1090201

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NMS0010.1177/14614448221090201new media & societyMarwick and Partin

Article

new media & society

Constructing alternative facts:

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© The Author(s) 2022

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QAnon conspiracy sagepub.com/journals-permissions
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221090201
DOI: 10.1177/14614448221090201
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Alice E Marwick and William Clyde Partin

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Abstract
Communication research is increasingly concerned with the relationship between
epistemological fragmentation and polarization. Even so, explanations for why partisans
take up fringe beliefs are limited. This article examines the right-wing conspiracy
QAnon, which posits that the anonymous poster “Q” is a Trump administration insider
who encourages followers (“Bakers”) to research hidden truths behind current events.
Drawing on qualitative fieldwork on the 8chan imageboard, we position baking as a
collective, knowledge-making activity built on the affordances of social media designed
to construct specific facts and theories that maintain QAnon’s cohesion over time.
Bakers demonstrate populist expertise, the rejection of legacy media accounts of current
events in favor of the “alternative facts” constructed through their systematic research
programs. We emphasize the politically ambivalent nature of participatory culture and
argue that baking casts doubt on critical thinking or media literacy as solutions to “post-
truth” dilemmas like hyperpartisan media and disinformation.

Keywords
Conspiracy, dark participation, epistemology, expertise, extremism, far-right, fringe,
participatory culture, populism, QAnon

Introduction
In 2018, the moderator of a 13,000-member Facebook group pinned a post titled
“CLICKBAIT & NEWS EXPLOITATION SITES EXPLAINED & WHY WE DON’T
SUPPORT THEM.” The post explained that clickbait “[plays] on your emotions” and

Corresponding author:
Alice E Marwick, Department of Communication and Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB# 3285, 308 Bynum Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3285, USA.
Email: amarwick@unc.edu
2 new media & society 00(0)

“[gets] advertising revenue for the number of visits, shares, and likes.” He listed several
“Fake News” sites banned from the page for “masquerading as legitimate news sources”
to generate “unethical revenue.” The post included screenshots of offending sites, includ-
ing a Facebook group called “Just Say No to Liberals” showing a photoshopped CNN
headline, “Weather Channel Co-Founder: Climate Change is Baloney.” The post ended
with a plea to group members to avoid “inadvertently promoting a News Exploitation,
clickbait, or Fake-News site.” The group was called “QAnon News and Updates: Intel
drops, breadcrumbs, & the war against the Cabal.”
QAnon is a conservative conspiracy theory that posits that former president Trump is
fighting the “deep state” to bring down a ring of elite pedophiles, as revealed by an
anonymous message board poster called “Q.” The public and journalistic consensus on
QAnon and similar conspiracies is that their adherents are gullible dupes, immune to
“facts” and “reason.” For instance, Adrienne LaFrance, author of a feature story on
QAnon in The Atlantic, tweeted that “[QAnon] is premised on a search for truth, [but]
adherence requires the total abandonment of empiricism. This is a mass rejection of rea-
son” (2020). The clickbait-warning post quoted above, however, seems to counter the
common frame of QAnons as easily hoodwinked cultural dupes. What explains this
contradiction?
This article examines how one group of QAnon participants, called “Bakers” or
“Anons,” draws upon the participatory affordances of the social web to collectively con-
struct knowledge that maintains the social and political cohesion of the conspiracy across
time. Bakers are QAnon believers who actively work to interpret “crumbs” of informa-
tion from Q’s posts to create insights or “bread.” Rather than dismissing Q researchers as
gullible, paranoid, ignorant, or irrational, we take seriously the tools and techniques they
use to arrive at those conclusions as situated forms of knowledge production that seek to
create and maintain “alternative facts.” Following Mark Fenster’s call to analyze the
interpretive practices of conspiracy communities (2008), our point is not that the “facts”
that Bakers produce are secretly accurate—they are not—but that they emerge from a
systematic, participatory process that forges an epistemology in which Bakers’ seem-
ingly outlandish claims become not only thinkable but functionally unimpeachable. In
particular, we see Francesca Tripodi’s notion of scriptural inference—a form of literacy
popular among conservative partisans premised on close engagement with primary
texts—as a key interpretative practice in the QAnon researchers we observed. Using
source claims, archives, and textual interpretation, QAnons systematically (and rather
literally) construct alternative facts.
We refer to QAnon’s interpretative practices as populist expertise, the rejection of
legacy media accounts, scientific consensus, or elite knowledge in favor of a body of
“home-grown” forms of expertise and meaning-making generated by those who may feel
disenfranchised from mainstream political participation. Populist expertise builds upon
the work of Henry Jenkins, whose popular expertise is an element of his theories of par-
ticipatory culture. In the last few years, a small piece of literature around “dark participa-
tion” has emerged, claiming that participatory culture has been corrupted by trolls,
conspiracy theorists, and hate groups (Frischlich et al., 2019; Quandt, 2018). However,
“dark participation” is only “dark” if one believes that unmodified participation is inher-
ently democratic and egalitarian. By looking closely at QAnon, a community that
Marwick and Partin 3

exemplifies virtually every tenet of participatory culture, we see that political or cultural
participation is not intrinsically positive, and perhaps never was. As liberal democracies
are forced to contend with forms of political participation that seek to curtail voting
rights, diminish the rights of minoritized communities, and establish authoritarian forms
of government, critically examining such participation is increasingly necessary.

