Conspiracy Theory as Metaphor: Promoting Cancer Misinformation through Algorithmic Influence and Metaphoric Manipulation on TikTok

Illness has long been framed through metaphor. Whereas the media was once a primary vehicle to represent disease metaphors, new media technologies and short video platforms are increasingly used to represent health and illness through metaphor. This study ( n = 200) employs an ethnographic approach to understand how metaphors are used to spread health misinformation online. It examines how cancer related health misinformation is circulated on the short form video app, TikTok. TikTok’s technological affordances encourage misinformation by providing accessible routes to monetisation and algorithmically steering users to content creators advertising unproven cancer cures. While TikTok’s recommender algorithm surfaces an abundance of health misinformation, purification and military metaphors play an important role in depicting cancer as a toxin that requires cleansing and detoxification by various unproven and harmful products and services. By emphasising the role of metaphor in spreading false and misleading information, this research highlights that misinformation is both a social and technical problem.