Reminder: please do register to hear Sam Jackson's talk if you plan to attend virtually. Talk on April 7th at 3 PM. From: Jeff Hemsley Sent: Monday, March 21, 2022 1:33 PM To: List Aoir <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>; FACADJUN@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU; PHD-DPS@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Subject: CCDS Presents Sam Jackson, April 7th @ 3:00 PM (ET) - A Hybrid Talk The Center for Computational and Data Sciences presents Dr. Sam Jackson, Thursday, April 7th at 3:00 PM EST, titled The (Tweet) Storm Is Upon Us: A Look at QAnon on Twitter. This talk is free and open to the public. Please do register for the event using the link below and feel free to forward: https://forms.gle/dZiBCry4a8QB128J8 The (Tweet) Storm Is Upon Us: A Look at QAnon on Twitter Sam Jackson For the past few years, the QAnon conspiracy theory has been a pernicious force in American public life. Many spaces on the internet have been important for the development and spread of the conspiracy theory, including "dark" social media sites like 8chan/8kun and more widely used sites like YouTube and Facebook. Using a novel dataset of more than 100 million tweets related to QAnon collected between July 2018 and the present, this talk will explore patterns and themes present in this activity. This dataset reveals a range of activity from vigorous support for the ideas promoted by "Q" to the most strident opposition and dismissal of those ideas. Along the way, I describe some of the specific methodological challenges that arose in this project. Finally, I note some of the ways that this dataset and the analyses we are performing can inform public conversations about conspiracy theories and "alternative" knowledge communities. Sam Jackson is an assistant professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany, which also houses UAlbany's iSchool. His research focuses on antigovernment extremism in the U.S., conspiracy theories, extremism online, and contentious activity on the internet more broadly. He earned his Ph.D. from the Social Science Doctoral Program in the Maxwell School in 2018; while completing his Ph.D., he was also an affiliate of CCDS and worked on the Illuminating project. His book, Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group, was published by Columbia University Press in 2020. Contact Jeff Hemsley (jjhemsle@syr.edu<mailto:jjhemsle@syr.edu>) for questions.