Literature review
Conspiracy
A conspiracy theory claims that a concealed group of powerful people are responsible for
some social phenomenon (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009). Although conspiracy theories
may seem to be uniquely modern, they have existed throughout human history, some for
hundreds of years, as in speculation about Jewish control over Christian culture (Bronner
2003; van Prooijen and Douglas, 2017). While topics of conspiracy theories range
widely, they commonly reflect anxiety about the loss of individualism within a complex
social order (Melley, 2000). Thus, conspiracy theories constitute a discursive framework
that shares narrative styles, tropes, logics, and myths (Byford, 2011). This is particularly
true with the rise of “big tent” conspiracy theories like QAnon, which weave multiple
theories together and morph as current events change (Zuckerman and McQuade, 2019).
Because conspiracy theories are so prevalent, a variety of disciplines have taken up
their study. Social psychologists, for instance, attempt to identify attributes common to
conspiracy believers, such as a perceived lack of political efficacy or openness to experi-
ence (Douglas et al., 2017; Goreis and Voracek, 2019). Scholars in anthropology, cultural
studies, and sociology instead consider conspiracy theories as social phenomena (Bratich,
2008; Harambam and Aupers, 2015). Rather than constructing a personality type of the
“conspiracy theorist,” such research finds that conspiracy believers see themselves as
critical freethinkers and are loosely arranged in interlinked networks (Ellefritz, 2014;
Harambam and Aupers, 2017; Mahl et al., 2021; Toseland, 2019). This suggests that
participants in conspiratorial communities, like other fringe groups, are socialized into a
way of knowledge-making and understanding over time (Olshansky et al., 2020; Proctor,
2018). While people may come to believe conspiracy theories without direct interaction
with others, this process is exacerbated by the Internet, where conspiratorial communi-
ties flourish (Enders et al., 2021; Mahl et al., 2021).
Many such communities are skeptical of traditional knowledge-making institutions
like academia and journalism (Lewandowsky et al., 2015). Instead, they are open to vari-
ous alternative knowledge claims, including the validity of personal experience, mysti-
cism and the occult, and the Bible (Olshansky et al., 2020; Toseland, 2019; Ward and
Voas, 2011). The ability to evaluate and read these knowledge claims is a hallmark of
conspiratorial communities. As Mark Fenster writes,

conspiracy theory demands continual interpretation. There is always something more to know
about an alleged conspiracy . . . conspiracy theory works as a form of hyperactive semiosis in
which history and politics serve as reservoirs of signs that demand (over) interpretation, and
that signify, for the interpreter, far more than their conventional meaning. (2008: 94–95)
4 new media & society 00(0)

Drawing on this literature, we conceptualize QAnon as a conspiratorial community of

practice in which ways of creating knowledge and interpreting texts are learned from
other participants (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Specifically, we build upon the findings of
media sociologist Francesca Tripodi, who argues that conservative Americans use tech-
niques learned in Bible study to read media texts (2018). This practice, which she calls
scriptural inference, involves scrutinizing primary sources line-by-line to “unpack” their
meaning. Tripodi frames this as a form of media literacy. QAnon participants engage in
this type of close reading within online communities, combining scriptural inference
with elements of collective interpretation characteristic of participatory culture. In plac-
ing these two together, this article considers how an interpretative practice associated
with conservative partisans has been remediated by the social affordances of the Internet,
giving rise to a powerful community of believers who become and remain committed to
a conspiracy despite its (frequently) counterfactual claims.

Participatory culture
The media scholar Henry Jenkins imagined a participatory culture in which the Internet
facilitated active participation in media rather than passive consumption, through both
fannish interpretive practices and the creation of cultural products (Jenkins, 1992;
Jenkins et al., 2006). He wrote that participatory cultures, unlike cultures of media con-
sumption, demonstrate “low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong
support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship
. . . members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connec-
tion with one another” (Jenkins et al., 2006). Jenkins drew heavily from fan studies,
arguing that participatory culture was a mode of textual interpretation and engagement
with a text that extended beyond the individual into communities of practice, organized
around fannish interests (1992). He wrote, “Organized fandom is, perhaps first and fore-
most, an institution of theory and criticism, a semi-structured space where competing
interpretations and evaluations of common texts are proposed, debated, and negotiated”
(1992: 86). In contrast to scholarly accounts, fan knowledge about television or comics
constitutes a popular expertise that, despite its lack of credentials, may “put academic
critics to shame” (1992: 86).
Participatory culture was widely taken up by scholars of the Internet (Delwiche and
Henderson, 2013) and participation was used to analyze social media sites like YouTube
and Reddit (Burgess and Green, 2009; Massanari, 2015), practices like writing fan fic-
tion and blogging (Pole, 2010; Turk, 2014), activism (Rotman et al., 2011), and educa-
tion (Buckingham, 2015). Most of this scholarship implicitly positioned cultural
participation as intrinsically positive (Lutz et al., 2014), in keeping with more general
concepts of political participation as a fundamental part of democracy (Carpentier, 2011;
Dalton, 2017). In political science, for instance, “participation” means “sharing power”
(Carpentier et al., 2019). Critiques of participation have primarily focused on a “partici-
pation gap” in which more educated, skilled, or wealthier people participate more, politi-
cally or culturally (Dalton, 2017; Hargittai and Walejko, 2008). In contrast, Christoph
Lutz and Christian Hoffmann’s typology of online participation included a social valence
axis. They defined negative action participation as “users [who] actively choose to
Marwick and Partin 5

engage for a purpose widely considered harmful or undesirable” such as extremism or

