The fragmentation of social media challenges how we might efficiently and effectively identify, understand, and counter harmful content. Prior work establishes frameworks for measuring problematic narratives, evaluating harms, and leveraging interdisciplinary theories and findings to design mitigating solutions. However, there is little understanding of these phenomena outside of mainstream platforms. This is particularly concerning given that alt-tech users have been observed to include insurrectionists, active shooters, and other extremists – often driven from mainstream platforms due to deplatforming and content moderation . Our work aims to characterize online narratives across alt-tech platforms. In particular, we highlight how rumoring and conspiracy theory narratives in the context of the 2022 U.S. elections impact social dynamics and inspire collective action. We gather a unique dataset of over 7,000 social media posts from Gab, Gettr, Parler, and Truth Social from which we derive prevalent narratives using natural language processing techniques. We then examine how the platform, affect, and engagement differ across context through the lens of narrative, social identity, and mobilization potential using mixed methods. Findings from our analyses show variation between how narratives support social identity conceptions of power and mobilization potential.

Conspiracy theories in online spaces, such as anti-vaccination or QAnon, present a unique amalgamation of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda disguised in entertaining, attention-grabbing content that may appeal to peoples' cultural, moral, or social identities. Studies aiming to understand how people may engage with conspiracy theory content online, or how they may lose belief in conspiracy theories often approach research from a purely theoretical or empirical point of view. In this work, through in-depth interviews with former believers of more than 12 conspiracy theories, with experiences across almost two decades and numerous online platforms, we aim to contribute an understanding of how various online and offline factors synergize to shape a user's engagement, tenure, and disengagement in online conspiracy theorizing. We further investigate how some users recover from conspiracy theorizing with the help of online recovery communities. We find how pre-existing biases and predispositions towards conspiracy theorizing often carry over in online spaces where a user's conspiracy theory worldviews further evolve through content recommendations, interactions in online communities, and socially-primed self-reflections. We also find reasons, such as exposure to inconsistencies in theories or toxicity and anti-social attitudes in online spaces, through which users get disillusioned from conspiracy theories. Our work has implications in bringing forward often unobserved impacts of internet-mediated conspiracy theorizing on the believers---the resulting mental health issues such as depression, distrust and anxiety, and social isolation---which is comparable to the indoctrination trauma. Moreover, our interviews reveal an important role played by online communities in helping users recover from conspiracy theory beliefs by finding empathy and solidarity in fellow former believers. We conclude by providing a path forward for how social computing researchers can contribute online community designs that aid existing issues surrounding safety, inclusivity, and lack of resources in existing online conspiracy theory recovery communities.

Widespread conspiracy theories may significantly impact our society. This paper focuses on the QAnon conspiracy theory, a consequential conspiracy theory that started on and disseminated successfully through social media. Our work characterizes how Reddit users who have participated in QAnon-focused subreddits engage in activities on the platform, especially outside their own communities. Using a large-scale Reddit moderation action against QAnon-related activities in 2018 as the source, we identified 13,000 users active in the early QAnon communities. We collected the 2.1 million submissions and 10.8 million comments posted by these users across all of Reddit from October 2016 to January 2021. The majority of these users were only active after the emergence of the QAnon conspiracy theory and decreased in activity after Reddit's 2018 QAnon ban. A qualitative analysis of a sample of 915 subreddits where the "QAnon-enthusiastic" users were especially active shows that they participated in a diverse range of subreddits, often of unrelated topics to QAnon. However, most of the users' submissions were concentrated in subreddits that have sympathetic attitudes towards the conspiracy theory, characterized by discussions that were pro-Trump, or emphasized unconstricted behavior (often anti-establishment and anti-interventionist). Further study of a sample of 1,571 of these submissions indicates that most consist of links from low-quality sources, bringing potential harm to the broader Reddit community. These results point to the likelihood that the activities of early QAnon users on Reddit were dedicated and committed to the conspiracy, providing implications on both platform moderation design and future research.

The shutdown measures necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 have amplified the role of technology in intimate partner violence (IPV). Survivors may be forced to endure lockdowns with their abusers, intensifying the dangers of technology-enabled abuse (e.g. stalking, harassment, monitoring, surveillance). They may also be forced to rely on potentially compromised devices to reach support networks: a dangerous dilemma for digital safety. This qualitative study examines how technologists with computer security expertise provided remote assistance to IPV survivors during the pandemic. Findings from 24 consults with survivors and five focus groups with technologist consultants show how remote delivery of technology support services raised three fundamental challenges: (1) ensuring safety for survivors and consultants; (2) assessing device security over a remote connection; and (3) navigating new burdens for consultants, including emotional labor. We highlight implications for HCI researchers creating systems that enable access to remote expert services for vulnerable people.