The QAnon Recipe
Analysis of 100mn conspiracy posts on social media reveals the key ingredients of virality by tracing the mainstream emergence of a climate denial theory
The 2024 EU elections offered a fresh reminder of the rise of the far right and the mainstreaming of wild conspiracy theories. Beyond anti-immigration platforms, much of what unites seemingly fragmented and often contradictory groups in this coming political force is the allure of conspiracy theories.
In search of answers, Lighthouse has been closely analysing the spread of QAnon in Europe, the inculcation of an entirely US-based conspiracy theory about a Satanic plot into local and national political discourse on an entirely different continent. From furious protests in Oxford, England, against the apparently harmless idea of 15-minute cities to a child being kidnapped from social services in Eastern France, QAnon has not only jumped the Atlantic, it has moved offline and into the real world.
Focusing on the intersection of climate conspiracy theories and QAnon, Lighthouse analysed more than 100 million posts on channels associated with Q on Telegram in order to identify the recipe for virality. We found that radical theories spread due to the deft deployment of conventional marketing techniques: exploiting lulls in social media conversation to introduce new topics, boosting traffic by tapping into influencer networks and diversifying revenue streams.
Other tricks are unique to the world of QAnon: sprinkling in keywords that reference traditional QAnon lore to improve the chances that the new theory is ingested into the QAnon metanarrative.
The role of alternative media is to provide raw materials to fuel the conversation on Telegram channels. While traditional media often treats the alt media topics as fringe they also provide valuable oxygen and attention. The long-term success of a local conspiracy theory hinges on it breaking out of domestic QAnon conversations to attain international fame, which in turn fuels local advancement.
METHODS
Lighthouse and Bellingcat published the largest data-driven investigation into QAnon in Europe in 2022 based on a database of Telegram channels and posts capturing the evolution of the QAnon universe in Europe. Those investigations exposed a German QAnon conspiracy theory superspreader; the role of Covid in luring people into the QAnon world through pandemic-related content in Italy; and how in France and the Netherlands, conspiracy theories jumped between local and international topics to gain traction.
These anecdotal examples led us into a year-long investigation of 100 million posts to understand how the QAnon community exploits social media loopholes to propel brand new conspiracy theories on climate change issues into public discourse. The investigation confirms that while individual theories may sound far-fetched and even contradictory, a set of strategies deployed by QAnon influencers and alt-media sites can and does form a potent recipe that pulls people further into the world of Q.
We used an iterative procedure to identify keywords frequently occuring in posts related to the fifteen minutes cities and climate lockdown narratives. Based on a sample of more than 23,000 posts, we investigated the spread and key actors promoting these narratives. In addition, we employed various natural language processing techniques, such as named entity recognition, topic modelling, and toxicity detection, to understand the linguistic ingredients that made the theories go viral.
Our full Methodology is available here.
STORYLINES
A seemingly spontaneous protest in the university city of Oxford in February 2023 brought together people ranging from anti-vaxx group Children’s Health Defense to climate change deniers and citizens angry at a traffic calming scheme. Collective outrage at seemingly catch-all protests is one of the trends that is making the right wing conspiracy movement seemingly unstoppable. The story in publishing partner the EUobserver then works backwards to understand the online movement that from QAnon to anti-vaxxers brings disparate communities together into a potent political force.
Links to the livestream of the Oxford protest, recorded by Children’s Health Defense, have been re-shared in QAnon Telegram channels more than 23 thousand times amassing almost 560 thousand views in the months following the event. The investigation finds that as people’s rage and frustration fed by conspiracy theories related to Covid and Ukraine died down, Telegram users following QAnon channels were primed for a new target: climate denialism. This is the first ingredient of the recipe.
The Oxford event took place on February 18 2023 and posts on climate related issues warning about a “climate lockdown” or against “15-minute cities” had been spreading since March 2022. They only gained wider popularity around November of the same year when the support by a few key channels in the QAnon world prompted a surge in traffic and attention. This is the second ingredient.
According to Lighthouse analysis, to really hook audiences and ignite protests, the theory had to tap into the original primal fears that allowed otherwise rational people to fall prey to QAnon conspiracy theories in the first place. The sense of coercion and the stripping of freedoms due to Covid converges with the climate denial views, even if the connection is not immediately made. According to Lighthouse’’s analysis of climate-related posts, the idea of convenience is twisted into the concept of a prison: 15-minute cities, instead of facilitating access to amenities, are there to keep people in certain areas of the city, to lock them up, despite evidence to the contrary. This is the third ingredient of the recipe.
When a theory is first introduced, it is competing against dozens of other theories for attention in an already crowded digital space. Alternative news websites, Telegram influencers, established media, and also organizations such as Children’s Health Defense need people’s engagement. The recipe for virality depends on these groups feeding off each other’s audiences and benefiting from the groundwork laid by others. Children’s Health Defense is also an example of how the recipe can be applied in different contexts: from spreading theories on social media to lobbying activities in the EU Parliament.
Once the first three ingredients of the recipe for virality have set the conspiracy in motion, the spillover into the mainstream is bound to happen thanks to two additional ingredients: local scandals are connected to the wider world of conspiracy lore, setting the stage for the theory to go from local to global and external sources, such as established media, pick them up and thus lend them a veneer of credibility.
One of the cornerstone values that underpin QAnon is the opposition to supposedly secret machinations perpetrated by the world elites. It doesn’t make much difference if the enemy is the World Economic Forum or the local mayor of the city that wants to introduce a new law.
Posts about the climate lockdown and 15-minute cities often refer to plans imposed by those in power and that shouldn’t be taken at face value: they are usually part of larger schemes to reduce citizens’ freedom. In this way local events can be considered parts of an international scheme, allowing a conspiracy to germinate in different countries.
When politicians claim that the climate crisis is a fake crisis created to control people’s lives or journalists pick up these conspiracy theories, they give them an air of legitimacy and access to a more mainstream audience.
This vicious feedback loop demonstrates the success of the recipe for virality: an elected representative or a journalist presents the absurdity as reality, legitimising a theory that was spread in the first place by alt-news media and Telegram. In addition, using a shared vocabulary to frame these theories produces a clear convergence among heterogeneous conspiracy groups that were originally focused in spreading disinformation on unrelated topics, such as vaccines. This generates reach, clicks and attention. And spreads fear.