child pornography (2017).
In 2018, journalism scholar Thorsten Quandt wrote an incendiary piece criticizing the
project of participatory journalism, arguing that “citizen journalism” relied on unrealistic
conceptions of the “user” as a willing altruist (2018: 37). Instead, Quandt described a
new breed of highly motivated “wicked actors,” such as trolls, conspiracy theorists, and
hate groups, with “sinister” ideological, political, or religious reasons for participation.
Other journalism and political communication scholars have since adopted Quandt’s
normative concept of dark participation to describe “deviant” behaviors like trolling in
online news comment sections, with an entire special issue devoted to the topic (Anderson
and Revers, 2018; Westlund, 2021). By differentiating “dark participation” from “par-
ticipation,” Quandt and those who draw on his work position “participation” as positive
and suggest that the types of participation that the author dislikes should be framed as
“dark.”
While we applaud the impetus to study forms of participation that are not considered
intrinsically democratic, we believe the normative conception of participation as positive
is misguided. Not only is it troublingly subjective, intent is notoriously difficult to deter-
mine on the Internet, where pieces of content are frequently removed from their original
context and deployed across networks (Phillips and Milner, 2017). Our view is that
QAnon is not a corruption of participatory culture, but instead exemplifies its tenets as
originally documented by Jenkins. Specifically, we return to Jenkins’ discussions of fan
communities that share a common textual interpretive strategy and development of
expertise. For example, in his ethnography of a Twin Peaks Usenet group (Jenkins,
1995), he argued that the combination of mystery and Internet community created “a
scriptural culture” centered on “circulation and interpretation” (p. 55). Twin Peaks pre-
sented viewers with a central puzzle—who killed Laura Palmer—which prompted audi-
ence members to scrutinize the text for “clues” and work together to solve the show’s
many mysteries. Our research shows that QAnon shares much with the communities
Jenkins studied: it has a relatively low barrier to entry;1 strong support for participants’
contributions and creations; belief by Anons that their contributions matter; and forms of
social connection between participants.

Populism and expertise

Though research on populism has a long history, the concept has received considerable
attention in the last 20 years (Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013), doubly so following the
election of Donald Trump (Mudde, 2019). While the definition of populism is highly
contested, political scientist Jan Wenner Muller defines it as an “exclusionary form of
identity politics” that is critical of elites, anti-pluralist, and moralistic, and thus poses “a
danger to democracy” (2016: 1–4). Populism exists across the ideological spectrum and
is perceived differently by different political theorists, who variously express concern or
support for populism in its many forms. Chantel Mouffe (2018) views the current “popu-
list moment” as an opportunity for left-wing politicians to leverage crises in neoliberal-
ism, while others like Cynthia Miller-Idriss (2020) see populism as a vector for
mainstreaming right-wing extremist positions.
6 new media & society 00(0)

Rather than valorizing one definition or making a normative claim, we merely want
to emphasize that it is difficult to assign populism a single ideological telos. Instead, we
draw from this literature a constellation of qualities associated with populism: that is,
populism is anti-elite, anti-pluralist, and anti-expertise. Anti-elitism and anti-pluralism
are central to the QAnon mythology (Hannah, 2021), while anti-expertise occupies a
more complex position. Populism is often associated with “anti-intellectualism,” the
generalized mistrust of intellectuals and experts, which often opposes expertise in, for
instance, vaccination, climate change, and nuclear power (Merkley, 2020). This has
posed a considerable challenge to the role of scientific expertise in policymaking (Collins
et al., 2020), as well as engendering a broader hostility toward institutions that, histori-
cally, produce “legitimate” knowledge.
We want to complicate the notion that populism is inherently anti-expertise. Instead, we
ask whose expertise matters and how expertise is defined. Scholars in science and technol-
ogy studies (STSs) have long shown that what counts as expertise is not natural but norma-
tive: the status of expert is not a given but conferred through knowledge-making institutions
like universities, news media, and government (Collins and Evans, 2008). The assumption
that “expertise” is politically neutral or self-evident is ahistorical and discounts the long
history of “boundary work” in knowledge-making fields that validates some people and
organizations, but not others, as experts (Gieryn, 1983). To be clear, we are certainly not
opposed to scholars mobilizing discourses of expertise nor do we believe that all claims to
expertise should be treated equally. Still, we are wary of how declarations of expertise are
sometimes wielded as barely veiled claims to authority over epistemology, which may
obscure how expertise is defined and negotiated outside mainstream contexts.
In sum, while many adherents of populism are skeptical of mainstream knowledge-
making institutions, we do not believe that populism is opposed to expertise as such, but
specific understandings of expertise. Populist movements offer alternative structures of
expertise aligned with their own ideological commitments, and scholars ought to con-
sider how these are constructed and gain currency. Akin to “mainstream” understandings
of expertise that are shared by journalists, academics, and policymakers, populist exper-
tise is not self-evident but produced and maintained within communities of practice like
QAnon.

