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Joan Donovan: Poorly Regulated Online Spaces, Pandemic Have Contributed To Mainstreaming Of QAnon | Boston Public Radio

Joan Donovan, research director for Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said Wednesday that our increasingly polarized political climate and the poor regulation of online spaces has contributed to an “entangled web” of disinformation that bad actors can weaponize and amplify. This has enabled conspiracy theories like QAnon to spread from isolated fringe groups all the way to the White House, she added.

“Some of these theories definitely originate online, then in a kind of marketing move they’re A-B tested, and different audiences will pick up different pieces of the conspiracy theory, then eventually if something seems to be sticky and is resonating with a large crowd, we’ll start to see media pundits, amateur journalists, YouTubers, and other influencers start to pick that up,” she told Boston Public Radio.

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Source: Joan Donovan: Poorly Regulated Online Spaces, Pandemic Have Contributed To Mainstreaming Of QAnon