With Lin Wood causing chaos with the South Carolina GOP it's important to remember that he is openly a QAnon believer and an important neo-QAnon influencer. Unlike established d'influences in QAnon wood has pushed the narrative forward creating new conspriscies for adherents.
His telegram channel has 835,000 followers, it is the largest QAnon channel, followed by Sidney Powell with her 500,000 followers. The channel administered by 38 OG QAnon influencers has only 210,000. Wood has more followers on telegram than all the QAnon groups on Gab.
Woods influence comes from 3 vectors: 1) his proximity to the Former president, 2) his position of power and influence as a lawyer and 3) he hasn't told QAnon followers to stand by and wait, but provided new avenues of investigation and conspiracy, this providing participation
At this point it's not about canonical adherence to QAnon or the drops with Wood, which has pissed off some OG influencers (womp womp). He's creating political conspiracies that are "prescient" to those invested in the political conspiracy about corrupted governments and elites
His recent political shenanigans has given him a boost in new followers and views. Though the impact of that is difficult to measure.
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1/ My colleagues @Blyth_Crawford@FlorenceKeen and @hannah1_rose and I have been working on this massive report for weeks to provide insight into the state of domestics violent extremism after the first 100 days of the Biden administration. Here is what we found:
2/ We applied a mixed methods approach, leveraging data scientific methods and digital ethonography, in an effort to better understand MAGA-related groups, movements, and narratives both prior to and after Biden’s inauguration.
3/ It examines the various groups and movements that gained momentum under the administration, the key discourses and motivations of those that were a part of the 6 January insurrection, and how these have evolved.
2/ The most prominent careers built upon a QAnon foundation are those of Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert who endorsed QAnon during their bids for Congress.
3/ As @travis_view has covered extensively Majorie Taylor Greene's adherence to QAnon dates back to the it's inception in 2017, long predating her political career.
2/ As @AlKapDC extensively covered in his monitoring of QAnon candidates, 38% of QAnon candidates were women. 42% of these made it on the ballot. What this means is that out of the record 94 women who ran for congress 14% espoused some belief in QAnon
3/ These statistics are very important as @Blyth_Crawford and I highlight women are not only underrepresented in politics, but their role in extremists movements is still perceived through a gender biased lens.
1/ First lets take a look at the QAnon community. There are 6 themes that I found common throughout the communities (there are more obviously)
2/ Same in the movement still push the narrative that this is all part of the plan and will lead to the revelation of some great corruption or some great plot. Though this type of hopium was in the minority as opposed to past QAnon narratives
3/ a fair amount pushed the narrative that this was a DS plot and may even count as a victory for them; however, patriots and anons are wise to their plan and will not fall for theirs deception.
1/ For those who were not available for the presentation here is my slides and some comments. Link to the presentation is here
2/ as it stands I have found QAnon communities in 85 countries. Now there is no exact science to this as attribution via social media data is extremely unreliable. (anyone who say otherwise is lying)
3/ The way I evaluate this is based on if QAnon content is translated into foreign languages, is QAnon content adapted to local socio-political contexts, are adherents adapting and manipulating QAnon narratives to fit their context,etc.
1/ Today Yahoo News published a story about a report from the Soufan Center on how China and Russia were fueling Qanon conspiracy theories. The report has a problematic methodology in regards to how it uses and perceives data, also the report has a weak grasp of QAnon.
2/ First lets get something clear, the report claims to be data driven, however, there is no explanation of the data sources (I am assuming it is @crowdtangle ). If that is the case then there should be a methodological explanation. If not that should be explain as its important
3/ That data sample is a fraction of what I collected from January to August 2020 there were 1.65M posts in the 416 QAnon pages and Groups I was curating. Considering they claim a full year of collection I do not think their sample is large enough