Methods and research site

This study uses qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. Though this article
is not directly about media effects, we took inspiration from Alice Marwick’s (2018)
sociotechnical model of media effects, which encourages researchers to think holistically
about the complex interrelationships between audiences’ own meaning-making prac-
tices, online content, and the social affordances of digital media, and the multiple meth-
odologies one might use to analyze these empirical phenomena. Between August 2019
and January 2020, we conducted non-participant observation on 20 Facebook groups
dedicated to QAnon, 9 public and 11 private, ranging from 276 to 22,186 members. We
also monitored several QAnon research boards on platforms such as o-chan, Endchan,
and 8kun. In contrast to formal ethnography, we understood our presence in these spaces
to be a form of what Clifford Geertz (1998) called “deep hanging out,” in which
Marwick and Partin 7

researcher(s) spend extended periods of time in a group under study. Though generally
silent observers, we also utilized a pseudonymous Facebook account to ask about spe-
cific practices, interpretations, and meanings of posts.2
We also frequently consulted the extensive archives established by Bakers. Because
transparency was a strong community value, Bakers developed and continuously updated
enormous archives of their message board discussions, analyses of Q’s posts, and com-
munity-produced media such as videos and instructions for new participants. These
archives included links to publicly available materials hosted by governments, founda-
tions, and news media (including the NTSB and FAA’s list of in-flight incidents, patent
databases, military procurement documents, Wikileaks archives, and highly publicized
leaks like the Panama Papers), as well as purpose-built Google Drive databases that
aggregated information about “relevant” activities (such as Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs,
timelines of resignations of government officials, and lists of mass shootings in the
United States). We downloaded archives of 8chan’s/q/research board, all of Q’s drops,
and books of proofs in PDF form. Many of these vernacular databases were highly organ-
ized and clearly designed with ongoing research in mind.
While a comprehensive review of this massive corpus is beyond this article’s scope,
we selected a case study to demonstrate the process of baking. We believe that our selec-
tion is representative of the QAnon research community as it existed during our field-
work. However, we did not conduct interviews with Bakers and cannot confirm the
identities or motivations of participants. In general, these motivations appear to go
beyond the typical pleasures of participation, such as camaraderie and recognition. Like
many conspiracy theorists, Bakers map coherent patterns onto the chaos of current
events, produce damning critiques of their ideological opponents, and, by “aiding”
President Trump through research, may see themselves as players on the world stage
(Lantian et al., 2017; Moulding et al., 2016).
Though this study runs the risk of amplifying harmful theories (Phillips, 2018), we
believe it is justified for two reasons. First, as of 2021, 61% of American adults report
being aware of QAnon (Pew Research Center, 2021). In this sense, there is little concern
about elevating an obscure conspiracy to public consciousness when QAnon is part of
mainstream political life in the United States. Second, we believe that sustained ethno-
graphic analysis of how QAnon’s knowledge claims are made, validated, and circulated
is vital for understanding the spread of this and other online conspiracies, as well as
honestly evaluating existing or proposed solutions.
The dataset that informs this article ends in January 2020. Since then, QAnon has
changed considerably, spreading into a wide range of other, more general topics includ-
ing wellness (Ong, 2021) and COVID vaccines (Drinkwater et al., 2021). Though often
branded “QAnon,” many new adherents show little interest in the kinds of close reading
and knowledge-making practices we observed in our data collection.3 This shift coin-
cided with a growing awareness of QAnon in the leadup to the 2020 American Elections,
where multiple “pro-QAnon” candidates ran for state and national seats. In this sense, the
dispersal of QAnon into political discourse was accompanied by a dilution of some of the
QAnon tenets upheld by the Bakers we observed. Our dataset thus reflects a specific
moment in the history of a conspiracy but is not necessarily representative of the various
(after)lives of QAnon.
8 new media & society 00(0)

Findings: “The biggest problem is people use every word Q

says to try to completely invent fantastic assumptions”
In this section, we trace how Q adherents work together to construct “proofs” to demon-
strate how Bakers construct “alternative facts.” A “proof” is a document that decodes Q’s
obscure and vague posts, known as “drops,” and links them to real-world events that
happen days, months, or even years before or after. To Q devotees, these linkages prove
that Q is who they claim to be—a government official with access to Trump and high-
level security clearance—and that their drops, like the conspiracy as a whole, are nigh
infallible.
Proofs take several forms. The most common are evidence collages, which Joan
Donovan and Brian Friedberg define as “compiling information from multiple sources
into a single, shareable document, usually as an image” (2019: 8). Proofs also take the
forms of YouTube videos and PDF documents. They are used to refute claims that the Q
conspiracy is counter-evidentiary and to demonstrate the accuracy of Q’s predictions to
both insiders and outsiders. The proof we analyze in-depth is an evidence collage titled
“Rogue Missile Attack Intercepted” (Figure 1), which includes screenshots of six Q
drops posted to 8chan (Table 1), five of which were posted on 12 June 2018, and one of
which was posted on 22 December 2017.
When Q drops a new post, Bakers immediately begin discussing and attempting to
decode it. While several 8chan boards were considered the home of QResearch at the
time of our fieldwork, this takes place across the social web including Twitter, YouTube,
Trello, Reddit, and private Discord servers.4 We focused on 8chan threads because they
are the origin of Q drops and are meticulously archived by QAnon researchers.
Following archived discussions on 8chan can be difficult. Because 8chan allows any-
one to post anonymously, the boards are full of mischief-makers who frequently derail
conversations, purposefully or not. Moreover, conversations are not “threaded” in the
traditional sense, with a top-level comment under which responses are organized, as on
Reddit, for example. When participants respond to a post, their response appears chrono-
logically in the thread and is linked to the original only by a numerical referent; as a
result, multiple conversations exist in every forum thread and can be very difficult for
untrained eyes to follow. For this proof, we analyzed 8chan threads for drops 432 and
1476–1479 for a total of 2450 posts. Q deleted drops 1473 and 1474 quickly after post-
ing, so the community removed them from the baking archives. One Anon explained,
“Since Q deleted them so fast and they even magically deleted off of Qpub5 I think we
should not spread these 2 crumbs. Clearly they were comm’d to certain people and need
to not be seen by others.”6 We use these 8chan threads to demonstrate the basic processes
of baking and source evaluation in the QAnon conspiracy.

