QAnon's Rise in Europe: A Multimodal Analysis of the Examples of Austria and Germany

QAnon, the conspiracy theory followed by millions of social media users in the United States, has also significantly gained ground in a couple of European countries, among them Austria and Germany. The Covid-19 pandemic has functioned as kind of a fire accelerant, quite a number of European QAnon branches have sprung up online. Fears stirred up by the coronavirus outbreak have significantly contributed to the increase of European QAnon followers and believers in the “Deep State” model. More and more people in Austria and Germany have meanwhile joined QAnon on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and especially on Telegram. QAnon symbols and references to the conspiracy theory are particularly visible also at so-called "Corona rallies". While such protests assemble heterogeneous groups of activists such as anti-vaxxers, government sceptics, white supremacists, and far-right activists, the influence of the far right, which is quite agreeable to QAnon's ideas, has grown over the months. The “theories” conveyed by QAnon perfectly fit Coronavirus conspiracy constructions such as alleged secret plans pertaining to vaccination programs or supposed dangerous manipulations by powerful individuals and arcane societies. Moreover, QAnon narratives can easily be connected to the main stories about "The Great Replacement" and "The Great Reset", propagated by diverse far right groups in Germany and Austria. They also relate to anti-pluralistic, anti-liberal, and anti-Semitic patterns that mold the political cultures of Austria and Germany. The paper presents selected results of the comparative research project “Protests against governmental measures relating to the Covid-19 pandemic in Austria and Germany”. The data were collected first by means of an online survey complemented by short problem centered qualitative interviews with Corona rallies participants. Second, netnographic methods were used to observe relevant Telegram and Facebook groups and to collect textual and visual material online. In addition, media material has been collected, using the Austrian Media Corpus, one of the largest text corpora in the German language, the APA Online Manager, and the archive of the German News Agency. The analysis of the media material followed the principles of theoretical sampling, data have been selected for in-depth analysis on the basis of their potential representation of important concepts and constructs, and shall reflect as precisely as possible what is going on in the field. The multimodal analysis allows for the reconstruction of both text frames and visual frames as important and effective means of meaning making. The study combines statistical analysis of the survey data, both quantitative and qualitative text analytical tools, elements of critical discourse analysis, visual context analysis and image type analysis. This is to explain why centuries-old conspiracy theories that have returned from the United States to Europe in new garments currently achieve such striking success. One of the results highlights the adaptation of QAnon’s US based narratives into EU-centered - or even local - narratives, where they merge with pre-existing conspiracy narratives. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that QAnon functions as kind of a conspiracy theory sponge which gives a home to diverse and even contradictory narratives.