Celebrating Success: Dr Wasim Ahmed

Congratulations to Dr Wasim Ahmed and his co-authors who recently had their paper titled: “COVID-19 and the 5G Conspiracy Theory: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Data” published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

A number of conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 have been spread on social media platforms. One of these has linked the spread of COVID-19 to the launch of the mobile communication network known as ‘5G’ which is the successor to the current 4G network. It is a dangerous conspiracy theory which has led to the burning of 5G towers around the United Kingdom, including damage reported at a hospital.

In the paper, Dr Wasim Ahmed and his co-authors analyse the conspiracy theory on Twitter using social network analysis, identify influential sources spreading the theory and discuss methods to combat it.

The work was also recently featured in an article published by E-International News, and is featured by the London School of Economics. Further outlets have also shown an interest in promoting this work.

The full article is available here.