"COVID19 is_": The Perpetuation of Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories via Google Autocomplete.

ABSTRACT

As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic grew in 2020, uncertainty surrounding its origins and nature led to widespread conspiracy-related theories (CRT). Use of technological platforms enabled the rapid and exponential dissemination of COVID-19 CRT. This study applies social contagion theory to examine how Google Autocomplete (GA) propagates and perpetuates these CRT. An in-house software program, Autocomplete Search Logging Tool (ASLT) captured a snapshot of GA COVID-19 related searches early in the pandemic (from March to May 2020) across 76 randomly-selected countries to gain insight into search behaviors around the world. Analysis identified 15 keywords relating to COVID-19 CRT predictions and demonstrate how searches across different countries received varying degrees of GA predictions. When grouped with similar keywords, two major categories were identified "Man-Made Biological Weapon" (42%, n = 2,111), and "Questioning Reality/Severity of COVID-19" (44%, n = 2,224). This investigation is also among the first to apply social contagion theory to autocomplete applications and can be used in future research to explain and perhaps mitigate the spread of CRT.