Photo: Screenshot of Twitter

A new research has revealed that twitter accounts of Trump supporters and infamous US conspiracy-mongers endorsing the QAnon movement are at the center of a coordinated astroturfing campaign to spread rumors about the coronavirus, particularly the conspiracy theory saying "China created the virus as a bioweapon," an unverified accusation repeatedly embraced by the US president and his administration, leading many to suspect the political purposes behind the coordinated retweeting campaign in promoting the interests of far-right US politicians. 

A recent report released by the Australia Institute's Centre for Responsible Technology found that the COVID-19 pandemic has also brought about an "infodemic," a term the World Health Organization defines as spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories about the virus, after the research team analyzed 2.6 million tweets and 25.5 million retweets that used coronavirus-related hashtags on Twitter over 10 days from late March 2020.

The coordinated efforts to promote the "Chinese bioweapon" conspiracy theory focused on 882 original tweets, which were retweeted 18,498 times and liked 31,783 times, creating an estimated 5 million reaches on Twitter users. Similar research in January suggested there is a highly sustained and coordinated effort to promote this theory by pro-Trump, Republican and QAnon accounts, though highly suspected to be bot-like accounts, according to the research.

Many of these conspiracy theories also frequently oppose the rise of China as a global power, 5G mobile network construction and vaccine development efforts funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Many of them can be marked as anti-Chinese accounts with posts criticizing the Communist Party of China (CPC) or posting other racist and hate speech content.

Analysts suggest that the goal of those rumor-mongers is to sow confusion, further exacerbate political divisions both within and between countries, and erode the public's trust in democratic and scientific institutions.

US President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus at the White House on Monday, in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP

Who is behind China-bashing

Dr Timothy Graham, one of the authors of the recently released report co-written with Graham's colleagues Professor Axel Bruns and Guangnan Zhu from Queensland University of Technology, told the Global Times on Thursday that he was impressed by the overwhelming evidence for loosely (and in some cases strongly) coordinated amplification of the "China bioweapon" conspiracy theory from self-identified right-wing and conservative accounts on Twitter.

Of the 30 most important clusters of co-retweet activity, 28 of those were either pro-Trump, Republican conservative, or QAnon accounts.

QAnon is one of the most dangerous US-made conspiracy theories starting in 2017 that concocted medical disinformation and downplayed scientific logic and the overall severity of COVID-19.

QAnon conspiracy theorists believe there is a secret plot by an alleged "deep state" against US President Donald Trump and his supporters. They believe the political elites of the "deep state" are seeking to bring down Trump, whom they regard as the only hope to wipe out the deep state. They seem to like to fight against any entities that oppose Trump, including China in this case.

For QAnon, this conspiracy theory aligns with their broader narrative that the coronavirus was planned by the so-called "deep state," as a new tool to damage Trump's presidency and upcoming election campaign. This falsely positions the virus as both engineered and weaponized.

"It is possible that QAnon members rallied together to coordinate the spread of the China bioweapon conspiracy on Twitter," said the author of the report.

This paints a fairly clear picture of this kind of false information being politicized and weaponized at least in the US, analysts suggested.

Those conspiracy theorists aim to mislead public perceptions of other countries, or even nurture a hatred sentiment against China, as many in the US have a very vague understanding of China, Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

It is very likely that there are anti-China forces behind those social media accounts with political purposes to weaken and smear China to serve far-right politicians for their political and economic interests, Li added.

However, Graham stressed that these may not necessarily be true Trump supporters, and in some cases may not even be human as the research team saw a small amount of "bot-like" activity, which we define as accounts that co-retweet the same tweets repeatedly within one second of each other. But mostly it was troll-like accounts, or hyper-partisan Trump supporters, QAnon conspirators and broadly conservative accounts.

"These accounts explicitly support Trump, but they could well be disinformation campaigners or lone trolls who are exploiting political identities for other reasons," Graham told the Global Times.

The 2016 US presidential election saw how foreign interference campaigns successfully created "pro-Trump" troll accounts, making observers suspect that it's entirely possible that some of these accounts are not in fact real Trump supporters, but instead bots or trolls with malicious motives.

Preaching by anti-China politicians

Widespread narratives that are related to conspiracy theories over COVID-19 released by ostensibly pro-Trump and pro-QAnon accounts exist partly due to the idea that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been publicly amplified by Republican politicians, observers concluded.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims that the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab though it has been widely rejected by the World Health organization and global scientists.

Likewise, on January 27, Republican Congressman Jim Banks tweeted specifically about the "China bioweapon" conspiracy theory by citing an Israeli biological warfare expert, showing support for it.

The researcher, Graham, told the Global Times that he believes that this amplification and support (indirect and direct) by elected officials provides a major explanatory factor for why this kind of idea spreads from the fringes into the mainstream.

"It's not a big leap to go from the idea that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, to further arguing that it was a bioweapon, and perhaps even that it was released on purpose. None of them is substantiated," he said.

Widespread conspiracy theories and rumors across Western social media reflect how anti-intellectualism prevails among the US public, said Li.

"Once the mainstream media pick up on these false narratives espoused by elected officials, it's too late - they spread like wildfire and the damage cannot be reversed," Graham said. "I believe social media platforms need to work harder to detect and remove coordinated mis- and disinformation."

"In many ways, this particular conspiracy theory has been very damaging for foreign relations between China and other countries - this is a terrible loss, as we all have shared goals and can benefit so much from good will, exchanges of culture and trade opportunities," Graham said.