Conspiracy Theory in America
... 466). The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), taking advantage of previous academic work equating those rejecting official accounts for significant political and social events with pathology ( Popper, 1949;Hofstadter, 1964), intentionally set in motion a process leading to the creation of the terms conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorist as pejoratives (deHaven Smith & Witt, 2013). These pejoratives were subsequently adopted as such by academics, the news media, and other authorities ( Green, 2015). ...
... It is clear the terms conspiracy theorist and conspiracy theory are often used by the media, authority figures, and others in power to discount those who question official accounts for many significant events (deHaven Smith & Witt, 2013;Green, 2015). What is unclear is how these terms evolved and became such powerful pejoratives and what impact powerful people and institutions played in their development. ...
... Rather than a sum of its paranoid parts, conspiracism is greater and more complex. ( Goldberg, 2004, p. 260) There is an absence of a scholarly exploration of the evolution of the terms conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorist, and conspiracy theorists as pejoratives (deHaven-Smith, personal communication, September 14, 2014; deHaven Smith & Witt, 2013;Manwell, 2010). There are a few explorations of the terms' use as pejorative silencers ( Green, 2015;Husting & Orr, 2007), but little academic evidence and support exists for the contention of intentional hegemonic construction of the memes ( Bratich, 2008, deHaven-Smith & Witt, 2013Green, 2015). ...
Those rejecting the official accountsof significant suspicious and impactful events are often labeled conspiracy theoristsand the alternative explanations they propose are often referred to as conspiracy theories. These labels are often used to dismiss the beliefs of those individuals who question potentially hegemonic control of what people believe. The conspiracy theory concept functions as an impediment to legitimate discursive examination of conspiracy suspicions. The effect of the label appears to constrain even the most respected thinkers. This impedimentis particularly problematic in academia,where thorough, objective analysis of information is critical to uncovering truth, and where members of the academy are typically considered among the most important ofepistemic authorities.This dissertation trackedthe development and use of suchterms as pejoratives used to shut down critical thinking, analysis,and challenges to authority.This was accomplished using critical discourse analysis as a research methodology. Evidence suggesting government agents were instrumental in creating the pejorative meme conspiracy theoristwas found in contemporary media. Tracing the evolution of the conspiracy theory meme and its use as a pejorative silencer may heighten awareness of its use in this manner and diminish its impact.
... Moreover, in the last half century we have witnessed a great number of such paranoid accusations turning out to be actually true (think of the Watergate scandal, the CIA mind-control program MK-Ultra, the FBI's counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO), the Iran-Contra Affair, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and more recently the LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate) scandal and the NSA intelligence operations revealed by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden). It is therefore simply untenable to argue that the belief in conspiracy theories is by definition delusional and paranoid deHaven-Smith, 2013;). Such unwarranted assumptions should not therefore guide social scientific analyses. ...
... Conspiracy culture does not exist on its own in some kind of cultural vacuum, but is shaped and formed by the interactions with these meaningful others. To miss these is not just sociologically wanting, but insensitive to the dynamics of power that are at play here deHaven-Smith, 2013;. Indeed, precisely the notion of what a "conspiracy theory/ist" is, can hardly be understood by its inherent or substantial characteristics, but only by the fact that it has been labeled as such (cf. ...
... While it can be used non-pejoratively in reference to any hypothesis about any conspiratorial plot, the label "conspiracy theory" is conventionally applied to whatever is considered an unequivocally ridiculous, unfounded narrative, which is scoffed at and easily debunked (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009). Once labelled a "conspiracy theory", a hypothesis tends to be dismissed out of hand as being unfounded and even paranoid (see Bratich, 2008;Husting and Orr, 2007;deHaven-Smith, 2013). This shows not only in lay users' discourse but also in many academic publications that make (sometimes unfounded) a priori assumptions about selected conspiracy theories, equating them with "misinformation". ...
Despite the abundance of research into conspiracy theories, including multiple studies of Covid-19 conspiracy theories in particular, user reactions to conspiracy theories are an underexplored area of social media discourse. This study aims to fill this gap by examining a dataset of humorous responses to proliferating COVID-19 conspiracy theories based on a corpus of tweets bearing the pejorative hashtag #CovidConspiracy. We report the complex orchestration of heteroglossic discursive voices in these posts to reveal their rhetorical function, oriented towards expressing a negative stance and, in some cases, amounting to ridicule. The discursive effects of this interplay of voices entail imitation, parody, mockery and irony on the micro level, while on the interactional (macro) level, anti-conspiracy tweets jointly enact what we dub "polyvocal scorn". It expresses multiple users' trenchant critique and contempt for conspiracy theories, while the humour of the tweets serves to display the users' wit and superiority over conspiracy theorists.
