Corona Conspiracyland

This page visualizes 14,259 images posted on Instagram between January and September 2020. Together, they received a total of 4.2 million likes and 260k comments. The images were retrieved as part of the Infodemic research project using keyword queries related to COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Each image was processed with an Inception Convolutional Neural Network, trained on ImageNet 2012, and projected into a two-dimensional manifold with the UMAP algorithm such that similar images appear proximate to one another. In addition, categories can be selected to highlight images with hashtags that are frequently used by Qanon, associated with Bill Gates, 5G and New World Order conspiracies (and more). This tool is based on PixPlot created by by the Yale Digital Humanities Lab Team