[Air-L] Need resources to get up to speed on QAnon

Mon Aug 17 04:44:51 PDT 2020

I am supporting the work of about a half dozen groups studying aspects of
QAnon. More groups are welcome. Feel free to reach out. If you study
conspiracies, cults, online grifts, ARGs, elections, terrorism, white
nationalism, emoji, or even (no joke) mind control, this is a topic you
cannot really opt out on, since it creeps daily into the lives of citizens
in every democracy. For huge numbers of authentic and inauthentic digital
citizens active on social media, QAnon is deeply embedded in their fervent
often biblical worldview and daily amplified by clever, distributed,
flexible Alternate Reality Game (ARG) mechanics. As Colin points out, there
is a lot of mainstream media coverage emerging now. There is a limited but
growing scholarly literature. Most focus in the press now is on the
anti-democratic (small "d"), pro-Trump, overtly racist, ostensibly
dangerous cult like attributes in the US, though it is multilingual and
documented in more than 70 countries. Fewer articles describe it as a game.

In my view, it started as a small grift to sell t-shirts on Amazon where
you can now purchase all sorts of QAnon "chum" for Trump or
#savethechildren rallies. The grift is a growing business and the online
game play is fully on display in the offline streets. It evolved quickly
into a massive multiplayer ARG and now threatens national security in the
name of stopping pedophilia and satanic worship. QAnon blends real world
tragedies (like Epstein) with unlimited online narrative storylines created
by the various players. The game reward system consists of amplification
measures (ex., RTs, shares, replies, and likes) and of course the gold
standard when you get Presidential of General Flynn retweets.

It first stood out to me when I saw the presence of themes like WWG1WGA,
General Flynn, "The Great Awakening" and QAnon in the Twitter user bios
fall 2019 while studying the Canadian election. Accounts purporting to be
in the USA were churning out huge amounts of misinformation and propaganda
about Justin Trudeau, promoting a far right fringe candidate, as well as a
bizarre constellation of non-Canadian issues. There were anomalous features
throughout the data, including, but not limited to, accounts with
affinities for sharing known Russian propaganda news sites, super
influencer status accounts, trolls and bots, and networks of radically
homogeneous followers. The US flags and Flynn three star emojis, among many
other symbols, were buttressing an emoji-laden hashtag-driven crusade
enabled by recommender algorithms. They still are.

Now we have the OAN network inside White House press briefings teeing up
Russia-friendly questions for the most pro-authoritarian President in my
lifetime. I want to write that you cannot make this all up, but they did,
so you sort of have to write it. I want to believe this cannot be as vast
as it seems, but the group is growing fast with super-devoted adherents and
it is labeled a terrorist threat by the FBI for a reason.

In terms of what to read first, may I suggest:

https://ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/26/1005609/qanon-facebook-twitter-youtuube/

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/07/23/jack-posobiec-interviewed-pro-hitler-disinformation-poster-one-america-news-network

https://www.wired.com/story/the-weird-dark-history-8chan/

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-owns-8chan-jim-watkins-life-2019-8

If the thing that really caught your attention is "mind control" watch this
interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eu0puplTFo&feature=youtu.be

~Stu

On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 5:55 AM Alexandra Florea <xandra.florea at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Prof. Stuart Shulman is working with qanon data, as per an email sent to
> this list a few weeks back. I'll forward it to you.
>
> On Mon 17. Aug 2020 at 06:30, raincoaster <raincoaster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello AOIR'rs,
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm a cybersecurity journalist coming back from a 4 year health-related
> >
> > hiatus. I need to get up to speed on the whole QAnon conspiracy pretty
> >
> > quickly for a couple of projects, and am more out of the loop than I
> >
> > thought. If anyone has any pointers to primary and secondary sources
> >
> > relating to QAnon, I'd really appreciate it. My background is the
> opposite
> >
> > side of the coin: hacktivism with a focus on Anonymous. Starting from
> >
> > scratch here, so all suggestions are appreciated, particularly since half
> >
> > the accounts seem to be banned from Twitter and the other half blocked me
> >
> > ten years ago.
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any guidance.
> >
> >
> >
> > Lorraine Murphy
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > The Cryptosphere <http://thecryptosphere.com>: short and sweet cyber and
> >
> > crypto for the whole family!
> >
> >
> >
> > raincoaster <http://raincoaster.com>: 49 degrees latitude, 360 degrees
> >
> > attitude!
> >
> >
> >
> > raincoaster media <http://raincoastermedia.com>: transformative social
> >
> > media training
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
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> >
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> >
> > --
> Alexandra Florea
> PhD Candidate
> Goethe University Frankfurt
> Find me on Twitter: @alleyah
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-- 
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Founder and CEO, Texifter