... According to some authors [20], it is difficult to test and challenge a "conspiracy theory" of the kind that the WEF is one of the causative players if not in the pandemic itself then in the rolling out of NPIs worldwide; however, deHaven-Smith pointed out that "political conspiracies in high office do, in fact, happen" ( [21], p. 6), so it should be possibly to objectively define and test the above theory about the WEF. We attempt here to approach the question empirically. ...
Background
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has spawned a global network of elites called Young Global Leaders (YGLs) with significant influence on large corporations, politics, academia, and media. This article scrutinizes the idea that through this network, the WEF had a significant influence on the scale and scope of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented in response to the COVID-19 crisis. We tested for associations between the country-level distribution of YGLs and the intensity and duration of the implemented NPIs summarized by the Government Response Severity Index (GRSI).
Materials and methods
The number and category of YGLs per country was extracted from the WEF website. We also extracted the maximum and median GRSI values for three time periods: (i) the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic (March 1, 2020, to April 30, 2020), (ii) the height of the second wave in Europe (December 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021), and (iii) the approximate first year (March 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021). Being a precondition for causality, any association between the total or category-specific number of YGLs and the GRSI values in each time period was evaluated using Spearman’s ρ correlation coefficients and polynomial regression, respectively
Results
There was a highly significant positive correlation between the total number of YGLs in a country and the median (ρ = 0.36, p = 2.5×10-7) and maximum (ρ = 0.34, p = 1.6×10-6) GRSI during the second wave of the pandemic, but not during the first wave. The total number of YGLs was also a significant predictor of higher median GRSI during the second wave of the pandemic in the best-fitting (four-degree) polynomial regression model (p<0.01); additional significant and positive predictor in this model was a country’s location within Europe or South America, respectively (p<0.01). Investigating an influence-weighted number of YGLs in business, politics, and civic society separately yielded no significant associations with NPI severity for any of the three time periods.
Conclusions
As there were significant correlations during the second, but not the first wave of the pandemic, we conclude that the WEF might not have been the origin of but rather an echo-chamber or amplifier for certain opinions and strategies that were formed and implemented during or before the first months of the COVID-19 crisis. Future qualitative studies may reveal putative causal mechanisms underlying our observed correlations.
... According to some authors [20], it is difficult to test and challenge a "conspiracy theory" of the kind that the WEF is one of the causative players if not in the pandemic itself then in the rolling out of NPIs worldwide; however, deHaven-Smith pointed out that "political conspiracies in high office do, in fact, happen" ( [21], p. 6), so it should be possibly to objectively define and test the above theory about the WEF. We attempt here to approach the question empirically. ...
... Dabei ist historisch evident und in der Literatur vielfach aufgezeigt worden, wie etwa der Republikanismus sowohl mit dem Kampf gegen politische Verschwörungen als auch mit dem Verschwörungsdenken untrennbar verbunden ist (vgl. Campbell, Kaiser & Linton, 2007;Pagán, 2008;DeHaven-Smith, 2013;Butter, 2014;Kasimis, 2021). Wo genau die Grenze und der funktionale Zusammenhang zwischen "mythischem" und "rationalem" Verschwörungsdenken liegt und welche Rolle die Verschwörung als Kulturtechnik dabei spielt, dieser zentralen Frage weicht Blume systematisch aus. ...
... A Kennedy-gyilkosság kivizsgálására kiküldött Warren-bizottság jelentését nem titkolt kétkedéssel fogadták. Ezzel kapcsolatban állította nagysikerű könyvében (Conspiracy Theory in Amerika, 2013) L. Dehaven-Smith, hogy az összeesküvés-elmélet kifejezés megjelenése a CIA propagandakampányához fűződik, amely ezzel a megbélyegzéssel a bizottság jelentését kétkedéssel fogadók érveit kívánta hitelteleníteni (Dehaven& Smith, 2013). ...
