References
- BBC Monitoring & BBC Reality Check. (2020, June 24th). What is the Great Reset — and how did it get hijacked by conspiracy theories? BBC New. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57532368.
- Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661
- Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press.
- Blight, M. G., Ruppel, E. K., & Schoenbauer, K. V. (2017). Sense of community on Twitter and Instagram: Exploring the roles of motives and parasocial relationships. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 20(5), 314–319. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2016.0505
- Cagnassola, M. E. (2021, May 4th). Bill and Melinda Gates divorce sends QAnon conspiracy theorists into a frenzy. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/bill-melinda-gates-divorce-sends-qanon-conspiracy-theorists-frenzy-1588584.
- Caliandro, A., & Graham, J. (2020). Studying Instagram beyond selfies. Social Media+ Society, 6(2), https://doi.org/10.2056/305120924779
- Castells, M. (2015). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. John Wiley & Sons.
- Dickson, E. J. (2020). A Wayfair child-trafficking conspiracy theory is flourishing on TikTok, despite it being completely false. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/wayfair-child-trafficking-conspiracy-theory-tiktok-1028622/.
- Dickson, E. J. (2021, January 6th). The attempted coup at the capitol proves this is the United States of QAnon. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/united-states-of-qanon-capitol-insurrection-riot-conspiracy-theory-1110622/.
- Digital Planet. (2021). The long shadow of the lockdown: How the pandemic altered the way Americans spend time online. Tufts University: Digital Planet. https://sites.tufts.edu/digitalplanet/the-long-shadow-of-the-lockdown-how-the-pandemic-altered-the-way-americans-spend-time-online/.
- Echterhoff, G. (2012). Shared-reality theory. https://bit.ly/30uwawz.
- Freedom Needs Truth. (2021). An open letter to Candidates, the Media, Political Parties, and Policymakers. Medium. https://freedomneedstruth.medium.com/freedom-needs-truth-5224c632557b.
- Freelon, D., Marwick, A., & Kreiss, D. (2020). False equivalencies: Online activism from left to right. Science, 369(6508), 1197–1201. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb2428
- Giugni, M. G. (1998). Was it worth the effort? The outcomes and consequences of social movements. Annual Review of Sociology, 24(1), 371–393. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.371
- Hannah, M. (2021). QAnon and the information dark age. First Monday, 26(2), doi:10.5210/fm.v26i2.10868
- Hardin, C. D., & Higgins, E. T. (1996). Shared reality: How social verification makes the subjective objective.
- Harlow, S. (2012). Social media and social movements: Facebook and an online Guatemalan justice movement that moved offline. New Media & Society, 14(2), 225–243. doi:10.1177/1461444811410408
- Harwell, D., & Timberg, C. (2021, January 20th). QAnon believers grapple with doubt, spin new theories as Trump era ends: ‘We all got played’. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/20/qanon-trump-era-ends/.
- Heater, B., & Hatmaker, T. (2020, October, 30th). Facebook is limiting distribution of ‘save our children’ hashtag over QAnon ties. TechCrunch. https://tcrn.ch/3BNhypN.
- Howard, P. N., & Hussain, M. M. (2013). Democracy’s fourth wave?: Digital media and the Arab Spring. Oxford University Press.
- Jost, J. T., Ledgerwood, A., & Hardin, C. D. (2008). Shared reality, system justification, and the relational basis of ideological beliefs. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 171–186. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00056.x
- Kearney, M. D., Chiang, S. C., & Massey, P. M. (2020). The Twitter origins and evolution of the COVID-19 “plandemic” conspiracy theory. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 1(3), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-42
- LaFrance, A. (2020, June). The Prophecies of Q: American conspiracies are entering a dangerous new phase. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/.
- Langman, L. (2013). Occupy: A new new social movement. Current Sociology, 61(4), 510–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392113479749
- Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). Instagram: Visual social media cultures. John Wiley & Sons.
- Lee, P. S., So, C. Y., & Leung, L. (2015). Social media and Umbrella Movement: Insurgent public sphere in formation. Chinese Journal of Communication, 8(4), 356–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2015.1088874
- Lee, T. T. (2010). Why they don’t trust the media: An examination of factors predicting trust. American Behavioral Scientist, 54(1), 8–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764210376308
- Lim, M. (2018). Roots, routes, and routers: Communications and media of contemporary social movements. Journalism & Communication Monographs, 20(2), 92–136. https://doi.org/10.1177/1522637918770419
- Mattoni, A., & Treré, E. (2014). Media practices, mediation processes, and mediatization in the study of social movements. Communication Theory, 24(3), 252–271. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12038
- McCafferty, D. (2011). Activism vs. slacktivism. Communications of the ACM, 54(12), 17–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/2043174.2043182
- Moorhouse, D., & Malone, E. (2020, September 4th). Here’s why Buzzfeed News is calling QAnon a “collective delusion” from now on. Buzzfeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/drumoorhouse/qanon-mass-collective-delusion-buzzfeed-news-copy-desk.
- Murphy, L. T. (2018). Anti-trafficking’s sensational misinformation: The “72-hour myth” and America’s homeless youth. Journal of Human Trafficking, 4(1), 89–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2018.1423450
- Nippert, A., & Wicks, S. (2020). QAnon and human trafficking conspriacy theories are causing more harm than good. Laboratory to Stop Human Trafficking. https://combathumantrafficking.org/blog/2020/09/04/qanon/.
- North, A. (2020, September 18th). How #SaveTheChildren is pulling American moms into QAnon. Vox. https://www.vox.com/21436671/save-our-children-hashtag-qanon-pizzagate.
- Pandya, A., & Lodha, P. (2021). Social connectedness, excessive screen time during COVID-19 and mental health: A review of current evidence. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 45(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.684137
- Polaris. (2021). Countering QAnon: Understanding the role of human trafficking in the disinformation-extremist nexus. Polaris. https://polarisproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Polaris-Report-Countering-QAnon.pdf.
- Postill, J. (2014). Democracy in an age of viral reality: A media epidemiography of Spain’s indignados movement. Ethnography, 15(1), 51–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138113502513
- Roose, K. (2021, September 3rd). What is Qanon, the viral pro-Trump conspiracy theory? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html.
- Starbird, K., Arif, A., & Wilson, T. (2019). Disinformation as collaborative work: Surfacing the participatory nature of strategic information operations. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 1–26. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359229
- Sternisko, A., Cichocka, A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020). The dark side of social movements: Social identity, non-conformity, and the lure of conspiracy theories. Current Opinion in Psychology, 35, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.02.007
- Theocharis, Y., Lowe, W., Van Deth, J. W., & García-Albacete, G. (2015). Using Twitter to mobilize protest action: Online mobilization patterns and action repertoires in the Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and Aganaktismenoi movements. Information, Communication & Society, 18(2), 202–220. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.948035
- Thompson, S. A. (2021, January 26th). Three weeks inside a pro-Trump QAnon chat room. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/26/opinion/trump-qanon-washington-capitol-hill.html.
- Wardle, C., & Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking. Council of Europe. Retrieved from: https://tverezo.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/PREMS-162317-GBR-2018-Report-desinformation-A4-BAT.pdf
- Young, J. C. (2021). Disinformation as the weaponization of cruel optimism: A critical intervention in misinformation studies. Emotion, Space and Society, 38, 100757. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2020.100757
- Zadrozny, B., & Collins, B. (2018, August 14th). How three conspiracy theorists took ‘Q’ and sparked QAnon. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531.