Audience-generated Feedback on Conspiratorial Content on Facebook and Reddit in Serbia

Abstract

Conspiracy theories are a ubiquitous phenomenon in the socio-political discussion.By trusting these theories, society justifies possible events like the COVID-19pandemic. Through mixed methods research, the article seeks to provide the amountof page-generated and user-generated conspiratorial content that links chemtrailswith the COVID-19 pandemic, along with audience-generated feedback on socialmedia content. Facebook and Reddit have been chosen for this research because oftheir inherently contrasting approaches to content regulation. Facebook’s contentmoderation tools lacked the impact to remove misinformation, as only 8% of contentwas flagged as false information. Additionally, even if researched subreddits had twotimes the amount of relevant content in comparison to relevant Facebook pages, mostof the content had 0 upvotes, meaning that the content was either negatively receivedor lacked adequate support. Serbian-speaking Facebook users expressed support forconspiratorial content on this platform, while Serbian redditors used conspiratorialnarratives to ridicule conspiracy theorists. Likes were the most utilized type of feedbackon content of relevant Facebook pages, while comments were the most utilized typeof feedback on content of relevant subreddits. The importance of this research lies inunderstanding what conspiratorial narratives try to imply through social media andhow the audience interprets and communicates with this content.