Social media: A watchdog or a conspiracy breeder?: COVID-19 disinformation among Iraqi students

Abstract

The author seeks to determine the scale of conspiracy belief among undergraduate students and their dependency on social media to enhance their conspiracy theories. The first goal was to determine the extent to which conspiracy theories affect how undergraduates explain and understand crises and events. For example, theories about secret government cabals controlling Iraqi citizens’ lives and other issues. The second objective is to apply COVID-19 as a case to determine the extent of the conspiratorial interpretation of the sprea)d of the virus through exposure to misinformation through social media and how social media impacted it. The study was recruited from a snowball sample of students in two universities in Baghdad. Sample size 331 (230 males and 101 females) aged 19–24. They were surveyed through phone interviews. The study applied media dependency and conspiracy theories in survey research on a snowball sample in two major public universities in Baghdad. The survey shows undergraduate students depend on conspiracies from social media, especially Facebook. Moreover, the study finds that students believe in government malfeasance. In contrast, many students believe in multiple COVID-19 conspiracies, global government conspiracies, scientific conspiracies, extraterrestrial coverups, and government conspiracies meant to cause personal harm. Finally, there was no significant difference between males and females in dependence on media or scale of conspiracy belief.

Keywords:

• conspiracy theories
• media dependency
• social media
• undergraduate students
• COVID-19

1. Introduction

This study will measure whether social media use is connected to Iraqi undergraduate students’ beliefs in conspiracy theories. The most significant publishing information resource linked to the internet is social media. Arab uprisings have relied on social media influences to have a more significant impact on their audience. Social media has also played a role in Egypt’s revolution and other countries in the Middle East by helping the organizers of the uprisings to record the change in new users and activity, comparing the data before the Arab uprisings to data during or after the protests (Genovese, 2015). Analysis of the populations contributing to Arab uprisings sheds light on social media’s positive and negative aspects. In 2011, Tunisian protesters arranged demonstrations using social media, primarily Facebook. Tunisian protestors continue to engage online. Facebook is the most popular social media platform in Tunisia. Around 66% of Tunisians have subscribed to Facebook, whereas Kemp (Kemp, 2020) found 29.82 million internet users in Iraq; this number increased by 11 million (55%) in 2019 and 2020. Internet penetration stood at 75%. According to Napoleon Analytics (Napoleon Analytics), in 2021, there will be 24,809,000 Facebook users in Iraq, which accounts for 58.3% of Iraq’s entire population. The majority of the users are men (70.3%). People aged 25–34 are the largest user group (9,000,000). The most significant imbalance between male and female Facebook users occurred among people aged 25–34 years, where men lead by 3,800,000. The most influential person in the modern history of conspiracy theories is Nesta Webster, an English woman who spread her speculations during the initial part of the twentieth century (Lee, 2011). According to Webster, the world’s secret societies worked in concert, aiming to destroy British civilization. Her thoughts found a significant audience during her lifetime (Lee, 2011). Many studies claim that people believe in conspiracy theories to alleviate the confusion, frustration, and apprehension that result from living in a modern society characterized by rapid social change, high scales of social and geographic mobility, deterioration of personal autonomy, and erosion of trust in government (Aupers, 2012). This study’s research sample reflects Iraqi college students’ thinking, who may have different perceptions of the virus’s spread and its concomitant conspiracy theories (Mulligan & Habel, 2012). The media has made it relatively easy for people to distribute conspiracy theories, which raises the question of whether media messages promoting conspiracy theories increase belief in such theories (Jolley & Douglas, 2013). So, this study aimed to answer this question, as the study used a global model to measure the extent of groups thinking about the conspiracy and applied it to a survey of Iraqi university students, then used the case of COVID-19 to examine how the students interpreted the spread of the pandemic and how social media enhanced their belief in the conspiracy by disinformation. The study also aimed to determine if there is a difference between males and females at the scale of their belief in the conspiracy and their exposure to the deception that reinforces it. According to these objectives, the two hypotheses of the study were:

1. Students, as part of Iraqi society, strongly believe in a conspiracy theory in their interpretations of events and crises.

2. Believers in a conspiracy theory in their interpretations of events and crises depend on social media as the best space to get disinformation that approves their conspiratorial interpretations.

2. Literature review

2.1. Conspiracy theory, COVID-19 and social media

Conspiracy belief is correlated with several other behaviors and beliefs. Czech found that conspiracy belief rises amongst the political party/parties almost the election (Czech, 2020). Another correlation between belief in authority figures and conspiracies involves the transference of psychological issues to more comprehensive and broader belief systems: for example, correlating mistrust of parental figures to mistrust in political parties (Nail et al., 2019). Jamin (Jamin, 2018) argues that belief in conspiracies is correlated with populist, fascist, and far-right political parties and that these parties move the goalposts from talking about Marxism as a historically essential and reality-grounded field of study to a set of conspiracies that don’t remember and don’t any primary or secondary sources, instead being described as a form of cultural “violence” describing Marxism without any reference to original texts or any other kind of data [Jamin]. In addition, Lamberty et al. found that “higher scales of conspiracy mentality can predict voting behavior for the more conservative party and its candidate” (Lamberty et al., 2018) and that conservative voters are more than twice as likely to believe in conservative theories as do democratic or more liberally biased voters (Lamberty et al., 2018).

