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Review

Conspiracy theories and social media platforms


Matteo Cinelli1, Gabriele Etta1, Michele Avalle1,
Alessandro Quattrociocchi1, Niccolò Di Marco2,
Carlo Valensise3, Alessandro Galeazzi4 and
Walter Quattrociocchi1

Abstract Introduction
Conspiracy theories proliferate online. We provide an over- The advent of social media had a profound impact on
view of information consumption patterns related to conspir- how people access information and interact online.
acy content on four mainstream social media platforms Users tend to acquire information they like, filter out
(Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit), with a focus on information they do not, and join groups of like-minded
niche ones. Opinion polarisation and echo chambers appear peers around a shared narrative called echo chambers
as pivotal elements of communication around conspiracy [1e3]. According to group polarisation theory, an echo
theories. A relevant role may also be played by the content chamber can act as a mechanism to reinforce existing
moderation policies enforced by each social media platform. opinions moving the entire group toward more extreme
Banning contents or users from a social media could lead to a positions. In many instances, conspiracy theories are the
level of user segregation that goes beyond echo chambers pivot around which echo chambers develop and grow
and reaches the entire social media space, up to the forma- [4,3,5]. Considering that the spreading of conspiracy
tion of ‘echo platforms’. The insurgence of echo platforms is a theories can have potentially harmful consequences for
new online phenomenon that needs to be investigated as it individuals and societies [6,7], understanding the pro-
could foster many dangerous phenomena that we observe liferation of such theories in online environments,
online, including the spreading of conspiracy theories. especially in the context of an infodemic [8,9], becomes
of fundamental importance.
Addresses
1
Sapienza University of Rome — Department of Computer Science
A relevant aspect concerning the spreading of conspiracy
Viale Regina Elena, 295, 00100 Rome, Italy
2
University of Florence, — Department of Mathematics and Computer theories online is empirical evidence for the fact that
Science, Viale Giovanni Battista Morgagni, 67/a, 50134 Florence, Italy individuals endorsing conspiracy content (e.g. on Face-
3
Enrico Fermi Research Center, Piazza del Viminale 1, Rome 00184, book) were highly engaged and more responsive to
Italy endorse deliberately false or other questionable infor-
4
Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice — Department of Environmental
Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Via Torino 155, 30172 Mestre Italy
mation [1]. Indeed, in the context of internet and social
media, conspiracy theories seems to be strongly related
Corresponding author: Quattrociocchi, Walter (walterquattrociocchi@ to misinformation, with which they share many aspects
gmail.com) ranging from the presence of questionable elements in
their narrative to the reasons why they appeal to po-
tential believers [10]. Also, the way in which conspiracy
Current Opinion in Psychology 2022, 47:101407 theories propagate in online communities seem to pre-
sent structural features that are remarkably similar [11]
This review comes from a themed issue on Conspiracy Theories
to those of (mis)information cascades happening on
Edited by Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Roland Imhoff
Facebook [2] and Twitter [12]. However, results
For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial concerning structural differences in information cas-
Available online 30 June 2022 cades should be taken with caution [13] given the
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101407 intrinsic limitation of a false/true or science/conspiracy
2352-250X/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
dichotomy and the inherent unbalance of these cate-
gorised datasets [14].
Keywords
Like misinformation, conspiracy theories appear on
Conspiracy Theories, Social Media Platforms, Polarization,
Echo Platforms.
most social media platforms, from mainstream to niche

www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Psychology 2022, 47:101407