Baking, from crumbs to bread

How does a drop become a proof? Baking is an intertextual, interpretive practice and
drops are intended to be decoded, implying that each proof has a hidden meaning that
Bakers must work out for themselves. To understand crumbs, Bakers must consider the
body of Q drops and proofs, the textual corpus of Donald Trump (tweets, speeches, and
Marwick and Partin 9

Figure 1. Rogue Missile attack proof.

10 new media & society 00(0)

interviews, taken by the QAnon community to be inerrant), current events, and other
information sources. Bakers pay close attention to the text of the drop, focusing on miss-
ing letters, alternate meanings, patterns of capitalization, and other potential clues—
similar to the practices of Bible study chronicled by Tripodi (2018). Drops often include
questions and unlabeled images or tell readers to “think critically,” which encourage
Bakers to assemble a theory that transforms the knowable into the known.
On 8chan, whenever Q posts in an existing thread, participants drop the previous
discussion and begin baking, brainstorming the post’s meaning. For example, when
decoding Drop 432 (Table 1), Bakers suggested several explanations for the unusual
spelling of “missle”:

Could the missing “i” in missle mean “Miss Lee” the reporter/hostage “rescued” by Bill Clinton
from NK?

Maybe a “missle” is a “missile” that’s been taken over in-flight by an unintended party.

This early interpretive process of a drop involves brainstorming and wild guesses, so
suggestions that seem particularly unlikely are often met with skepticism. As one Anon
rants,

The biggest problem is people use every word Q says to try to completely invent fantastic
assumptions. Most of the Q map is set up as a relational database, made up of data sets that are
tied together by key words and signatures. If you want to figure something that Q says out, look
BACKWARD to all of Q’s previous posts. This has a much higher likelihood of finding value
than random guesses pulled from your imagination.

To gain support for their interpretations, Bakers frequently substantiate their theories
with images, links to videos or news articles, or intertextual references.
Bakers have constructed various best practices for interpreting drops, available in
documents and ebooks written and distributed by the community. In the ebook Q: The
Basics: An Introduction to Q and the Great Awakening, the anonymous author explains
that Q’s “cryptically worded statements and questions” are intended to “lead anons and
the public to question and research insider information about presidential strategies, poli-
cies, and events.” They explain that Q’s drops are obscure by design, as Q cannot be
crystal clear for fear of violating their security clearance. Instead, readers are encouraged
to engage in “open-source reporting” to “research and learn for themselves.” Similarly,
The Book of Q Proofs notes that “Q’s posts are often arranged as a series of questions,
where one question answers the question that was just asked before it; the questions are
set up so that they imply the answer” (Anon, 2018: 19). In The QAnon Phenomenon
ebook, Jay Jericho identifies four decoding methods he has witnessed on 8chan: reading
Q’s drops literally; synchronization or attempting to link Q drops to real-world events;
the Twitter coordination method, which compares Q drops to tweets by Trump and other
political actors; and the errors method, which focuses on missing letters and numbers
(2019: 24–31). As we will see, these different methods sometimes result in competing
interpretations that become objects of contestation themselves.
Table 1. Q Drops in Rogue Missile proof.
Drop Number Date Transcription Number of posts
on 8chan thread

432 22 December [screenshot of Donald Trump tweet which reads “Will be signing the biggest ever Tax Cut and Reform 605
2017 Bill in 30 minutes in Oval Office. Will also be signing a much needed 4 billion dollar missile defense bill.]
MISSILE.
Marwick and Partin

MISSLE.
FOX THREE.
SPLASH.
AS THE WORLD TURNS.
RED_OCTOBER >
Q
1473 [later 12 June 2018 JDLKD-8382KDJDzAZ7301 None, deleted
deleted by Q] YTTR-aRB730100-JQE195
CZTA68-KDHG-[ t]
CASTLE ARRIVAL GOOD
BLUE METAL
1474 [later 12 June 2018 FOX M1 STOLEN TAKEDOWN None, deleted
deleted by Q] ACTION KDH-0000
VIC-INTEL_34.XXXXCLAS_38.XXXXCLAS
[]CON SIT-AWARE
ON GUARD Z-BUNK_T6_Y
EXE_70283-BM-380287349271923872021028392821000 T
1476 12 June 2018 This is not a game. 525
Certain events were not supposed to take place.
Q.
[screenshot of skunkbayweather.com]
1478 12 June 2018 Event talk being attacked. 738
Ref: VOL pic, POTUS Tweet(s), Missing letters. . ..
You have more than you know.
Some areas we cannot expand on.
Critical thinking.
Q
1479 12 June 2018 Reverse image search. 582
Think hack.
Comms dark.
Q.
[picture of submarine in water]
11
12 new media & society 00(0)

Figure 2. Notables.

Interpretive closure
How does this process of wild speculation coalesce into a coherent narrative? We
observed several different processes by which an interpretation becomes a proof. None
of these are definitive, as multiple interpretations of crumbs can and do still exist.
Together, these processes shed light on how interpretive practices between Bakers trans-
form cryptic posts into truth-claims whose facticity is (mostly) accepted.
The first and most authoritative form of interpretive closure is Q’s own verification of
an explanation. For example, drop 432 (Table 1) contains the word “splash,” which also
appeared in drop 365, posted just a few days prior on 18 December 2017. Shortly after Q
posted drop 365, Bakers brainstormed explanations for the word’s repetition, such as
“the movie Splash has that actor Tom Hanks in it,” which did not garner much support.
Another participant, seemingly copying and pasting from an Air Force glossary page,
replied,

Splash = Missile time of flight is expired or missile destroyed; target or bomb impact.

