Rise of QAnon

Overview

This project investigates the social and cognitive dynamics behind the rise of the QAnon conspiracy movement using a large-scale Twitter dataset and a combination of network and content analysis tools.

We propose that QAnon is sustained by a hypercoherent belief system that thrives in online echochambers, offering a narrative of Good versus Evil that resonates within politically polarized social media ecosystems.

What is QAnon?

• Promotes the belief that a cabal of Satan-worshiping elites operate a child sex-trafficking ring.
• Claims Donald Trump is destined to defeat them.
• Supported by ~⅓ of Republican-identifying individuals as “mostly true” (CIVIQS, 2020).
• Undermines trust in science and expert institutions.

Theoretical Framing

• Hypercoherence: Beliefs are adopted if they increase coherence within an individual’s mental model.
• Echochambers: Environments where curated content reinforces identity and belief alignment.
• QAnon is a natural consequence of platforms that promote virality and belief-confirming content.

Data

• 880,000 tweets from 110,000 users
• Timeframe: June–July 2018
• Extracted retweet behavior and tweet content for analysis

Study 1: Network Analysis

• Constructed a retweet network to reveal key users and community structure.
• Findings:
  • Far more “distributors” than “producers.”
  • Only a few users were central to narrative creation.
  • Many small communities, few large embedded groups (k-clique detection).

Study 2: Topic Modeling

• Fit topic models to tweets from five large communities.
• Extracted themes such as militarization, justice, and vengeance (e.g., “LetTheTribunalsBegin”, “PeopleAreWeapons”).
• Common framing: a battle between Good and Evil.

Future Directions

• Behavioral experiments to test the influence of moral framing on conspiracy belief strength.
• Demographic and identity-based predictors of belief adoption.
• Improve modeling with cleaner and longer textual data.

Conclusion

• QAnon’s growth can be explained by a hypercoherent, Good-vs-Evil narrative architecture.
• Social platforms amplify a small number of content producers via mass retweeting.
• This work highlights the need for better moderation and public understanding of how conspiratorial thinking takes root online.