- Public Opinion Manipulation on Social Media: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Bots during the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Lessons for science and technology policy? Probing the Linkedin network of an RDI organisation.SN social sciences · 2022Article
- Trustworthiness Over Time on Twitter: Three Critical Periods for the Norwegian Health Authorities and Political Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Social media + societyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was an unexpected event and resulted in catastrophic consequences with long-lasting behavioral effects. People began to seek explanations for different aspects of COVID-19 and resorted to conspiracy narratives. The objective of this article is to analyze the changes on the discussion of different COVID-19 conspiracy theories throughout the pandemic on Twitter. We have collected a data set of 1.269 million tweets associated with the discussion on conspiracy theories between January 2020 and November 2021. The data set includes tweets related to eight conspiracy theories: the 5G, Big Pharma, Bill Gates, biological weapon, exaggeration, FilmYourHospital, genetically modified organism (GMO), and the vaccines conspiracy. The analysis highlights several behaviors in the discussion of conspiracy theories and allows categorizing them into four groups. The first group are conspiracy theories that peaked at the beginning of the pandemic and sharply declined afterwards, including the 5G and FilmYourHospital conspiracies. The second group associated with the Big Pharma and vaccination-related conspiracy whose role increased as the pandemic progressed. The third are conspiracies that remained persistent throughout the pandemic such as exaggeration and Bill Gates conspiracies. The fourth are those that had multiple peaks at different times of the pandemic including the GMO and biological weapon conspiracies. In addition, the number of COVID-19 new cases was found to be a significant predictor for the next week tweet frequency for most of the conspiracies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.