Fox Three = Simulated/actual launch of active radar-guided missile

Q replied to this post, verifying it, and thus superseding other proposals and making
“splash” and “Fox Three” definitive.7 This is evident since it is referenced not only in the
thread for drop 432, but in innumerable future proofs, on Twitter, and in several Medium
posts translating the drop. More commonly, though, Q offers no clarification. When
Bakers asked if the missing “D” in drop 1476’s “suppose[d]” (Table 1) was significant,
Q replied that it was but did not explain further. Anons suggest that D might stand for
Democrats, Defense, the programming language D, or “D-Day,” but no single interpreta-
tion was confirmed by Q.
Another form of interpretive closure exists within each 8chan thread, as certain posts
are called out as “notable” (Figure 2). These posts are picked by the thread moderator,
who posts prospective notables to the thread for community feedback.8 Notables are sup-
posedly a way to separate the wheat from the chaff and call out useful, informative, or
interesting posts. In practice, notables range widely in quality, from posted news articles
and new evidence collages to unsubstantiated theories. Notables are then archived in a
Marwick and Partin 13

variety of places, and recent notables appear at the top of each new 8chan thread.9 When
formulating theories, Bakers frequently draw from notables rather than returning to the
crowded, confusing original 8chan threads. By being selected for inclusion in notables,
one interpretation is valued over another and is more likely to be taken up in future inter-
pretive work.
Finally, interpretive closure takes place when a Baker creates a proof, YouTube video,
Twitter thread, or evidence collage. Such authors have a great deal of leeway in selecting
and combining evidence. For example, although Q confirmed the meaning of “splash,”
this discussion is missing from the evidence collage for the Rogue Missile attack (Figure
1), although drops 1473 and 1474—deleted by Q and removed from many other
archives—remain. As Donovan and Friedberg explain, the evidence collage format
allows conspiracy theorists to combine “verified and unverified information,” choosing
“which sources to highlight or obscure” and leading “audiences through guided path-
ways of information,” encouraging viewers to adopt the author’s point of view and expe-
rience interpretation for themselves (2019: 26). Evidence collages thus allow Anons to
freeze the interpretive process and privilege their preferred reading. In other cases,
YouTube channels like the “Citizen’s Investigative Report” or “Patriot’s Soapbox” will
walk viewers through each drop, drawing from 8chan to highlight particular explana-
tions. Multiple interpretations of each drop can and do exist in the world of Q. This is
recognized by Bakers, one of whom noted that “Many Q posts have several correct inter-
pretations that fit.”
This is supported when comparing interpretations of drop 432 from three sources: the
Book of Q Proofs, a previously mentioned 609-page PDF which decodes each drop; the
QAnon.pub proof database; and a spreadsheet we found linked on 8chan. All use the
Q-verified interpretation of drop 432 (“fox three” as missile launch and “splash” for a
destroyed missile) but otherwise disagree on its significance. The Book of Q Proofs sug-
gests that 432 refers to a ballistic missile launched from Seattle to Singapore during a
meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un, while the spreadsheet argues that it refers to
an unsuccessful North Korean attack on an Argentine sub. Moreover, because 432 was
posted 6 months before the other drops in Figure 1, it appears in earlier proofs, such as an
evidence collage found at Qproofs.com which speculates that the NSA prevented the
deep state from launching a missile attack on Hawaii. While all these proofs appear on
community archives, they do not demonstrate consensus. Interpretations also change as
Q provides new information or the political situation shifts. Theories are never consid-
ered fully “closed” unless they are confirmed by Q.

Discussion: “if you’re not going to do the research, then

shut the f#(k up”
While conspiracy theorists are often imagined as gullible people who will accept any-
thing, our findings complicate this assessment. Rather, Q adherents demonstrated wide-
ranging knowledge about current and past events, questioned the legitimacy of sources
or the conclusions that other participants came to, and, above all, admonished others to
“do the research” or “think critically”—messages that frequently appear in appeals to
media literacy. (As one meme shared in a QAnon Facebook group put it, “if you’re not
14 new media & society 00(0)

going to do the research, then shut the f#(k up.”)) Although Bakers’ research often led
them to outlandish and counterfactual conclusions, their knowledge-making practices
lend systematicity and, ultimately, authority to their findings, if only to other Bakers. Our
point is not to legitimate these as equally valid ways of knowing, but to establish that
there is an internal logic to QAnon that runs in parallel to many knowledge-making prac-
tices in more “legitimate” institutions, like universities and thinktanks. We focus on
three: archiving, source evaluation, and expertise.