2 Conspiracy Theories

ones, involving all kind of users, from genuine believers by exposure to debunking posts, and their community
to debunkers and simple observers [15]. While non- shows a dominant negative attitude in response to them
conspiracy information by news outlets outpaces [20], suggesting the inefficacy of the debunking
conspiracy-related content, the relevance of the users’ approach within echo chambers. Importantly, the
engagement around conspiracy is not negligible [2,12]. (automatic) identification of conspiracy theories on
Facebook proves difficult. In the study by Conti et al.
Echo chambers and conspiracy in social [13] the authors devised a classifier relying on the
media structural features of the content propagation cascades
In the following we provide an overview of the typical to find that conspiracy and science content reverberates
information consumption patterns on Facebook, Twitter, in a way which is hard to distinguish from one another.
YouTube, and Reddit in relationship to conspiracy con-
tent. In the last section, we briefly discuss results about Recently, Facebook has intensified its efforts against the
niche social media platforms. proliferation of conspiracy theories and misinformation8
through enhancing content moderation activities on the
Facebook platform (see e.g. the case of Qanon9). The effective-
In the past years Facebook has been accused of being a ness of those actions, however, is currently still
vehicle for conspiracy theories and misinformation debated [21,22].
spreading arguably more than other social media plat-
forms, facing criticism on a number of themes including Twitter
vaccine hesitancy,1 the Russian interference in the 2016 In the last decade, Twitter has been widely used as a
U.S. elections,2 climate change denial,3 the so-called workbench for studying social phenomena including the
‘infowars’ case,4 and more recently the role played in spreading of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
fomenting the 2021 U.S. Capitol Hill attack5 and in the Some example includes Brexit [23], the Catalan refer-
debate around COVID-19.6 Despite that, quantitative endum [24], the US presidential elections [25,26], and
investigation on misinformation/conspiracy consump- the COVID-19 vaccines debate [27]. One of the Twitter
tion on Facebook has been somewhat limited - e.g. peculiarities is the presence of automated accounts
compared to Twitter - possibly due to increasing re- often used to amplify the diffusion of controversial
strictions in data accessibility following the Cambridge content about different topics [25,26], including con-
Analytica case in 2018, when a private firm used Face- spiracy theories. The role of automation [28] and, more
book users’ data without consent to profile individuals in general, coordination [29], combined with the
and send them personalised political advertisements..7 recommendation algorithm and biases in user choices
fostered the emergence of polarisation and echo cham-
However, the presence of strong polarisation and bers on the platform. Echo chambers has been detected
echoechambers on Facebook, arguably facilitated by the around strongly debated topics such as abortion, gun
News Feed (now just Feed) algorithm [16], is well- control and climate change [3]. Moreover, some com-
documented and it is likely to be the among primary munities tend to be consistent across topics: for
drivers in the information diffusion dynamics on the example, climate change deniers are usually closer to
platform [1,4,17,3,18]. The characterisation of conspir- conservative political position, while activists tends to
acy news consumption and spreading has often been sympathise for liberals.
based on a comparison with that of scientific content.
Within this framework, the existence of conspiracy Twitter actively engaged in combating the spreading of
theory related community structures with echo- problematic content by enforcing several strategies,
chamber-like behavior has been reported and it was from prohibiting political advertisement, to moderation
shown that polarised consumers of conspiracy content and accounts ban. The results of these actions seem to
are highly focused on posts pertaining only to their own impact the amount of misinformation and conspiracy
community and very active in diffusing such contents theories circulating, such as in the case of the 2019
[1,17,19]. These users tend to be little to not affected European elections [30] or 2020 US presidential elec-
tions [31]. Yet, conspiracy theories may still be popular
among some groups of users [32].
1
www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/13/majority-antivaxx-vaccine-ads-
facebook-funded-by-two-organizations-study.
2
www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-fake-engagement- YouTube
whistleblower-sophie-zhang. Research involving the role of conspiracy theories (and
3
www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-denial-spreads-on-facebook-as- misinformation) on YouTube is quite recent. A motiva-
scientists-face-restrictions/.
4
www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17577426/media-left-right-facebook-define-journalism. tion for this new line of research involving YouTube data
5
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/22/jan-6-capitol-riot-facebook/. is perhaps due to the media coverage received by the
6
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/facebook-page-for-covid-conspiracy-theorists-has-
hundreds-of-thousands-of-followers-7c285b05f.
7 8
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook- https://about.fb.com/news/tag/misinformation/.
9
influence-us-election. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54443878.

