Does Q Still Matter?

Recently I published a new research article analyzing the earliest discussion threads that gave rise to Qanon. The article shows that despite the clearly outlandish quality of most Q movement narratives, they’re not being pulled from thin air. Instead, they’re created (at least initially) by applying a specific and idiosyncratic interpretive lens to completely real and verifiable sources. I arrived at these conclusions by counting the number of sources linked to narrative claims in the movement’s first discussion thread, and then classifying them according to the specific narrative function they served. It’s a less technical methodology than I usually use, but it’s warranted because the movement’s engagement with outside sources has never been examined closely. By pointing out the Q movement’s engagement with authentic sources, I’m hoping to intervene against the condescension so rampant in mainstream discussion of both Q and conspiracy discourse more broadly.

At the most immediate level, I believe that my position within the disciplines of librarianship and archival studies dictates that I work towards meeting information seekers wherever they are, in an attempt to serve the pursuit of knowledge— even if some of them believe that Democrat politicians literally drink children’s blood. More broadly, I’m highly sympathetic towards people who question mainstream narratives. It’s widely accepted that the US government used false pretenses to justify its military engagements in Vietnam and Iraq, for example. Why should anyone trust the same “reliable” sources and mainstream media outlets that have proven so untrustworthy in the past? I don’t think we do ourselves any favors if we act condescendingly towards an information community that is motivated by somewhat justifiable skepticism towards mainstream narratives.

But that project is done now. And it seems like Q might be too. Disinformation and debates about the veracity of information, however, are as prominent as ever. Most recently, I noticed a nearly-Q-level explosion in claims, counterclaims, and attempted debunkings about who blew up the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Oct 17. Lots of independent researchers took it upon themselves to investigate the topic using social media and digital maps in the following weeks, producing convoluted evidence collages similar to those that were common in QAnon. I suspect some of these so-called “open source intelligence” efforts were probably disinformation efforts in their own right. My 2021 method for forensic image analysis might have helped wade through some of the noise, but evidence and narrative claims were changing so fast it was hardly worth trying, especially since my primary vector of written output takes the form of peer-reviewed articles that require months, if not years, of lead time.

Rather than trying to keep up with the pace of current developments in the conspiracy and disinformation spaces— a task literally designed to be maddening by its architects— I’m now trying to go back to the source. What are the specific information practices and design techniques that make a narrative spread effectively? Can we develop generalizable models and forms of literacy that help us to understand these phenomena as they unfold, without being baited into the exhausting analysis of deliberately shifting claims about minutia?

I’ve already started thinking historically about these questions. My Q research actually began with research on Alternate Reality Games, or “ARGs”. I was looking into the origin and mechanics of Ongs Hat, widely considered to be one of the first ARGs— perhaps the very first ARG, actually— which nevertheless blurs lines around the definition of “games” and “play” such that it is also one of the earliest born-digital conspiracy movements more broadly. I outlined my findings first on Twitter, and then in a conference talk. Revisiting the historical origins of online conspiracy movements also gets me deeper into issues around archival preservation of digital media content. In this case, I expect that the research will entail a lot of work with php-based discussion forums, which were highly formative in my early online life, and which I have always wanted to look at more closely.

I’m excited about the future prospects for this stream of research and happy to bring it more in line with my broader interests in preservation and forensics. I actually never intended to do disinformation research, but I needed a new project to work on during my postdoc back when most of my usual research sites were closed due to COVID-19. As it turns out, the themes of manipulation and control running through this research were also quite prominent in my dissertation work on the interwoven histories of 20th century psychedelic and computing research. More broadly, all this disinformation work is also part of the general digital archives and digital forensics research I do verifying sources and examining provenance in digital environments. Closely reading the digital materials used to construct a historical narrative tells us more about it than we could learn by simply operating at the level of their contents.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please check out my new Information & Culture article! Readers with academic credentials can grab it via UT Press, and others can read a free preprint version via ScholarWorks.