Archiving and canon-building

Bakers facilitated knowledge-making using a wide range of documentary and archival
practices. They expended considerable effort in creating searchable and accessible data-
bases of information deemed to be relevant. This included relational databases of pri-
mary evidence (posts by Q and tweets by Trump), such as QProofs.com, Qanon.pub, and
QMap.pub, which neatly organized thousands of pieces of “evidence” for Bakers’ use.
We also found carefully curated Google Drives, Dropbox folders, and spreadsheets of
pertinent reference material, such as FAA incident logs, S1 filings, and noteworthy
deaths. Such collections were intended for Bakers to explore the broader context around
a specific drop or Tweet, enabling easy linkages between otherwise disparate events.
Bakers methodically archived many of their completed proofs, from downloadable pdfs
and eBooks to meticulously edited YouTube videos.
By and large, the Bakers who created such documents were fastidious in their cita-
tional approach and exhibited great dedication to maintaining these sites, updating exist-
ing databases, and adding new ones. Although some Bakers attempted to turn a profit on
their creations, most materials were freely accessible. That said, some archives were
better resourced and maintained than others and Bakers did not consider any single
archive to be authoritative. This material not only facilitated the smooth functioning of
baking but enabled Bakers to position their knowledge-making practices as “research.”
By echoing more formal research techniques even as they adapted them to sensational
ends, Bakers not only constructed a social reality in which their most lurid conspiracies
were plausible, but granted themselves epistemic authority due to the systematicity of
their approach to knowledge-making.
Bakers have constructed what fans and fan studies scholars alike call a “canon,” a
term that nods to both the “great books” of high culture (the “Western Canon”) and the
Christian term for definitive New Testament texts. While posts by Q and Trump were
treated as unimpeachable primary texts, many other texts were considered relevant to the
interlocking textual and interpretive architecture of QAnon, such as S1 filings that could
reveal the financial interests of the wealthy or FAA incident logs that might contain
“unexplained” deaths. Likewise, as discussed, a few interpretations could be canonized
by a direct acknowledgment from Q. Thus, the textual basis for QAnon contains official
interpretations and considerable supplementary materials that represent competing but
nonauthoritative interpretations of the primary evidence.
Between their archival work and the construction of a canon, we argue that Bakers
exhibit strong parallels to the kinds of literacy that emerge in fan communities, espe-
cially those that primarily exist online. Like fan theories about what television episodes
Marwick and Partin 15

mean, such practices are both a performance of knowledge about a given franchise and a
collective-act of sense-making built around shared readings of primary texts that enable
a community to cohere across space and time. Unlike most fan communities, QAnon is
primarily concerned not just with American partisan politics, but actively shaping their
direction. QAnon also demonstrates “scriptural inference” (Tripodi, 2018), both in its
close engagement with primary sources and acceptance of Q and Trump texts as scrip-
ture-like: inerrant and requiring scrutiny to reveal a hidden meaning. Because QAnon
communities are conservative and frequently reference Christianity, it is likely that their
media literacy practices are rooted in the Bible study practices documented by Tripodi.

Source evaluation
Bakers engage in complex forms of source evaluation on primary and secondary texts. In
addition to canon, proofs mostly cite right-leaning sources, such as Breitbart and The
Gateway Pundit, although we also noticed mainstream media sources like ABC News,
Bloomberg, CNBC, The Atlantic, and USA Today. The four threads we analyzed included
links to the Daily Mail, Business Insider, the Daily Caller, Wikipedia, TruePundit.com,
The Japan Times, and others; tweets from political actors such as former CIA director
John Brennan; links to Google Maps; Google search results; and Bible verses. This is in
line with Bakers’ best practice. As an 8chan meme featuring a still from the Will Ferrell
movie “Anchorman” reads, “Anons: If your post is not fact based and it does not include
sources, it is just a DISTRACTION!!!!”
In some cases, Bakers rejected a source as outrageous or unreliable. For example,
drop 1476 includes a picture taken from skunkbayweather.com. Several Bakers point out
that the same picture was tweeted earlier in the day by @kabamur_taygeta, whose bio
identifies him as a “Patriot, Light Warrior, Sharing News And Information From The
Pleiadian Collective.” (Belief in Pleiadians, a humanoid alien race, is associated with
various new-age communities online.) Kabamur explains that the light source is “a beam
projector that is isolating the exact location of a massive underground crystal base trans-
mitter . . . It is being shot from beneath the ground and straight to a Pleiadian Craft where
it is being controlled.”10 Others are quick to discredit this theory, labeling him a “disinfo
operative” and stating “Kabamur puts out fake disinfo narrative on behalf of clowns.”11
In other cases, a source is criticized for being too liberal (Vice) or too fringe (a link to
ITCCS, a blog maintained by conspiracy theorist Kevin Annett, is dismissed with “the
article didn’t provide any evidence for its claims. When did things automatically become
true just because they are posted here?”).

Expertise
The interpretive and archival practices exhibited by Bakers in their discussions, proofs,
and archives illustrate not only the systematicity of knowledge-making among Anons,
but the skills that Bakers use during these processes. We label such practices populist
expertise: the rejection of legacy media accounts, scientific consensus, or knowledge
decried as “elite” in favor of a “home-grown” body of information generated and vali-
dated by those who may feel disenfranchised from mainstream political participation.
16 new media & society 00(0)

This seemingly paradoxical concept is intended to resolve a contradiction in how cur-

rent understandings of populism address expertise. Although populism is sometimes
thought to be defined in part by its hostility to experts, our findings suggest that this is
only partially true. Rather, QAnon Bakers build their own form of populist expertise that
is more amenable to the sensational conspiracies the group is known for. In this sense,
what Anons oppose is not expertise as such, but the normative version of expertise iden-
tified with academia, civil society, and the “Deep State.” Bakers illustrate an acute hostil-
ity to this normative view of expertise that may present itself as ideologically neutral but
is (fairly or not) thought to be a thin scrim for globalist and progressive claims.
These competing understandings of expertise demonstrate an important lesson about
its ideological ambivalence. Expertise does not have an ideological telos but is negoti-
ated ideologically. When populism is described as “anti-expertise,” it relies on a norma-
tive definition of expertise associated with science, the academy, and government. Yet
this elision hides a normative claim behind a specious, natural one. Our findings show
that expertise can be made, performed, and legitimated in a community of practice bound
by its adherence to QAnon as a political project. Rather than rejecting expertise, Bakers
attempt to claim the imprimatur of expertise by defining and performing it in such a way
that it aligns with their broader ideological goals.

