FEMALE TARGETS OF CONSPIRACY theories propagated by QAnon adherents face up to 10 times more online harassment and abuse than male targets, a behavioral study of pro-QAnon online users has found.
QAnon refers to an American-rooted
conspiracy theory that views former United States President Donald Trump
as a central figure in a behind-the-scenes battle against a sinister
cabal of enemies, known as the “deep state”. According to QAnon
adherents, “deep state” elites (politicians, entertainment figures and
other celebrities) consist of Satan-worshiping cannibals who traffic
children for sex. QAnon adherents also believe that these elites will be
routed during “The Storm”, a final reckoning between Trump and the
“deep state”, which will result in the arrest and physical extermination
of all elites.
But in a new study
published last month by the London-based Institute for Strategic
Dialogue (ISD), a team of researchers posits that not all victims of
QAnon adherents are targeted with equal intensity by the conspiracy
theorists. Concordia University PhD candidates Marc-André Argentino and
Adnan Raja, and ISD analyst Aoife Gallagher, used online data collected
in 2020 and early 2021. They categorized the data according to six case
studies involving celebrity figures, ranging from Tom Hanks and Anderson
Cooper to Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey, all of whom have been
prominent targets of QAnon conspiracy theories.
The researchers found that, in each case,
online attacks proliferated quickly once individual targets were
“labelled and perception [was] hardened in narratives about their
alleged role in pedophilia and/or sex trafficking”. What followed was
coordinated hate and harassment campaigns that included “forms of
high-volume brigading” —a coordinated attack by groups of users united
by belonging to the same antagonistic subreddit. In each case, negative
sentiments were amplified through the multiplication of coordinated
hateful —and often violent— content.
The study shows that “[g]ender-based,
racist and anti-LGBTQ+ hate and rhetoric” was present throughout the
dataset. However, of all factors —gender, race or sexual orientation—
relating to the identities of targets, gender was by far the most
determining. According to the data analysis, female targets of QAnon
brigading were subjected to volumes of hate and harassment that were as
many as ten times higher than those of their male counterparts. The
study also shows that this gender-based variation was true in every
platform used, such as Facebook (primarily), Instagram and Twitter.
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