Einstein and Glick conducted randomized experiments and found a clear correlation between messages conveying conspiracy theories and belief in such theories immediately after consuming them (Einstein & Glick, 2015). Their study concluded that the high percentage of belief in conspiracy theories among the student community is motivated mainly by exposure to social media. This connection needs more study, especially the relationship between the high percentage of belief in conspiracy theories and a society suffering from political and economic crises. Therefore this study argues that undergraduate students who believe in conspiracy theories are motivated by being exposed to social media messages supporting their beliefs that COVID-19 results from a conspiracy. Thus, we assume that undergraduate students who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to select the information that bolsters their conspiracist views instead of information that challenges them. This practice is encouraged by confirmation bias, where the taking in of new information is predicated on one’s current beliefs. Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive cycling that rejects anything that goes against one’s beliefs, recording and accepting only information that follows one’s current belief system (Eadon, 2020). Studies have found that it takes training in strategic thinking to avoid the trap of confirmation bias and the continued belief in conspiracies (Czech, 2020). However, much news is published on social media that suggests that the spread of COVID-19 is a conspiracy (Douglas et al., 2019), and such publication is so overwhelmingly present that readers rarely understand their confirmation bias, seeing only news that agrees with their beliefs. This process can only worsen as social media users curate their feeds to include only those sources that agree with their conspiracist ideas, blocking accounts that disturb their worldview. In addition, it has been found that minority groups are particularly susceptible to conspiracies as a method to help minority groups cope with an unequal social structure (Pennycook et al., 2020). Studies have shown a short-term effect of preference for media messages advancing conspiracy theories on belief in those theories (Einstein & Glick, 2015). Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 began to spread on social media immediately following the initial reports about the pandemic. Some conspiracy theories asserted that the virus was a hoax; others claimed COVID was a bioweapon created in a Chinese lab (Douglas et al., 2019).

Moreover, social media users who were already anti-vaccination didn’t change their beliefs about the COVID vaccines (Pennycook et al., 2020). This might be because social media users who already believe that vaccines are dangerous curate their social media feeds so severely that they create an “echo chamber” devoid of any opposing opinions (Pennycook et al., 2020). Although many conspiracists get their information solely or mainly from social media, other media platforms such as Fox News, conservative talk radio, conservative online newspapers, news agencies and magazines, and other news channels known for conspiracy-minded news articles, many of which tie the COVID vaccines to limits on civil liberties, free speech, and feeling an exigent threat against individual freedoms, which they believe are in danger from liberals, democrats, progressives, and socialists (Oleksy et al., 2021). Interestingly, proponents of conspiracy theories correlate their beliefs with the perceived morality of those delivering the beliefs. That is, conspiracy theorists connect conspiracist beliefs to the morality of the speaker (Emba, 2016). For example, many conspiracy theorists believe that Donald Trump is morally superior to Joe Biden and Dr. Fauci, and thus believe Trump’s ideas much more than they do Biden’s or Fauci’s (even given Dr. Fauci’s medical training and his longtime work with the CDC). Given that we are living in fearful times, including the COVID pandemic, global warming, the rise in tension between ethnicities, and a perceived lack of control over any of these things, conspiracy theories help believers make sense of confusion in the world by simplifying it into black and white/good and evil categories, organized by the perceived morality of political leadership. In the United States, there are multiple conspiracy theories predicated on the perceived morality of immigrants, especially non-Christians. Therefore, if the Islamic religion supports a belief, proponents of conspiracy theories will deny their expertise because of a lack of perceived morality. The same happens with beliefs held by immigrants, particularly Meso and South American immigrants. Disinformation on social media

Ahmed et al (Ahmed et al., 2020) conducted a social group analysis of Twitter data to understand the drivers of the 5 G COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Iraq; the authors also studied strategies to push back against such false narratives. The researchers examined the social media behavior of 6,556 Twitter users who tweeted “5 G coronavirus” or “#5 G coronavirus” between 27 March 2020, and 4 April 2020. They collected 10,140 tweets and utilized the Node XL Social Media Research Foundation tool to assess this data. The researchers hypothesized that 5 G COVID-19 conspiracy theories commonly proliferate on social media networks. The study’s findings showed that the two largest groups of people who believed in conspiracy theories were isolated from each other. Second, the authors found that those who started misleading hashtags lacked authority but managed to captivate audiences. The researchers concluded that the best intervention against conspiracies is a targeted intervention focusing on delegitimizing fake information sources.

Brennen et al (Brennen et al., 2020) analyzed the main types, seeds, and claims of COVID-19 conspiracies. The authors studied a sample of 225 pieces of conspiracy from January 2020 to March 2020. They hypothesized that conspiracies played a profound role in shaping public opinion about the COVID-19 outbreak sources. Researchers measured scale, citations, claims, and responses to determine how conspiracy theorists responded to new stories related to COVID-19. The study found that only a tiny portion of coronavirus conspiracies was entirely fabricated; instead, data and information were reconfigured. In terms of sources, the study determined that conspiracies were both top-down and bottom-up phenomena. In some cases, celebrities started the conspiracies, and in other instances, obscure social media users were responsible for disseminating misleading information. The authors also discovered that a large percentage of conspiracies concern the actions of public authorities.