Current Opinion in Psychology 2022, 47:101407 www.sciencedirect.com


Conspiracy theories and social media platforms Cinelli et al. 3

platform for what concerns its role in exacerbating users’ Other social media platforms
opinions by means of its video recommendation algo- Less popular social media platforms are active matter of
rithm10. According to some studies [33,34], the algo- investigation, as they are often populated by users hit by
rithm seems to be responsible for the creation of the moderation policies (e.g. bans) on mainstream plat-
filter bubble and eventually of rabbit holes, that is, loops forms. Gab [44,18], Voat [45] and Parler [46] are among
of questionable and conspiracy contents suggested by the most studied alternative platforms ensuring ‘free-
the algorithm, creating a vicious circle of problem- speech’ to their users, in which conspiracy theories and
atic recommendations. related discussion proliferate [44,47,46,18]. Together
with social media platforms even messaging platforms
Despite a continuous effort to moderate inappropriate such as Telegram [48] are getting researchers’ attention
and problematic videos and comments, YouTube, just for their user base. Interestingly, before and during the
like other platforms, hosts a number of conspiracy Capitol Hill riot, Gab and Parler registered a higher
related contents. Furthermore, a recent research average activity, with a contextual increase in the usage
involving three different conspiracy theories has shown of anti-social language [49].
that videos related to conspiracy display a higher
popularity in terms of number of views, than videos Regulation and the risk of echo platforms
aiming at debunking them [35]. This result is in line Social media platforms present rather different features
with previous studies on the platform [36] according to with respect to diffusion and hosting of conspiracy
which conspiracy users tend to interact more with like- theories that may be associated with differences in the
minded peers. Evidence for the presence of echo implemented feed algorithm and enforced modera-
chambers was also found during COVID-19 debate [37], tion policies.
after categorising channels along two dimensions
corresponding to their reliability and political bias. As A primary problem is that banning problematic users
expected, a wide share of low-reliability and high-bias from one platform may induce their migration to other
channels were also responsible for sharing conspiracy ones where no moderation is enforced; this was the case
videos. Nevertheless, evidence about echo chambers in of Infowars, a far-right conspiracy website whose owner
partisan discussion is still debated [38,39]. was banned by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, but
gained large support (more than 200 k followers) on
Reddit Gab. One side, his ban reduced the overall number of
Given its growing popularity, Reddit has recently users exposed either accidentally or algorithmically to
captured the attention of researchers. Reddit posts are borderline content, on the other the event may have
gathered within communities of interest called contributed to exacerbate the radicalisation of his orig-
‘subreddits’, covering specific topics and actively inal audience and induced a migration in an even-more
moderated by their members. On this social media, the polarised environment.
recommendation algorithm apparently does not nourish
the echo chamber effect [3,40], with people interacting In this regard, it was observed how the presence of
with news from a relatively wide set of sources. The lack regulation policies plays an important role in shaping
of polarisation shown by Reddit users found support in people exposure to questionable content [18]. Indeed,
the study of misinformation and opinion dynamics [40]. by comparing a regulated and an unregulated social
Despite Reddit’s low users’ polarisation, researchers put media, namely Twitter and Gab, it was demonstrated
a remarkable effort into investigating how conspiracy how the presence of moderation pursued by Twitter
theories evolve on the platform and how certain users significantly reduced questionable content, with a
may still radicalise around specific narratives. Analyses consequent affiliation towards reliable sources in terms
of the linguistic dimension [41] was employed to show of engagement and comments. Conversely, the lack of
that similar narrative motifs are shared among different, precise regulation on Gab resulted in the tendency of
even unrelated, conspiracy theories, or to identify early users to engage with both types of content, showing a
warnings of users departure from conspiratorial com- preference for the questionable one.
munities [42]. Data from Reddit have been used also to
investigate the social dynamics associated to joining As we described in Section 2.5, the cases of Gab, Parler,
conspiratorial communities [43], highlighting margin- and Voat could not be singletons, since similar situations
alisation from other communities as the main driver for could be re-created on new social media as, for instance,
such a phenomenon. Eventually in the study by Zhang The Truth created by Donald Trump. More generally,
et al. [11], researchers found structural differences in content moderation may have unexpected effect at a
discussion cascades between conspiracy and science global level. As observed by Buntain et al. [34] the effect
related subreddits. of YouTube algorithmic moderation (i.e., reducing the
visibility of certain videos) of conspiracy contents was
10
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.
effective on the platform but, at the same time, it
html. inflated the spread of the same videos (shared as
www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Psychology 2022, 47:101407
4 Conspiracy Theories

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