for the spread of conspiracy theories through social media platforms such as
Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram, suggesting things like ‘a faction of the elites
are weaponising the virus, and a vaccine would likely be a tool for population control and mind control’. 110 Due to the extensive spread of misinformation and
absurd conspiracy theories, the Colorado Information Analysis Centre (CIAC)
issued a warning stating that the ‘spread of disinformation has the potential to cause civil unrest and mass panic’ . 111 In addition to this, extensive media
coverage of far-right backlash and anti-covid protests served to legitimise and
amplify the messages of the movements, whilst filter bubbles, echo chambers,
and media biases led to individuals experiencing continuous exposure to far-right
perspectives, thus adding to the normalisation of extremist views.
106
Made with FlippingBook HTML5