Chapter published in:
Conspiracy Theory Discourses
Edited by Massimiliano Demata, Virginia Zorzi and Angela Zottola
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 98] 2022
► pp. 241–266

Chapter 11
The ID2020 conspiracy theory in YouTube video comments during COVID-19

Bonding around religious, political, and technological discourses

| University of New South Wales
| University of New South Wales

This chapter explores a dataset of YouTube video comments about the ‘ID2020’ conspiracy theory, which claims that Bill Gates is part of a global conspiracy to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine incorporating a tracking microchip. This conspiracy theory merges religious discourses about the ‘Mark of the Beast’, with discourses about quantum dot and blockchain technologies. The chapter aims to understand the kinds of values that are negotiated by users who interact with ID2020 conspiracy videos by posting in YouTube comment sections. The appraisal and communing affiliation frameworks developed within Systemic Functional Linguistics are used to investigate evaluative language and social bonding in the dataset. The results reveal distinct textual personae bonding around positions such as anti-globalism, anti-technology, political scepticism, and anti-vaccination.

Keywords: COVID-19, conspiracy theories, YouTube, systemic functional linguistics, bonding, affiliation, technology, religion, politics, discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.YouTube and conspiracy theories
  • 3.Dataset
    • 3.1Sampling strategy for YouTube videos
    • 3.2Sampling strategy for comments
  • 4.Method: Affiliation analysis
    • 4.1Coupling analysis
    • 4.2Affiliation analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Religious Fanatics
    • 5.2Anti-technologists
    • 5.3Anti-Globalists
    • 5.4Political sceptics
    • 5.5Anti-Vaxxers and COVID-19 Denialists
    • 5.6Educators
  • 6.Bond cluster diagram of personae and their bonds
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 01 December 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.98.11inw
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