Conclusion: QAnon as participatory culture

As university-based researchers, we are in many ways aligned with the normative view
of expertise decried by QAnon Bakers. However, we see expertise not as self-evident but
defined and conceptualized within communities of practice. Indeed, many of the terms
that appear throughout our analysis, from source evaluation to archiving to literacy, are
highly ambivalent, and we should be wary of associating them with specific political
purposes. Rather than positioning such terms as inherently good (perhaps with “dark”
counterparts) or natural, we encourage researchers to consider how such terms are them-
selves subject to ideological negotiation. Media literacy, for example, cannot be used to
distinguish between “progressive” and “conservative” mainstream media when conserv-
ative forms of media literacy draw on fundamentally different epistemological assump-
tions than elite forms of expertise (boyd, 2018).
We return to Jenkins’ definition of a participatory culture as one that exhibits “low bar-
riers to artistic expression and civic engagement,” provides “strong support for creating
and sharing one’s creations” and “some type of informal mentorship,” and creates social
connections and meaning for its participants (2006). These are all present in QAnon. In
addition to the shared interpretive practices that guide Bakers’ knowledge-making activi-
ties, Bakers encouraged each other to create their own media, including evidence collages,
books, and videos. The community welcomes newcomers and maintains introductory doc-
uments to orient newbies to the dense conspiracy. Forms of “legitimate peripheral partici-
pation,” such as volunteering to moderate threads, curate notables, or post interpretations
of crumbs, enable potentially interested individuals to be socialized into QAnon as a com-
munity of practice. And while most of the discussion on 8chan is political in nature, Anons
do support each other. For instance, in one 8chan thread, an Anon posted that they are
newly sober, miserable, and thinking of killing themselves. This post garnered 33 responses,
Marwick and Partin 17

including personal experiences with sobriety, prayers, and supportive messages. More fre-
quently, Anons will praise each other’s contributions or build on information provided by
others. Collectively, QAnon can be understood as a participatory culture that demonstrates
the creative and supportive aspects of participatory communities while espousing anti-
democratic and anti-institutional ideals. This calls into question the unerringly positive
framing of participation, and its counterpart of dark participation.
Our research also shows the centrality of “doing your own research” to QAnon, a
quality it has in common with other fringe cultures, from antivaxxers to flat earthers.
Bakers prize research and close textual interpretation, or “scriptural inference” (Tripodi,
2018), undermining assumptions that media literacy or fact-checking are effective coun-
ters to the spread of misinformation. Rather, in drawing on scriptural inference, we
emphasize that these practices, along with the knowledge they produce, legitimize and
make rational what might otherwise seem counterfactual. This has significant implica-
tions for understanding not only conspiracy theories, but partisan “echo chambers” in
which consensus and even truth-claims themselves are increasingly polarized.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the participants of Data & Society’s Contested Data Academic
Workshop, the QAnonference, the Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference,
Adrienne Shaw, Torin Monahan, and the anonymous reviewers for for valuable feedback on ear-
lier versions of this paper.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: This research was supported with monies from the John S. and James
L. Knight Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program, and the Institute for Arts and
Humanities at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

ORCID iD
Alice E. Marwick https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0837-6999

Notes
1. Although the complex terminology, combative forum culture, and intricate lore may seem
daunting to outsiders, QAnon participants spend a remarkable amount of effort maintaining
archives, FAQs, and books of proofs, as well as “Beginner’s Guides” designed to acclimate
newcomers to the conspiracy’s key tenets.
2. Specifically, we used a Facebook account that once “belonged” to one author’s parents’
Labrador Retriever (now deceased). Although this had the practical benefit of offering the
researchers anonymity, it also served as a wry reminder of an early online truism: on the
Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.
3. In other cases, these practices have shifted. We recently witnessed QAnons on Telegram using
“gemetria,” a form of Jewish numerology, to interpret Trump’s fall 2021 speeches.
4. 8chan was dropped by its domain registrar and network infrastructure provider during our
fieldwork in August 2019. It was unreachable via the publicly accessible Internet until
November 2019, when it returned as 8kun.
18 new media & society 00(0)

5. An online directory of Q drops and proofs in .jpg format.

6. At first, it may seem surprising that bakers would not pursue these possible leads, given
their intense curiosity and dedication to uncovering the meaning behind Q’s posts. However,
because bakers believe that Q is a high-level political operative engaged in a high-stakes
geopolitical conflict, such concerns ultimately rank below the need to protect Q’s anonymity
and safety.
7. Or someone posting under the Q tripcode. We make no claims as to the existence or identity
of Q.
8. Each thread has a volunteer Baker who keeps their eye on the thread, starts a new thread using
the agreed-upon format when the old one is full, and compiles the notables for the previous
thread. This can be anyone and is often suggested to newbies as an easy way to get involved
in the community. Thus, the person picking the notable posts does not necessarily have more
authority or experience than any other participant.
9. Many notables were posted on the @QAnonNotables Twitter account, while others are
archived on the popular QAnon website, qresear.ch.
10. https://twitter.com/kabamur_taygeta/status/1006626402819608578
11. “Clowns” refers to the CIA, part of the Deep State.

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Author biographies
Alice Marwick is an Associate Professor of Communication and Principal Researcher in the Center
for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
William Clyde Partin is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Communication and a research
affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.