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posted by fyngyrz on Tuesday April 03 2018, @05:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the horde-it-on-the-grapevine dept.

Due to the Internet, conspiracy theories are on the rise and playing an increasingly significant role in global politics. Now new research from The Australian National University (ANU) has analysed digital data to reveal exactly who is propagating them and why.

Lead researcher Dr Colin Klein of the ANU School of Philosophy said that conspiracies such as Pizzagate (which falsely claimed high-ranking Democratic Party officials were running a child-sex ring out of a pizza shop) and the anti-vaccination movement are becoming a bigger issue.

Dr Klein and his team used a huge, publicly available dataset of every comment made on the conspiracy section of the world's largest discussion website Reddit from 2007 to mid-2015 to work out exactly who was taking part in spreading these conspiracies and why. He was surprised by the results.

The analysis showed that most conspiracies built traction when a range of different people and groups could connect it to their own preconceived beliefs or agendas.

http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-study-reveals-who-is-spreading-online-conspiracies

[Also Covered By]: Phys.org

[Paper]: Topic Modeling Reveals Distinct Interests within an Online Conspiracy Forum

Does Reddit seem like a good choice for this study?


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  • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:53PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:53PM (#662123)

    Does Reddit seem like a good choice for this study?

    Aren't the DNC and CNN a better start? Conspiracy wako's (sic) have been on the internet since BBS days and it was never a problem before. It only became a problem when the corporate news media lost any pretence of being objective and went full, propaganda mode retard. Now it's all that "fake news", those "loony conspiracies" and still no impeachment for Russian Collusion.

    most conspiracies built traction when a range of different people and groups could connect it to their own preconceived beliefs or agendas.

    Indeed and it's a much more serious problem when it's the DNC and MSM are pushing an unproven conspiracy theory at societal level.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:09PM (#662135)

    And the CIA.

    The CIA Democrats: Part one [wsws.org]
    The CIA Democrats: Part two [wsws.org]
    The CIA Democrats: Part three [wsws.org]
    The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party [wsws.org]

    But wswswswsws is just another one of those nutty conspiracy sites. I can tell because it doesn't appear on Google News.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:11PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:11PM (#662137)

    Yeah. Who goes to r/conspiracy to spread conspiracy theories? That would be one place where everyone objectively believes it is a conspiracy theory.

    • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday April 03 2018, @10:07PM

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 03 2018, @10:07PM (#662203)

      It'd be far better to go to the moon to spread conspiracy theories. Except, of course, we never went to the moon...