2.2. Religiosity and conspiracy theories

Religion and faith are also essential factors in predicting belief in conspiracies, and the more important religious faith is, the more that its practitioners believe in conspiracies (Jasinskaja & Jetten, 2019). The more critical and central religious faith is to a person’s identity, the more strongly held their belief in conspiracy theories is. Moreover, belief in conspiracies increased in fundamentalist, far-right religious populations as their leaders spoke to the oppression and violations that their religion was subject to via leftists or democrats (Reijven et al., 2020); for example, a standard American conspiracy is that Christianity is under attack. This belief is not backed up by scholarly studies or any evidence and appears based on fear and paranoia. Perhaps an increase in faith leads to an increase in conspiracy beliefs because both require blind faith and obedience to perceived authority. Shermer agrees that fear is behind many conspiracies, especially beliefs that the “white race” is undergoing genocide and the “white way of life” (Shermer, 2020). Shermer goes on to say that social media is driving the development of these beliefs through repetition and the near-constant refocusing of social justice as a weapon to be used against white people. These, too, are correlated with conservatism and evangelical religion—finally, Robertson (Robertson, 2017) connected belief in conspiracies with the cultural hegemony of mainstream religions. Comparing certain religious beliefs to so-called “crazy conspiracy” beliefs is easy. For example, we take as routine knowledge that God sent Jesus—via a virgin birth—as His only son to die for our sins.

On the other hand, people may ridicule the idea of aliens landing on earth or the healing powers of crystals. That is, mainstream religion has become an unconscious and unquestioning belief set and, thus, hegemonic (Robertson, 2017). In the end, Robertson argues that fighting against this hegemony is extremely difficult and would probably end with just another set of hegemonic “crazy” beliefs:

The church’s hegemony continues so long as we permit their irrationality to be taken seriously but deny other irrationalities the same privilege. Not only that, but we fail to report the data we find accurately. These are beliefs held by vast swathes of the public in the modern West that many would prefer to ignore, but they are there nonetheless. It should not be part of our purview to decide which ideas are permissible. We ignore them at our peril––as recent elections in the United States and UK demonstrate (Robertson, 2017). Robertson warns us that we must not dismiss these hegemonic beliefs as “crazy” and call it a day. No matter how crazy a belief becomes, it still has enormous effects on the “true believers” and those who resist those beliefs.

2.3. Conspiracy theory belief in Iraq and the Middle East

Given the rise of conspiracy theories over large swathes of information, one would expect to find conspiracists across the globe. In this study, the population studied is Iraqi undergraduates from one of two Baghdad universities. The study looks at the rate of belief in conspiracies, if there are differences according to gender, and if these beliefs can be correlated with the use of social media. Matthew Gray argues that conspiracy theories are ubiquitous in Iraq and has found that the great distance between cities is one cause of this problem. The Middle East has been subject to so many conspiracies in the past. In addition, some conspiracy theories are driven by the government itself (Brennen et al., 2020). This idea is echoed by al-Marashi, who argues that Iraq and other Middle Eastern governments spread conspiracy theories that all domestic problems are caused by foreign interference (Al-Marishi, 2019). Gray also adds that there is no evidence that the Islamic religion has anything to do with Iraq’s or the Middle East’s general belief in conspiracy theories (Gray, 2020). There are also many anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in Iraq and the Middle East, believing that Jewish people want to commit genocide on Muslim people (Spoerl, 2020). In addition to theories about Israel, there are also many conspiracy theories about the West (Nyhan & Zeitzoff, 2018). Even though Americans also believe in conspiracies about Iraq and other Middle East countries, conspiracies from America are presented—within America—as logical.

In contrast, conspiracies from the Middle East are presented as irrational and pathological (Alstrope & Bleiker, 2018). This article indicates that conspiracy theories proliferate around the world. Still, attitudes towards them depend on which country believes them, which country the conspiracy is about, and which country judges whether or not the conspiracies are viable. Matthew Gray (Gray, 2008) published a paper explaining conspiracy theories in modern Arab Middle Eastern Political Discourse: conspiracy theories always rise quickly in Iraq; some seem just fantasy. Both the Gulf War of 1990–1991 and the Iraq War of 2003 have given rise to many conspiracy plots. Often, conspiracy plots of the Gulf War were sponsored under Saddam Hussein’s regime. In Iraq, in the broader Arab world, and even in the West, conspiracies around the 2003 conflict and the subsequent Iraqi civil conflict were expected, perhaps due to the questionable and changing explanations of the Bush administration (Gray, 2008). In 1990, a certain number of conspirators deliberately struck Saddam into a trap; in invading Kuwait to launch a war, conspirators knew that this invasion would destroy or weaken Hussein’s army or at least make the West more accessible to Iraq’s oil (Gray, 2008). During and after the crisis and the war of 1991, Saddam outlined similar conspiracy arguments. Other conspiracy theories were seen in the 2003 war and its aftermath. For example, in the early months following the collapse of the Saddam regime, there was a conspiracy theory that Saddam made a secret deal with America to lose the war (having been put into power in the first place by Washington D.C.) or that the United States knew where he was but did not want to kill him, and knew where he was hiding in 2003 as well, or that the destruction of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad’s Paradise Square was an American conspiracy. Others are similar: “Much of the Iraqi military hardware has been destroyed by TV cameras, and TV stations from Arab countries have shown small photographs of wreckage that have fueled many Arab minds with speculation that an arrangement was reached” (Gray, 2008). Subsequent conspiracy theories were similar in their modality in the years following 2003. A widespread claim was that the United States conspired against Iraqi Sunnis or that, on 30 December 2006, Saddam was not executed; instead, a “double” took his place. Moreover, countries and cities in political turmoil—like Baghdad—construct suspicious conspiracy theories about multiple subjects (LeVine & Malstrom, 2019); such turmoil could only be intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, fostering conspiracy theories about the pandemic, among other subjects. Various zones in the world lack studies on conspiracy theories, with each zone having specific conspiracist beliefs. Some theories are universal—such as the pandemic- while others are regional and connected to a population’s specific political and religious system and its leaders. In Iraq, many political dilemmas and conflicts could be connected to conspiracy theories, as evidenced by the studies cited in the previous paragraph. However, this paper focuses on Iraqi student belief in conspiracies, especially about COVID-19. One study found that 27.4% of Iraqi Kurdistan believe in conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

