QAnon, once a fringe online movement, is increasingly crossing into offline life, where it is acquiring an unprecedented political power. The January 6 Capitol Riots in 2021, the 2022 Freedom Convoy, and the building of the Richmound School Compound in Saskatoon in 2023 are only a few recent political events that have been driven by QAnon conspiracy theories. Pivotal to this shift from online to offline is the relation between QAnon’s ideology and dissemination practices and the wealth of conspiracy theories that flourished in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, an increased distrust in public health measures, such as masking and vaccination campaigns, flourished in conjunction with claims of “doing one’s own research.” This process of “doing one’s own research” can be understood as a form of ‘agnotology,’ a set of practices for which the production of ignorance plays a more dominant role than the production of knowledge—even though it feels like you are informing yourself. That COVID-19 conspiracy theories led to an increase of QAnon believers should thus be unsurprising, as not only are the movements ideologically aligned, but they also rest on a shared basis of reactionary, anti-establishment, misinformation-laden “personal research.” This presentation will put increased distrust in public health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic into relation with the rise of QAnon, analyzing how these forms of disinformation function as entangled, participatory processes.
