COVID 19 conspiracy theories in Canada: Evidence, verification, and implications for decision making
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aim/purpose – The COVID-19 pandemic generated a new communication universe with numerous actors, including conspiracy theory (CT) promoters who spread skepti- cism about the authenticity of the pandemic and the necessity of health emergency regu- lations. This study explores the dissemination of COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Canada to create a model for verifying conspiracy theories, especially in the context of decision making. Design/methodology/approach – The study was transdisciplinary and it was composed of an empirical and a conceptual part. The first part used analysis of websites and social media, observation with participation for data collection, and standard content analysis for data analysis. The conceptual part used a philosophical inquiry and a framework on heuristics in decision making. Findings – The empirical part of the study established three types of conspiracy theory promoters and labeled these as Conspiracy Theory Mill, Busy Gunman, and Hyper Re- lay. The conceptual part of the study created a model for CT verification. The study extends conceptualizing of conspiracy theories by characterizing them as narratives based on arbitrary ontological assumptions, epistemic naïveté and flaws, and contorted and biased logic. These narratives represent a form of folkish storytelling and entertain- ment, which become dangerous in the state of a public health emergency. Research implications/limitations – The study has implications for research on con- spiracy theories and for the theory of decision making. The study’s insight into the Canadian conspiracy theory landscape is limited by the types of social contexts studied. The model for verifying a conspiracy theory, which the study developed, is still incipient in character and needs further validation. The model can be used in decision-making theory. Originality/value/contribution – The study confirms the literature on conspiracy theo- ries originating in the areas of psychology and cultural studies. Beyond just exhibiting characteristics reported in the literature, the discovered three types of conspiracy theory promoters may advance the corresponding typology research. The model for verifying a conspiracy theory may contribute to research on the nature of conspiratorial content as well as to decision-making theory. Practically, the three promoter types and the verifica- tion model can be used as part of a blueprint for identifying and controlling conspiracy theories. Decision-makers at large may benefit, including those in health institutions, government, business as well as lay people. Keywords: COVID-19, conspiracy theory, Canada, decision making. JEL Classification: D7, D8, I1.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".