QAnon Conspiracies Show Organic Growth Capability with Multi-layered Digital Infrastructure
QAnon infrastructure and Modus Operandi drive a horizontally controlled, organically self-sustaining user community. While the group behind QAnon is seeding the direction of the narrative, the content is produced by followers leveraging infrastructure that cannot be directly tied to the original QAnon group and that appears to be maintained by followers.
This Modus Operandi (M.O.) empowers QAnon’s adaptability to recent events against the group, such as censorship on social media platforms. QAnon has moved from fringe to mainstream and its content is now appearing and being distributed in sites not directly linked to the QAnon phenomenon and narrative.
QAnon is capable of influencing the focus and narrative of millions of people. Narratives could be weaponized to threaten a broad range of individuals and organizations as followers become radicalized via an increasingly hostile and violent narrative.
QAnon, from Fringe to Mainstream
QAnon is led by an unidentified individual or collective operating under a public alias known as “Q.” Q’s posts started appearing in October 2017 in the anonymous image board 4Chan. Q presented himself as a high-ranking official within the US government willing to…
