"lol that crap paper Laura Greenaura wrote is and still way way way way wrong. None of those accounts ever belonged to me and probably the wrote accounts to look at. @michiganstateu isn't a place for smart people"
~CICADA3301 Puzzle Pirate
QAnon refers to a set of far-right, conspiratorial ideologies that have risen in popularity in the U.S. since their initial promotion in 2017 on the 4chan internet message board. A central narrative element of QAnon is that a powerful group of elite, liberal members of the Democratic Party engage in morally reprehensible practices...
SOURCE:
...evidence was obtained supporting that networks of extreme far-right adherents engaged in organized QAnon propaganda promotion, as revealed by network overlap among accounts promoting far-right extremist (e.g., anti-Semitic) content and insurrectionist themes; New Age, occult, and "esoteric" themes; and internet puzzle games like Cicada 3301 and other "alternate reality games."
Based on well-grounded theories and findings from the social sciences, it is argued that QAnon propaganda on Twitter in the months circa the 2020 U.S. Presidential election likely reflected joint participation of multiple actors, including nation-states like Russia, in innovative misuse of social media toward undermining democratic processes by promoting "magical" thinking, ostracism of Democrats and liberals, and salience of White extinction narratives common among otherwise ideologically diverse groups on the extreme far-right.
DISCLAIMER:
Preprints and early-stage research may not have been peer reviewed yet.