Deceptive communication and misinformation are crucial issues that are currently having a significant impact on social life. Parallel to the important work of identifying misinformation on digital platforms is understanding why such material proliferates. One approach to answering this question is to attempt to understand the values that are being targeted by misinformation as a means of interpreting the underlying social bonds that are at stake. This study examines the kinds of social bonds that are communed around and contested in a corpus of YouTube video comments about the viral internet hoax ‘The Momo Challenge’. A social semiotic approach to ‘ambient affiliation’ (Zappavigna, 2011) is used to investigate how these bonds are negotiated in this digital discourse. This approach involves establishing the types of personae (for instance Moralisers, Myth Spreaders and Connoisseurs) who were negotiating meaning in the comments on the basis of the values that they recurrently shared, deferred or disputed. The analysis suggests that, in addition to concern over whether Momo was real and dangerous, there was a deeper moral panic about parenting in the digital age and the legitimacy of institutions such as schools and media as brokers of knowledge.

欺骗性的交流和错误信息是目前对社会生活产生重大影响的关键问题。与识别数字平台上的错误信息的重要工作并行的是，理解此类材料为何激增。回答此问题的一种方法是尝试理解错误信息所针对的价值，以此来解释潜在的潜在社会纽带。这项研究研究了关于病毒式网路骗局「The Momo Challenge」的YouTube影片评论中，在社交活动中交流和竞争的种种。使用一种“环境归属”的社会符号学方法（Zappavigna，2011）来研究在这种数字化话语中如何协商这些纽带。这种方法涉及根据他们经常共享，推迟或有争议的价值观，确定在评论中进行含义谈判的角色类型（例如，道德修士，神话传播者和鉴赏家）。分析表明，除了担心Momo是否真实和危险之外，数字时代的父母养育以及学校和媒体等机构作为知识经纪人的合法性还存在更深的道德恐慌。