Lastly, those believing the theories were young, educated, and unemployed; the authors theorized that the loss of their jobs contributed to conspiracy beliefs (D. Abdulah & Saeed, 2020). Another study found that 83.5% of Iraqis sampled in the Duhok governorate had not been vaccinated and that 51.4% did not plan to be vaccinated (D. M. Abdulah, 2021), believing that the vaccines were risky and unsafe; these views were based on misinformation. This belief increased among the uneducated and illiterate. Moreover, there is evidence that terrorist groups are spreading conspiracies about the pandemic via apocalyptic theories blaming their “enemies,” using social media to spread these theories (Basit, 2020; Kruglanski et al., 2020). Another study found that fear, loss of family members to COVID-19, and social media use were behind vaccine hesitancy in Iraq and correlations with being female and being young (Tahir et al., 2021). However, an article studying medical students in Baghdad found high knowledge, satisfaction, and acceptance of proactive measures against COVID, even though many received their information from social media (Khalil et al., 2020). However, one might expect university students in the medical field to be highly knowledgeable. Another study found high rates of vaccine hesitancy in Middle Eastern Arabs, although the country most willing to receive vaccinations was Iraq, and recommended raising awareness and ensuring fair distribution (Abu-Farha et al., 2021). A further study in Iraqi Kurdistan found high scale s of mistrust in experts and institutions, relying instead on television; this study did not find a connection between vaccine hesitancy and social media (Taha et al., 2021).

3. Theoretical framework

The study argues that the conspiracy affects Iraqi society and has influenced its human thinking. This phenomenon resulted from the complex circumstances that the Iraqis lived through: wars and political crises over many decades. Therefore, two hypotheses are suggested. The first is that the conspiracy is rooted in the Iraqi mind and its interpretations, and second, people depend on disinformation in social media to reinforce their conspiratorial interpretations.

The two hypotheses in this conceptual framework rely on two theories, conspiracy and media dependency theories. First, the “conspiracy” is obtained from the Latin word conspirers, meaning “to breathe together,” which indicates combining two or more individuals and their collusion-based actions to attain the desired result (Fenster, 1999). A conspiracy theory would be an explanation, either speculative or evidence-based, that attributes an event’s causes to a conspiracy (Byford, 2001). Or paranoid notion would be a theoretical or proof-based clarification, which characterizes the reasons for an occasion to a trick or a plot (Basham, 2003). A standard definition of conspiracy theories by Jeffrey M. Bale is the conviction that a group of actors meets in a secret agreement to attain some malevolent goal (Reid, 2010). Therefore, based on Bale’s definition. Conspiracy beliefs are often defined as believing in the presence of a “vast, sinister, preternaturally efficient multinational conspiratorial network intended to perform most heinous actions (Bale, 2007). The inferred network’s goal—the conspiracist actors’ goal—is to mislead purposefully and influence individuals participating in, impacted by, or witnessing significant events such as war, natural disasters, poverty, and terrorist attacks (Janssens et al., 1966). Typically, when official records of an incident are insufficient or there is no definite explanation, conspiracy theories about such occurrences are supported (Basham, 2003). To test the first hypothesis in this conceptual framework, the study used the psychometric assessment of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCBS) and applied it to survey interviews of undergraduate students. The (GCBS), is the most widely used measure of the general belief in conspiracy theories to measure the student’s conspiracy. Secondly, media dependency theory explains how individuals become dependent on media as a resource. This theory organizes the relationship between the media and social systems that shape mass media’s effect on audiences. Media dependency theory is based on two main elements: sources and goals. Discussing origins, DeFleur & Rokeach wrote that different individuals, groups, and organizations must depend on resources controlled by others, groups, or organizations to achieve their personal and social goals. Individuals seek to accomplish these goals to understand the social world by learning and obtaining experiences through direct contact with the social system. The guidance and practical elements refer to the interactions between individuals in society, including making decisions, such as political participation and dealing with emergencies. Another goal is providing information: the media are an information system through which individuals seek information to achieve their goals. The media engage in three types of tasks: collecting information through delegates and correspondents assigned to do so, coordinating information, and revising the information gathered, and disseminating knowledge by distributing the previously organized and coordinated information to the public. Media dependency theory includes several hypotheses about reliance on the media. The first hypothesis is that the more instability in a society, the more society members depend on the media. Second, the more the media system in place in society can achieve the public’s goals and satisfy its needs, the more it depends on the media. Third, the degree of media dependence on the media varies according to users’ circumstances, characteristics, and goals. Based on the media dependency theory, the author conceptualizes that students who believe in conspiracy depend on social media for information and news to achieve their goals during times of COVID-19 crisis. And because social media is an uncontrolled medium compared to traditional media (Dagnall et al., 2007). It will be the most expansive field to post disinformation and conspiracies, but it reinforces several conspiracy theories. The study operationalized the media dependency of students on survey interviews with a sample of Iraqi undergraduate students.

