.AMONG THE TRUTHERS

ao

During covid-19 breakout, the World Health Organization registered the spreading of a new phenomenon which was later labelled “infodemic”. It was defined as an excessive quantity of information that encourages misinformation, disinformation, and rumors during a health emergency. To take action against false or possibly harmful misinformation, main social media websites started to take down misleading content or ban the authors of these posts. As a result, many users decided to flock to alternative websites that promised them to be censor-free and real hubs of free speech. Our study investigates how covid-19-related content, from general disinformation to real conspiracy theories, is communicated on these “dark platforms” that are less regulated and moderated. The research focuses on two websites. The first one is Gab, which resembles Twitter in its structure and allows users to post images, videos and texts. The second platform is Bitchute, a media sharing website where users can upload videos that otherwise would be banned from traditional social networks such as “Plandemic”, a conspiracy theory documentary that promotes misinformation and has reached millions of views. The goal of our study is to analyse the recurring patterns in how topics related to covid-19 spread. We investigated how the different conspiracies got tangled together on these hubs and how all of these contents spread out to reach more audiences.