The Q-drops – a Content Analysis

The QAnon-movement, a conspiracy theory and political movement gaining fame in the recent storming of theCapitol in Washington D.C in the beginning of 2021, see the messages from the source “Q” as their most importantsource of information. “Q” has posted short messages on different message boards (4Chan, 8Chan et cetera) sinceNovember 2017. The messages comment on contemporary political events and claim to foresee politicaldevelopment (Operation Q) Who the source, “Q” is, is not known, although speculations exist on the internet. Atleast we know that the person or persons making the posts seems to want us to believe that they have insight into thebackstage of the political scene (LaFrance 2020). Conspiracy theories, and the QAnon-movement, have beeninvestigated in the discourse of Information Literacy before. But then mostly from the perspective of the followerand his/her motives to be a part of the movement (Beene & Greer 2021). In this presentation the foundation of theQAnon-movement will be investigated: The posts or “dumps” from the source “Q”. This will give us a deeperunderstanding what the followers of QAnon really believe in. Knowing the structure and actual content of the “Q”-posts will help us understand the QAnons. A practical result of this might be a greater possibility to understand andcommunicate with people invested in the movement.Around 5000 posts that “Q” has made since fall 2017 are presented on different websites connected to the QAnon-movement. By performing a content-analysis it would be possible to answer questions such as who is mentionedmore – Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? Or – how many times are networks of child-traffickers mentioned in theQ-posts? In this poster-presentation I will focus on references to other conspiracy theories; the Adrenochrome-conspiracy, “Truthers”, “Birthers” and False flag school-shootings. QAnon has been labeled a “big-tent-conspiracytheory” because it constantly evolves and adds new conspiracies to its belief-system (Roose 2020). Using a content-analysis we could gain knowledge whether these conspiracy theories are already present in the posts from “Q” or ifthey show up later in the process. Message spread by QAnon-followers follow a certain process in which Q-posts arediscussed by followers in blogs, Youtube-channels and podcasts mixed with a general conspiracist narrative.The content-analysis will be performed by converting all Q-posts to individual text-files. This gives us the possibilityto use a analysis-tool such as GREP to perform searches in all posts without the distortion of the QAnon-websitesown search systems (Grep Manual). A few relevant keywords per conspiracy theory will be used to find anyreferences to it among the vast amount of posts by the source “Q”