The hypothesis that people with Conspiracies Beliefs depend on media sources that confirm their mentality, and thus they will believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories due to their media choices. Therefore, being selective in mass communication refers to the fact (Bajrami et al., 2016) that the audience may make an informed selection based on their preference for trusted information (Van der Linden, 2015). The online environment offers a wide variety of easily accessible information providers from which populist citizens can profit in the very sense of media preference. Among these online alternatives are social media platforms (Bajrami et al., 2016), political blogs, websites of interested parties, and digital-born information (Fischer et al., 2008).

4. Methodology

4.1. The survey design

This study surveyed a sample of 331 college students (230 male and 101 female) the psychometric assessment of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCBS), the most widely used measure of the general belief in conspiracy theories. The scale includes five related but distinct theory types: government malfeasance, extraterrestrial cover-ups, malevolent global conspiracies, personal well-being, and information control. The survey was designed according to the media dependency theory and GCBS (Slater, 2004) and a few previous studies on use of social media, taking into consideration the Iraqi context (Schulz et al., 2017). The study considers a snowball sample to identify the graduate students in the two major universities in Iraq.

4.2. Research questions

RQ1:

Taking into consideration the political, social and security reality of Iraq and its effects: What is the scale of conspiracy belief? And how belief was reflected in media dependency of news even if a disinformation in the case of the COVID-19?

RQ2:

What are the major conspiracy theories that the undergraduate students believe to explain COVID-19?

RQ3:

In terms of gender, did the students differ in the percentage of their belief in the conspiracy and their dependence on social media?

4.3. Sampling

4.3.1. Pretest

The draft instrument was presented to ten undergraduate students (five male and five female) to get their feedback.

4.3.2. Face-to-face preparing frame

The researcher visited the two universities to identify the sample of undergraduate students and schedule phone call interviews. The two researchers prepared a frame of 331 students who accepted to conduct the interviews, (230 men and 101 women) with an average age of 19–24 years. The study approach is based on phone interviews conducted on a sample of undergraduate students from two main universities in Baghdad (125 men and 87 women). The two universities were Baghdad University and Al Iraqiya University. They are the two largest and oldest public universities in Baghdad. however only 212 successful interviews were completed in a month.

4.3.3. Sampling

The study selected a random sample of students from Baghdad’s two major universities. The sample is considered random, starting with the sample seeds of Iraqi students. Twenty students (ten women and ten men) were face-to-face selected from five different departments at the University of Baghdad and the same practice at the Iraqi University. By applying the snowballs sample, each student gave us the approval of other students with their phone numbers to contact them and conduct the remaining interviews.

In cases where a student refused to interview, the interviewer moved on to the next. Researchers chose students for our random sample from each department, resulting in around 8 to 10 interviews at each participating department. However, some interviews were canceled due to refusals or because the student was busy. Canceled interviews were replaced with other interviews, so 8 to 12 interviews were ultimately conducted at each department. It sampling covered up to 54 departments in the two universities of all literary, arts and scientific specializations, as researcher chose 27 departments in the University of Baghdad and 27 departments in the Iraqi University. The phone interview lasted approximately one month; Fieldwork was completed between 6 October 2020, and 2 November 2020.

4.4. The phone interviews

Three researchers (one male and two female) conducted phone interviews, and the number of daily interviews for each researcher was from two to five. The sample included uniquely different Iraqi undergraduate students to answer the questions:

- Who are the undergraduate students, in terms of gender, and what is the mass media depend on to get COVID-19 news?

The study used phone interviews by applying the snowball sample for multiple waves (a new sampling wave reached the undergraduate students, or an interviewee introduced the interviewer to an undergraduate student or more potential undergraduate students); the paper used the diverse seeds of a snowball sample because it gives a vital sample diversity compared to the initial seed (Brotherton et al., 2013). Therefore, the snowball seed diversification was classified to cover maximum diversity, and the starting seeds for the snowball sample were varied to four undergraduate students (men and women).

The first part of the phone survey was designed according to the GCBS. The GCBS was created to research conspiracy theories and is typically used to measure beliefs in specific conspiracies through a survey. It asks broad questions about assumptions that are presumed to underlie such beliefs. The GCBS measures an overall score (Kirchherr et al., 2018). The second part was conducted through phone interviews with undergraduate students who used traditional and social media to measure their information preference on COVID-19. This was done to test the hypothesis that conspiracy believers intentionally expose themselves to social media messages to further shore up their belief in the conspiracy. The study measured the scale of beliefs in conspiracies by using 15 GCBS questions; each question asks the subject to rate how much they agree with a given statement on a three-point scale, where 1 = disagree, 2 = neutral, and 3 = agree. The 15 statements are in Table 1.

Table 1. Questionnaire entries

Questionnaire entries
1	The government is involved in the murder of innocent citizens and well-known public figures and keeps this a secret.
2	The power controlled by heads of state is second to that of small unknown groups who control world politics.
3	Secret Institutions communicate with extraterrestrials but keep this truth from the public.
4	The spread of certain viruses and diseases results from some organizations’ deliberate, concealed efforts.
5	Groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate, or suppress evidence to deceive the people.
6	The government permits or perpetrates acts of terrorism on its soil, disguising its involvement.
7	A secret group is responsible for making all major decisions, such as going to war.
8	Evidence of alien contact is being concealed from the public.
9	Technology with mind-control capacities is used by people without their knowledge.
10	The new technology that would hurt the current business is stifled.
11	The government utilizes individuals as patsies to shroud their inclusion in crime.
12	Certain critical occasions have been the consequence of a small group that covertly controls world occasions.
13	Some unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings and rumors are planned to divert the public from actual alien contact.
14	Tests, including new medications or innovations, are routinely carried out on people without their knowledge or consent.
15	Much significant data is deliberately concealed from the people out of self-interest.

