The Eurabia Conspiracy Theory: Twitter’s Political Influencers, Narratives, and Information Sources

• Published in: Media and communication (Lisboa) Vol. 11; no. 4; pp. 73 - 85
• Main Authors: Monaci, Sara, Morreale, Domenico, Persico, Simone
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lisbon Cogitatio Press 01.10.2023; Cogitatio
• Subjects: Analysis; Communication; Conspiracy; Conspiracy theories; COVID-19; Data collection; Disinformation; Eurabia doctrine; European integration; False information; Immigration; Information sources; International economic integration; Islamization; Migrants; Narratives; Pandemics; Population; population replacement conspiracy; Social media; Social networks; Social perception; Soziale Medien; twitter; United Kingdom; Netherlands; France; Spain
• ISSN: 2183-2439; 2183-2439
• DOI: 10.17645/mac.v11i4.7247

In recent years, conspiracy theories on social media have emerged as a significant issue capable of undermining social perceptions of European integration. Narratives such as the Eurabia doctrine, which would imply an ethnic replacement of the indigenous European population with migrants (Bergmann, 2018), have been a significant resonance. Thanks to computational analysis, we have collected data from Twitter over three years (2020, 2021, and 2022) during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this period, we collected over 50,000 tweets strictly related to the Eurabia doctrine topic in different European languages. Analysing the collected data, we identified the most relevant voices spreading conspiracy theories online, the emerging narratives related to the Eurabia doctrine, and the primary sources used by the most active or mentioned subjects in spreading disinformation.