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Add as preferred source Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain "When people think of extremists, they tend to think of neo-Nazis," said Francesco Campisi, a lecturer at Université de Montréal's School of Criminology. "But there are many other fringe groups that may not be violent yet can give rise to extremism."

For his doctoral dissertation, Campisi examined the online presence of far-right groups, including QAnon, a conspiracy-theory mill that emerged in the United States in the late 2010s and gained prominence during the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.

"It's an unusual group that's hard to define, but it was probably a precursor to what we are seeing under Trump," said Francis Fortin, a professor in UdeM's School of Criminology.

QAnon is a nebulous organization with no hierarchical structure. "It's an information ecosystem," Fortin said. "It is structured in part by the discussions."

Campisi and Fortin examined one specific online strategy used by QAnon: the hijacking of hashtags on X (formerly Twitter). The results of their analysis were recently published in the journal Technology in Society.

Hashtag hijacking means tacking popular but unrelated hashtags onto a post in order to pull in unsuspecting users.

"QAnon wants any form of engagement, positive or negative," said Campisi. "Every interaction tightens the cohesion of their existing core group and can potentially expand their base."

The researchers analyzed more than 400,000 tweets posted between 2020 and 2021 that contained keywords associated with QAnon or mentioned an account linked to the group.

The period was selected because it contained major events that fueled discussion in far-right circles, including the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, the storming of the Capitol, the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. presidential election.

"We cut off our data collection after January 2021, since Twitter deleted a number of accounts linked to the January 6 insurrection, in which QAnon played a major role," Campisi explained.

The researchers classified the hashtags used in the tweets on the basis of information gleaned from a literature review. Some of the hashtags were hijacked, having no connection with the content of the tweet, while others were organically generated.

The latter were based on QAnon's own conversations, which revolve around various conspiracy theories, or directly referencing the group (such as #WWG1WGA, short for QAnon's slogan "Where We Go One, We Go All").

The researchers then analyzed whether the hijacked hashtags, which sought to insert the group into existing public debates and turn them in a different direction, did in fact generate engagement in the form of likes, replies and reposts.

While hijacked hashtags were used in a large percentage of the posts analyzed, their effect on engagement was negligible. It turns out that intruding into another conversation is not an effective tactic.

"Simply being present is not enough to convince an audience," Campisi reasoned.

Hashtag hijacking tries to manipulate social media algorithms to gain visibility, but this is not so easily done.

"The algorithms interpret a series of signals," Fortin explained. "Clicking on a specific hashtag is a drop in the bucket. Not to mention that the algorithms are black boxes, and they're constantly changing."

"One of the limitations of our study is that we have no idea how hashtag hijacking affects individuals who never engage, but may form an opinion nonetheless when they read a post," Campisi pointed out.

Campisi has turned his attention to this question in postdoctoral research he's now doing at Simon Fraser University.

"I'm working on an analysis that empirically tests the probability of stochastic terrorism, which isn't terrorism per se, but rather the idea that certain hateful narratives, structured in a certain way, can increase the likelihood of 'lone wolf' attacks," he said.

There is less talk about QAnon today, but it spawned many theories that have spread through the online conspiracy ecosystem. And since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, extremist content has skyrocketed.

"We are all exposed to this type of material, and, unfortunately, we can't rely on the platforms to weed it out," Campisi concluded.

Francesco C. Campisi et al, QAnon's hashtag hijacking strategies and engagement dynamics across discursive themes on Twitter: Negative Binomial models of online visibility, Technology in Society (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2026.103296

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Analysis of over 400,000 QAnon-related tweets from 2020–2021 found that hijacking unrelated popular hashtags was a common tactic but had negligible impact on user engagement. Hashtag hijacking did not effectively insert QAnon into broader public debates or increase visibility, suggesting limited influence through this strategy. The long-term effects on passive viewers remain unclear.

This summary was automatically generated using LLM. Full disclaimer

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