The second part of the survey was concerned with media preference and investigated whether the topics in social media related to explanations of COVID-19 as a conspiracy and whether this affected the audience’s belief in conspiratorial interpretations. Finally, the researchers compared the GCBS scale with belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories through social media preference. Furthermore, the researchers analyzed the results based on gender.

5. Results and discussion

The GCBS survey indicates that students have a very firm belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Additionally, this research demonstrates that most conspiracies that attract undergraduate Iraqi students state that the reasons for the COVID-19 pandemic stem from world conflict, are part of an international war, and are a result of the US-China trade war. 58.44% of undergraduate students believe that COVID-19 is a global conspiracy. Moreover, 35.67% said that this conspiracy is part of competition between China and the USA. 26.11% of the sample believe the pandemic is a purposeful biological war. When asked where these students are getting their beliefs, the survey found that social media is an essential part of creating and spreading these students’ misinformation. Indeed, 71% prefer Facebook as the leading information resource on social media.

5.1. Government malfeasance

90.19% of the students agree regarding government malfeasance, which is the belief that the government commits crimes against its own citizens, while only 6.35 % answered neutral, and 3.46% disagreed.

In terms of gender, Figure 2 shows that 89.25% of women believe that the government commits crimes against its own citizens, while 8.6% responded neutral, and 2.15% disagreed. Meanwhile, 89.33% of male students believe that the government commits crimes against its own citizens, while 6.33% were neutral, and 4.34% disagreed. Women believe in this conspiracy theory more than men. The men’s undergraduate GCBS conspiracist mentality score was 4.5/5 for government malfeasance. The women’s score was 4.35/5.

This finding indicates that students do not trust the government and believe that it is intentionally hurting its own citizens. How could these students trust in the government distribution of COVID-19 vaccines when almost all of them distrust the government so deeply? In order to increase vaccine participation, and decrease beliefs in conspiracy theories about the danger of these vaccines, public officials must work on gaining trust with the public. This is a large task, however, and will take many years. Perhaps an easier task would be to shift the responsibility of distributing vaccines to non-governmental organizations like hospitals and clinics.

5.2 Malevolent global conspiracies

Malevolent global conspiracies reflect the believe that government and industry are controlled by the government behind the scenes. Figure 2 shows that 66.52% of the students agreed on beliefs regarding malevolent global conspiracies, while only 22.22% were neutral, and 11.26% disagreed. In terms of gender, 73.12% of women believed that in malevolent global conspiracies, 24.73% answered neutral, and 2.15% disagreed. Meanwhile, 65.50% of male students believed in malevolent global conspiracies, while 21.83% of them were neutral, and 12.67% disagreed. Thus, it appears that more women believe in malevolent global conspiracies than men. The male undergraduate GCBS score was 3.2/5, and the women’s undergraduate score was 4.03/5.

If students believe in global conspiracies, where they are suspicious that the pandemic and vaccines are the result of dangerous global conspiracies aimed at hurting ordinary Iraqi citizens, it is clear that they will stay away from vaccines, perhaps especially from vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna that were developed in America. Such conspiracies only propagate the fear that causes many Iraqi citizens to stay away from the vaccines.

5.3 Control of information

Figure 1 shows that 73.30% of the students agreed regarding the conspiracy theory on control of information, believing that science is manipulated, while only 17.32% answered neutral, and 9.38% disagreed. In terms of gender, 80.65% of women believe that science is manipulated, while 15.05% were neutral, and 4.30% disagreed. Meanwhile, 72.17% of male students believed that science was manipulated, while 17.67% were neutral, and 10.17% disagreed. More women believe that science is manipulated. The male undergraduate GCBS score was 2.3/5. The women’s undergraduate student score was 2.31/5. Finally, male undergraduate students’ overall score for conspiracist mentality was 3.26, while female undergraduate students’ score was 3.70, and the average score of college students is 2.22. Consequently, college students have multiple conspiracies Beliefs.

Figure 1. Theoretical framework.

If Iraqi students, and Iraqi citizens in general, believe that science is not a representation of truth, but is instead manipulated by governments or evil corporations, acceptance of vaccines that were developed and provided by the scientific community will not be high. A large portion of students believed that scientific truth is manipulated; this fact does not bode well for participation in vaccination programmes during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, health professionals and policy makers should take steps to counter the belief that science is manipulated, thus reassuring Iraqi citizens that the vaccines were developed in scientifically valid ways, are safe, and target only the COVID-19 virus instead of, for example, injecting microchips into their bodies.

5.4 Extra-terrestrial cover-up

Figure 2 shows that 41.41% of the students agreed regarding extra-terrestrial cover-ups, believing that aliens’ information is being concealed from the public, while only 14.14% responded neutrally, and 44.44% disagreed. In terms of gender, 46.24% of women believed in extra-terrestrial cover-ups, while 17.20% were neutral, and 36.56% disagreed. Meanwhile, 40.67% of male students believed in extra-terrestrial cover-ups, while 13.67% were neutral, and 45.67% disagreed. More women believe in extra-terrestrial cover-ups than men. The male undergraduate score was 3.2/5, while the women’s score was 2.65/5.

