This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Mark Scott on politico.com on June 2, 2020
Nearly 30 groups of Twitter users who identified themselves as supporters of President Donald Trump, the Republican Party or the conspiracy theory QAnon spread rumours that the coronavirus was a bioweapon created in China, according to new research.
An analysis of more than 2.6 million tweets over a 10-day period from late March found that 28 so-called Twitter clusters associated with conservative politicians or QAnon promoted the story about Covid-19's origins, according to academics from The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology, a progressive think tank. The clusters are groups of Twitter accounts, many of them automated, that frequently shared posts.
Since early January, rumours have exploded on social media that various governments, including the US, created the coronavirus as part of military experiments – reports that have been debunked by the World Health Organisation and multiple fact-checking groups. US intelligence and health officials have likewise rejected the idea that the pathogen was man-made or genetically modified.
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The bioweapon rumour goes further than the frequent allegations by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the virus may have come from a research lab in Wuhan, China, a charge for which they have yet to offer any evidence. The two have also declined to say whether they thought the virus release would have been deliberate or an accident. “Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake, and then they made another one or – did somebody do something on purpose?” Trump said during a White House appearance on April 30.
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‘I’m a little upset with China’, some of Trump’s more memorable quotes on the coronavirus pandemic
‘I’m a little upset with China’, some of Trump’s more memorable quotes on the coronavirus pandemic
As of late March, the Australian researchers found that the conspiracy theory labelling Covid-19 a Chinese bioweapon had been shared on Twitter within these US and QAnon groups almost 900 times. Those online messages were then retweeted 18,500 times, collectively garnering as many as 5 million views of the rumour across Twitter.
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The academics could not determine who was behind the clusters. But they said the ability of these groups to promote coronavirus-related rumours on social media could have helped the reports gain traction with a wider audience online.
