Tracking Viral Misinformation - The New York Times - 0 views
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QAnon conspiracy theory attitudes psychology research
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More than a year after Donald J. Trump left office, the QAnon conspiracy theory that thrived during his administration continues to attract more Americans, including many Republicans and far-right news consumers, according to results from a survey released on Thursday from the Public Religion Research Institute.
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The nonprofit and nonpartisan group found that 16 percent of Americans, or roughly 41 million people, believed last year in the three key tenets of the conspiracy theory
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Those are that Satanist pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation control the government and other major institutions
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In October 2021, 17 percent of Americans believed in the conspiracy theory, up from 14 percent in March
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the percentage of people who rejected QAnon falsehoods shrank to 34 percent in October from 40 percent in March
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After Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, QAnon was expected to be hobbled without him. But it has persisted despite that and despite efforts by tech platforms to staunch its spread. Forensic linguists have also tried to unmask and defang the anonymous author who signed online messages as Q.
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Robert P. Jones, the founder and chief executive of the research group and a social science researcher with decades of experience, said he never expected to be dealing with serious survey questions about whether powerful American institutions were controlled by devil-worshiping, sex-trafficking pedophiles. To have so many Americans agree with such a question, he said, was “stunning.”
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Among Republicans, 25 percent found QAnon to be valid, compared with 14 percent of independents and 9 percent of Democrats.
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Media preferences were a major predictor of QAnon susceptibility, with people who trust far-right news sources such as One America News Network and Newsmax nearly five times more likely to be believers than those who trust mainstream news
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Most QAnon believers associated Christianity with being American and said that the United States risked losing its culture and identity and must be protected from foreign influence
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More than half of QAnon supporters are white, while 20 percent are Hispanic and 13 percent are Black.
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They were most likely to have household incomes of less than $50,000 a year, hold at most a high school degree, hail from the South and reside in a suburb.