Figure 2. Undergraduate students’ conspiracies belief score.

What is interesting is that this belief is much lower than the belief in the COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Although the percentage is still high, it is less than half of surveyed students, perhaps showing that the fight against conspiracy theories can make inroads, decreasing the belief in particularly outrageous conspiracy theories. Therefore, policy institutions in Iraq should focus on educating the public about the most outrageous theories, such as the belief in microchips being delivered by the vaccine, thus reducing public fears of getting the vaccines. Every reduction in fear and belief in specific conspiracy theories will lead to many more people accepting the vaccine in the fight against the pandemic.

5.5 Personal wellbeing

66.52% of the students agreed regarding conspiracies about personal wellbeing, believing that individuals are currently being harmed by concealed dangers, while 20.78% were neutral, and 12.70% disagreed. In terms of gender, 74.19% of women believed in conspiracy theories regarding personal well-being, while 19.35% were neutral, and 6.45% disagreed. Meanwhile, 65.33% of male students responded that they believed in these theories, while 21.00% were neutral, and 13.67% disagreed. More women than men believe that concealed dangers are currently harming individuals. The male undergraduate GCBS score was 3.6/5, while the women’s undergraduate score was 3.03/5

These numbers are distressingly large, particularly when thinking about the pandemic. Certainly connected to the belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, belief in conspiracies meant to harm people can only reduce participation in vaccination programs and increase the belief in harmful theories about both vaccines and the pandemic as a conspiracy as a whole. Fear as a whole in this study—fear against the government, global conspiracies, and personal harm (among others)—can lead to people rejecting the vaccines, perhaps allowing new, more virulent variants to evolve. Moreover, if the government demands citizens to quarantine, wear masks, and get vaccinated, belief in conspiracies to create harm will create resistance to these demands as these theories push the idea that none of these things are meant to help and instead are meant to harm.

5.6 The COVID-19 conspiracy

Figure 3 shows that 58.44 % of students believe COVID-19 is a conspiracy, while 44.56% believe it developed naturally. In terms of gender, 58% of men believe that COVID-19 is a global conspiracy, while 42% believe it is natural. On the other hand, 61.29% of women believe COVID-19 is a conspiracy, while 38.71% believe it is natural.

Figure 3. The believers in COVID-19 as a conspiracy.

These numbers are also alarming. More than half of educated university students believe that the pandemic is a global conspiracy, and not a naturally occurring virus that evolved in nature. This belief encourages mistrust, in particular of China, and leads to greater mistrust in the government as a force participating in the spread of the pandemic. If students believe that the pandemic is a conspiracy, how can they trust that the government is truly willing to put a stop to the pandemic? In addition, such beliefs encourage xenophobia, as these conspiracies place blame on foreign governments as the initiators of the virus.

Figure 4 shows that most students (71.97%) indicated that they depend on Facebook to obtain information on COVID-19. Among them, 71.64% were men, and 73.91% were women. Other mediums, including Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp, were also used by students as the primary source for five conspiracy theories.

Figure 4. Undergraduate student dependence on social media for conspiratorial interpretation of information about COVID-19.

Figure 5 gives us an insight into the five conspiracy theories believed in by students with high conspiracy beliefs according to the GCBS, all of which were obtained from social media, with the most prevalent source being Facebook. The highest measure of a student-believed conspiracy published on social media was that COVID-19 is part of an American-Chinese war conducted covertly. The second plot is also a conflict, but it explains that it is a secret biological war. It turns out that the idea of conflict was the most believed conspiracy by the students, which they learned from social media. Others believed that COVID-19 due to a leak in the Wuhan center. And others believed, according to their social media dependence, that COVID-19 is a product of Bill Gates. Others believed in a conspiracy spread on social media that COVID-19 was a lie or fake news. Finally, some students mentioned that COVID-19 is a product of 5 G use.

Figure 5. The major conspiracies that students believe and were exposed to disinformation through social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp).

Figure 6 shows that most students (67.97%) use social media to obtain information about COVID-19, while 32.03% use traditional media (television, radio, and newspapers). In terms of gender, 74.19% of female students used social media and 25.81% used traditional media, while 67% of men used social media and 33.00% used traditional media. Again, this study demonstrates that social media is responsible for the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Therefore, as stressed above, social media companies must develop more effective methods of policing and removing users who post conspiracies, and posts that spread this misinformation.

Figure 6. Media sources that students depend to obtain COVID-19 information.

According to Figure 7, 56% (57.46% men and 47.83% women) of students explain the reason for moving away from traditional media towards social media is access to deeper information about COVID-19 that could not be obtained through traditional media. Moreover, 15.29% (26.09% women and 13.43% men) responded that they feel social media information can be obtained at any time during the pandemic. Another 21.74% (15.67% men and 21.74% women) fear missing information about the pandemic’s reasons. Finally, 12.10% (13.43% men and 4.35% women) mentioned that they use social media to obtain information about COVID-19 because they find the information more exciting than that offered by traditional media.

Figure 7. Reasons in depending on social media to get news.

