Who is behind the Plandemic? Analysing the different ideological conspiracy theory endorsements on Turkish Twitter

Abstract

The Plandemic conspiracy theory, which advances that the Covid-19 pandemic was an orchestrated event, was propagated via digital platforms across various countries throughout the pandemic, including Turkey. In this article, I analyse the conspiratorial tweets about the Plandemic on Turkish Twitter through CDA to show dispositions of different ideologies to conspiracy theories in Turkey. Findings show that the users combine the conspiracy theories that originated in the West with those that originated in Turkey to fortify the conspiratorial narrative concerning the Plandemic. I also detect the ideologies of tweets and users by elaborating their lexica and discourses, and I categorize them as conservative/Islamist and oppositional. The analysis shows that the Islamist/conservative community is likelier to employ the general characteristic of conspiracy in their discourse, meaning that they utilize a more mythic discourse based on unquestionable, godly storytelling. Nonetheless, the secular/opposition community also promotes the Plandemic conspiracy to cursorily criticize social injustice. [ FROM AUTHOR]