Fig 1.
Timeline of the most significant events that occurred during the course of the COVID-19 and 5G DW in 2020.
Fig 2.
(Left) Illustration of the concept of temporal slices and (Right) accumulative slices.
Temporal slices do not contain the vertices and edges of previous slices, while accumulative slices contain all vertices and edges from the previous slices.
Fig 3.
Three-part depiction of Network G↓.
The left subfigure presents the global degree distribution, illustrating the range of degree centralities. The central subfigure displays the distribution of cluster sizes across all accumulative slices, with clusters identified via the Leiden algorithm [27]. The rightmost subfigure explores the cluster size distribution across all temporal slices (, chosen for visualization to reveal finer temporal details, with
reflecting daily Twitter rhythms). Both the middle and rightmost figures are created by counting the occurrence of clusters with size C in every slice before averaging the number of occurrences by the number of slices in the experiment. Notably, both degree and cluster sizes exhibit visual patterns suggestive of power-law distributions, mirroring those found in other social networks. Note that this assertion is based on exploratory inspection rather than formal statistical tests.
Fig 4.
(Left) Total number of users and established contacts in each time “slice” and (Right) the corresponding accumulative slices.
Contacts encompass retweets, quotes, and comments, along with the count of distinct users per time segment. The 100-day investigation span, from February 1, 2020, to May 11, 2020, separates into accumulative slices (shown on the right) and
temporal slices (shown on the left). Both charts clearly demonstrate a phase transition between slices 360 to 390 and slices 61 to 66, respectively. Additionally, potential predictors emerge between slices 270 and 280 in the left chart. The shaded “Critical Area” corresponds to the initial period of reported arson attacks and real-world consequences.
Fig 5.
The average nearest neighbour degree (ANND) function at three different stages: (Left) before the phase transition (before slice 360), (Middle) during the phase transition (between slices 360 and 390) and (Right) after phase transition (after slice 390).
Fig 6.
Evolution of user clustering in the analyzed DW from February 1, 2020, to May 10, 2020, represented in time slices on the x-axis.
The left subplot illustrates the situation with accumulative slices and a . It shows a clear increase in the relative size of the top 10% of all clusters. This implies a growing participation in the 5G-COVID conspiracy narrative, with more users becoming part of clusters other than the largest cluster. The subplot on the right, displaying temporal slices with a
, shows a similar trend. It is noteworthy that the identity of the largest cluster changes over time, i.e., the largest cluster at a given time does not necessarily contain the same users as the largest cluster at a later time.
Fig 7.
Correlation between total contacts and the fraction attributable to the most active users, gauged by degree centrality.
The left subplot reveals the percentage of vertices in relation to the total number in an accumulative slice with a interval, marking the transition around slice 63. The changing ratio of connections during this transition suggests that highly active users interact with a larger set of distinct users compared to those with lower activity levels. Furthermore, the figure indicates a potential predictor around slice 45, which appears to be primarily noticeable to the active users. The right hand plot presents the same relationship for the temporal slices with
. Here, we observe similar patterns as on the left. Additionally, the gap becomes apparent between the most active 2% of users and the most active 5%, 10%, or 20% between slices 350 and 470, underlining the influential role of a small proportion of highly active users in shaping the network dynamics. The timeframe of the “Critical Area” (arson attacks and real-world consequences) aligns with the transition observed around slice 63 (left) and slices 360-390 (right).