5.7 Conspiracy theories in the Iraq context

After the long wars that Iraqi fought, such as the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988, then Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the religious leaders were freed from state control, and they hurried to fill the political hole left by the demise of Saddam Hussein’s regime. It did so by capitalizing on its moral position and extensive mass communication networks and taking advantage of secular forces’ weaknesses. These developments had adverse effects that affected education, readers, and spreading awareness. Thus, I argue that the conspiracy theory would have a powerful influence over the thinking of Iraqi citizens and their interpretation of crises and events, and any interpretation may tend to link it to politics as a result of the experience of the Iraqis and their past in a life affected by wars and political conflicts. Therefore, the study adopted the scale of conspiracy theory in the minds of a sample of Iraqi students, which was a very high percentage consistent with the phenomenon I argued about. In addition to the high scale of conspiracy, the results show a significant reliance on social media, especially Facebook, to obtain information that confirms to the students that COVID-19 is a conspiracy. The Iraqis interpreted it politically as part of the China-American conflict. The results of the study did not notice significant differences between males and females in terms of belief in conspiracy or dependence on the media.

According to the GCBS, it was found that the percentage of belief in conspiracy theories is high among undergraduate university students. Therefore, there is a necessity to conduct new studies on the reasons for the high percentage of belief in conspiracy theories among Iraqi undergraduates. Specifically, further research should tie belief in specific conspiracy theories to the exact news sources or social media sites where those theories were found. Second, most of the conspiracies about COVID-19 were situated around the competition between China and America. This finding indicates the students’ interest in these two countries and their global effects. Facebook was undergraduate students’ most used social media platform to access information about the pandemic. The most common conspiracy theory that the students believed was that the epidemic resulted from the Chinese American conflict to the extent of 35.67%. Next, students believed that a world biological war caused the epidemic in the proportion of 26.11%. Then students believed that COVID-19 was due to a virus leak in a Wuhan laboratory in China in the proportion of 24.4%. Finally, the study indicates that students prefer social media to obtain information that confirms their theories and perceptions about the causes of COVID-19. The study results confirmed the argument put forth in this paper that Iraqis tend to interpret crises and events through the lens of conspiracy due to their unstable political and security environment. In Figure 7 most of the students whose thinking was conspiratorial indicated that depending on social media was due to wanting to obtain deeper information and an explanation of what they were convinced of.

Students expressed their dependence on social media to obtain information related to COVID-19. Most of them, up to 70% of the sample, depended on Facebook, followed by Twitter, at a rate of up to 8%, then Instagram at a rate of 5%, then YouTube at a rate of 3%. This means that more than 86% of the students relied on social media to obtain their information about the COVID-19 pandemic. Those dependent on social media were divided into their belief in five conspiracies that explained COVID-19, as shown in Figure 7.

6. Conclusions

The term “conspiracy theory” has taken on a new meaning in recent years, owing mainly to the worldwide spread of COVID-19. The pandemic has led to the propagation of various myths regarding the scale of government control in people’s lives and mistrust about the remarkable pace of vaccine development projects. All of this created widespread resonance and was disseminated unprecedentedly via the media. Information that differed from what official sources indicated [about the spread of the virus around the world] was also disseminated and was inflated and transmitted by individuals at an unprecedented pace. Finally, the results show that there is an exaggeration in adopting the conspiracy between an educated society and, most importantly, students. The critical question is how the response of other uneducated or less educated societies will be. Furthermore, this community, a sample of university students in Iraq, relied on social media more, especially Facebook, to adopt several conspiracies reported on social media.

This data again proves that social media sites, especially Facebook, are not adequately policing the posts on their site. Whilst understandably a difficult task, Facebook and other social media sites must find ways to police posts for conspiracy theories and other “fake news” so that the site itself is not a continuing reason for the spread of the pandemic and the fear towards the vaccines. Even if they must hire thousands more employees, or at the very least develop new algorithms to detect posts encouraging conspiracies—especially conspiracies about COVID-19 and its vaccines—social media sites must understand and act to stop the spread of misinformation about the pandemic, and strategies like masking, social distancing, and the vaccines.

The data presented in this study stresses the cultural transformation from using traditional media sources like newspapers and television to find and research information to the use of social media sites to find this information. While there certainly are good, informative articles about the pandemic on social media sites, there are also many negative articles and posts which spread conspiracy theories. In addition to social media sites like Facebook focusing on better policing strategies against these theories, students and citizens themselves should be trained in research skills that help them discover whether a news article or a post is trustworthy or whether a news article or post is spreading misinformation. Given that the incredibly rapid cultural transformation towards using social media as a primary news source, parents and teachers must be trained to teach these skills so that young people can discern between truthful stories and conspiracy theories. Such education should be required for all students from elementary school through college, which should help reduce the belief in conspiracy theories as students develop thoughtful strategies to determine the truth or falsehood behind particular posts or news items.

The study’s hypotheses were supported by the research results, where a high percentage in the conspiracy scale among students and the students’ reliance on social media to obtain several conspiracies that appeared in the survey. The author has argued that that conspiracy has a large scale because of an authoritarian religion represented by the clergy who support superstition. Secondly, a media source like social media can be relied upon to promote it. There is therefore a need to study the circumstances that reinforce conspiracy theories, such as the impact of wars, the influence of the control of religious authorities, and education levels within society.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Haitham Numan

Haitham Numan teaches in the Department of Media and Communication at Cihan University. His research interests include Public Opinion, Intercultural Communication, and aspects of research Methods and Middle Eastern Politics. He has published almost 20 scientific research articles, including journal articles and books. Numan is an occasional op-ed writer with a track record of TV appearances.