"Is it a Qoincidence?": An Exploratory Study of QAnon on Voat

TL;DR

This paper conducts an empirical exploratory analysis of the QAnon community on Voat, examining user activity, discourse topics, narratives, and toxicity levels to understand its structure and content.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed characterization of the QAnon community on Voat, analyzing discourse, narratives, and toxicity, highlighting its relation to other conspiracy theories.

Findings

QAnon discussions focus on US politics, Trump, and world events.

QAnon-related narratives are linked to Pizzagate and 'Q' drops.

Discussions are less toxic than the broader Voat community.

Abstract

Online fringe communities offer fertile grounds for users seeking and sharing ideas fueling suspicion of mainstream news and conspiracy theories. Among these, the QAnon conspiracy theory emerged in 2017 on 4chan, broadly supporting the idea that powerful politicians, aristocrats, and celebrities are closely engaged in a global pedophile ring. Simultaneously, governments are thought to be controlled by "puppet masters," as democratically elected officials serve as a fake showroom of democracy. This paper provides an empirical exploratory analysis of the QAnon community on Voat.co, a Reddit-esque news aggregator, which has captured the interest of the press for its toxicity and for providing a platform to QAnon followers. More precisely, we analyze a large dataset from /v/GreatAwakening, the most popular QAnon-related subverse (the Voat equivalent of a subreddit), to characterize activity and user engagement. To further understand the discourse around QAnon, we study the most popular named entities mentioned in the posts, along with the most prominent topics of discussion, which focus on US politics, Donald Trump, and world events. We also use word embeddings to identify narratives around QAnon-specific keywords. Our graph visualization shows that some of the QAnon-related ones are closely related to those from the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and so-called drops by "Q." Finally, we analyze content toxicity, finding that discussions on /v/GreatAwakening are less toxic than in the broad Voat community.