The Persistence of Contrarianism on Twitter: Mapping users' sharing habits for the Ukraine war, COVID-19 vaccination, and the 2022 Midterm Elections

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter user behaviors across COVID-19, Ukraine war, and 2022 elections, revealing persistent contrarian attitudes that oppose mainstream narratives and span multiple topics, not strictly aligned with traditional political ideologies.

Contribution

It compares Twitter sharing habits across three major topics, uncovering a broad contrarian stance that links different issues beyond conventional political divisions.

Findings

Contrarian users oppose public health and foreign policy narratives.

Contrarian content ranges from opposition to conspiracy theories.

Cross-topic ideological coherence exists among users.

Abstract

Empirical studies of online disinformation emphasize matters of public concern such as the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign election interference, and the Russo-Ukraine war, largely in studies that treat the topics separately. Comparatively fewer studies attempt to relate such disparate topics and address the extent to which they share behaviors. In this study, we compare three samples of Twitter data on COVID-19 vaccination, the Ukraine war and the 2022 midterm elections, to ascertain how distinct ideological stances of users across the three samples might be related. Our results indicate the emergence of a broad contrarian stance that is defined by its opposition to public health narratives/policies along with the Biden administration's foreign policy stances. Sharing activity within the contrarian position falls on a spectrum with outright conspiratorial content on one end. We confirm the existence of ideologically coherent cross-subject stances among Twitter users, but in a manner not squarely aligned with right-left political orientations.