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In the immediate aftermath of the white nationalist terror attack in Christchurch, NZ, a variety of #FalseFlag conspiracy theories regarding the shootings began circulating on social media.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
We downloaded tweets containing #NewZealand/"New Zealand"/#NewZealandShooting/#NZMosqueShooting and #FalseFlag/"false flag"/#DeepState/"deep state"/#CrisisActor/"crisis actor"/staged/"doesn't add up"/#QAnon in the body of the tweet (as opposed to linked article titles etc.)
This yielded 5329 tweets from 4592 accounts. We then classified the 50 most frequently retweeted accounts into those which promote conspiracy theories about the attack and those which do not. Most of the early tweets are of the conspiracy-pushing ilk; #QAnon turns up frequently.
What subjects occur prominently in the conspiracy theory tweets about the NZ attack? In addition to false flags, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, the Parkland shooting survivors, #QAnon, and Mossad (among others) are prominent topics.
Here are the media sources and hashtags most frequently tweeted by the accounts with tweets promoting NZ attack conspiracy theories. They mostly link right-wing conspiracy sites, with a side dose of Western MSM and Russia Today. Hashtags are almost all #QAnonsense.
As a final note, Twitter is far from the only social media site where #FalseFlag theories about the New Zealand attack are circulating - here are some examples from Reddit, Gab, and 4chan, with a blog post thrown in for good measure.
