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Tracking the infodemic: Conspiracy theories in the corona crisis

Grant number: unknown

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Key facts

  • Disease

    COVID-19

  • start year

    2020

  • Funder

    Volkswagen Stiftung

  • Principal Investigator

    Prof Dr and Prof Dr Stefan Evert, Fabian Schäfer

  • Research Location

    Germany

  • Lead Research Institution

    Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

  • Research Priority Alignment

    N/A

  • Research Category

    Policies for public health, disease control & community resilience

  • Research Subcategory

    Communication

  • Special Interest Tags

    N/A

  • Study Type

    Non-Clinical

  • Clinical Trial Details

    N/A

  • Broad Policy Alignment

    Pending

  • Age Group

    Not Applicable

  • Vulnerable Population

    Not applicable

  • Occupations of Interest

    Not applicable

Abstract

This research project applies innovative corpus-linguistic methods to analyse the use and distribution of typical linguistic patterns of conspiracy theories and study the discursive strategies they share with right-wing populist and extremist discourses. Besides providing important insights regarding the Corona pandemic, the goal is to operationalise and automate the used methods so that they can be applied to the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation in the future.