Hashtag hijacking means tacking popular but unrelated hashtags onto a post in order to pull in unsuspecting users.
“QAnon wants any form of engagement, positive or negative,” said Campisi. “Every interaction tightens the cohesion of their existing core group and can potentially expand their base.”
The researchers analyzed more than 400,000 tweets posted between 2020 and 2021 that contained keywords associated with QAnon or mentioned an account linked to the group.
The period was selected because it contained major events that fueled discussion in far-right circles, including the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, the storming of the Capitol, the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. presidential election.
“We cut off our data collection after January 2021, since Twitter deleted a number of accounts linked to the January 6 insurrection, in which QAnon played a major role,” Campisi explained.
The researchers classified the hashtags used in the tweets on the basis of information gleaned from a literature review. Some of the hashtags were hijacked, having no connection with the content of the tweet, while others were organically generated.
The latter were based on QAnon’s own conversations, which revolve around various conspiracy theories, or directly referencing the group (such as #WWG1WGA, short for QAnon’s slogan “Where We Go One, We Go All”).
Intruding into the public debate
The researchers then analyzed whether the hijacked hashtags, which sought to insert the group into existing public debates and turn them in a different direction, did in fact generate engagement in the form of likes, replies and reposts.
While hijacked hashtags were used in a large percentage of the posts analyzed, their effect on engagement was negligible. It turns out that intruding into another conversation is not an effective tactic.
“Simply being present is not enough to convince an audience,” Campisi reasoned.
Hashtag hijacking tries to manipulate social media algorithms to gain visibility, but this is not so easily done.
“The algorithms interpret a series of signals,” Fortin explained. “Clicking on a specific hashtag is a drop in the bucket. Not to mention that the algorithms are black boxes, and they’re constantly changing.”
Widening the scope
“One of the limitations of our study is that we have no idea how hashtag hijacking affects individuals who never engage, but may form an opinion nonetheless when they read a post,” Campisi pointed out.
Campisi has turned his attention to this question in postdoctoral research he's now doing at Simon Fraser University.
“I’m working on an analysis that empirically tests the probability of stochastic terrorism, which isn’t terrorism per se, but rather the idea that certain hateful narratives, structured in a certain way, can increase the likelihood of ‘lone wolf’ attacks,” he said.
There is less talk about QAnon today, but it spawned many theories that have spread through the online conspiracy ecosystem. And since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, extremist content has skyrocketed.
“We are all exposed to this type of material, and unfortunately we can’t rely on the platforms to weed it out,” Campisi concluded.
