A study of nearly 5000 online posts purporting to be from Q, the supposed figurehead of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, shows the posts are written by different authors, despite claims to the contrary.
鈥淨uantitatively, there鈥檚 not a single Q,鈥� says of Binghamton University, New York.
The conspiracy theory has long been disproven. It is driven by 鈥淨 drops鈥�, or messages from a person calling themselves Q, who since October 2017 has claimed to have high levels of security clearance within the US government. Such drops have put forward that the then US president Donald Trump was battling a secretive cabal of paedophiles across big business, big media and big government.
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Blackburn and his colleagues analysed 4949 Q drops aggregated between 2017 and 2020 by six websites that claim to pass on the message of Q. The researchers analysed the style of the writing to see whether each of the drops came from the same author. The analysis indicated they didn鈥檛.
鈥淚f there is [a single Q], there鈥檚 such a massive change [in writing style] it鈥檇 be surprising,鈥� says Blackburn. He points out that the construction of Q by multiple authors mirrors the way apocryphal religious texts are generated.
There were common words, however. The researchers found that 鈥渄espotism鈥�, 鈥渏udiciary鈥�, 鈥渋ndependent鈥� and 鈥渆vinces鈥� cropped up regularly. Another popular word was 鈥淛im鈥� 鈥� likely a reference to Jim Rybicki, a former staff member at the US Department of Justice, and a bogey man for many conspiracy theorists.
One of the pieces of evidence that QAnon followers often put forward to defend Q being a single person is that the drops come with one of a handful of tripcodes. These are a sort of 鈥減seudo password鈥� that can be used to authenticate the poster, says co-lead author at University College London. However, those tripcodes have previously been cracked and published on internet forums, meaning the messages are easily spoofed. 鈥淒ifferent Qs are fighting each other about who is the fake and who is the original,鈥� says Papasavva.
Social media platforms have struggled with how to manage QAnon content. Many choose to suspend the accounts of those who post it 鈥� but that has little effect. 鈥淭here are always going to be several platforms archiving stuff and ensuring it can continue to propagate,鈥� says Blackburn.
at Georgia State University, who has co-written a book about QAnon, says the results match her own findings that the Q drops are most likely authored by more than one person.
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