A tanulmány a gazdasági, azon belül is elsősorban a pénzügyi-banki szféra visszásságaira koncentrál. Az egyház azt tanítja, már Jézus is fellépett a pénzváltók és kufárok ellen, kiűzte őket a templomból. Erre utalt Roosevelt elnök is beiktatási beszédében: „a pénzváltók elmenekültek a civilizáció templomának magasztos székeiből.” (Roosevelt, 1932) Kisvártatva azonban visszatértek…A dolgozat az USA monetáris történetének felemás jelenségeire fókuszál. Az amerikai pénzügyi csoportok az Egyesült Államok világhatalmi státuszának kialakulásával párhuzamosan a nemzetközi pénzügyi életben, a globális pénzügyi szervezetekben is domináns szerephez jutottak. Eközben – finoman szólva – nem mindig a fair play követelményei szerint versenyeztek a gazdasági tranzakciók színpadán.A legtekintélyesebb amerikai elnökök, tekintélyes politikusok nyíltan beszéltek a központi bankok esetében tapasztalt korrupcióról, de Nobel-emlékdíjas közgazdák elemzéseinek centrumába is gyakran került a Fed tevékenysége. A krimiken edződött közvélemény a nem tisztázott hátterű eseményeket igyekezett a maga módján „magyarázni”, szép számmal fogalmazódtak meg konspirációs elméletek.Írásom célja annak vizsgálata, hogy az egyes országok pénzügyi intézményeinek, a nemzetközi pénzügyi szervezeteknek a magatartásában találhatók-e olyan motívumok, olyan mozzanatok, amelyek súrolják a jogszabályok által kijelölt határokat. Másként fogalmazva: szolgáltattak-e okot tevékenységükkel a konspirációs elméletek megfogalmazására?
... Despite these early origins, most academics lay emphasis on the late eighteenth century as a significant period in the history of modern conspiracy theories (Butter, 2014;Byford, 2011;deHaven-Smith, 2013;Hofstadter, 2012;Lipset and Raab, 1978;Pipes, 1997;Wood, 1982). These grand moments of political turmoil and rapid cultural change around the French and American Revolutions have, following such authors, been strongly characterized by conspiratorial thought Contemporary conspiracy discourses 59 T&F PROOFS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION Contemporary Conspiracy Culture; by Jaron Harambam Format: Royal (156 × 234 mm); Style: A; Font: Times New Roman; Dir: Z:/2-Pagination/CCC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780367347413_text.3d; Created: 03/03/2020 @ 15:04:34 and allegations. ...
... On the other hand, the same attitudes can work as a control mechanism, which is instrumental in preserving democratic institutions, as far as these attitudes keep the public vigilant and the élites under scrutiny. After all, this latter approach is historically justified by the existence of real conspiracies (Olmsted 2009), including attempts made by public or private government-driven agencies to diffuse false conspiracy theories to cover real 'state crimes' (DeHaven-Smith 2013) or legitimise state policies (Yablokov 2015). ...
Beliefs in conspiracy theories have attracted significant international media attention in recent years. This phenomenon has been studied in the US but while anecdotal evidence suggests it is also widespread among the Italian public, little evidence has been collected to assess it empirically. Using data from a 2016 survey, this pioneering study of the Italian case investigates the extent of diffusion of conspiracy theories among Italians and tests several hypotheses concerning individual determinants. The paper finds that conspiracism is indeed widely diffused in Italy. It is negatively associated with education and positively with religiosity, while no correlation is found with political trust. Beliefs in conspiracies are also related to rightwing orientation and support for the populist Five Star Movement.
... Instead of scientists analyzing 9/11 using the available observations and physical evidence, the university sponsors a Leverhulme-funded project, Conspiracy and Democracy, that examines 9/11 as one of many "conspiracy theories" [41]. "Conspiracy theory" is a pejorative term coined and promoted by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) since the 1960s to denigrate the views of anyone who questions the official accounts of Deep State events such as the John F. Kennedy assassination [42]. ...
Beginning with an historical reminiscence, this paper examines the peer review process as experienced by authors currently seeking publication of their research in a highly controversial area. A case study of research into the events of 9/11 (11 September 2001) illustrates some of the problems in peer review arising from undue influences based on financial and political considerations. The paper suggests that ethical failures, rather than flaws in the process itself, are mainly responsible for perceived problems. The way forward lies in improved ethics and a more open process. In addition, editorial review boards and peer review strategies would help to improve the ethics of peer review in general.
The work aims to reconstruct the ideological foundations of the Italian QAnon group, a particularly interesting but poorly investigated phenomenon in the field of social sciences and in the Italian context. Through thematic modeling techniques, the document offers a first reconstruction of the meta-narrative promoted by the movement in digital spaces, which arises not only as an ideological foundation of the group, but also as a filter for interpreting the main facts of the world and an expression of a more complex and varied ideological undergrowth that finds its embodiments at a particular end of the political spectrum.
Social media technology not only affords opportunities for digital activism and global liberation, but it also poses threats to the freewheeling of democracy. The emergence and prevalence of conspiracy theories on social media stem from communal processes of online political debate or social movements that degenerate into conspiracy beliefs. This study views the online formation of conspiracy theories as a socially emergent process. Subscribing to a social constructionist lens and synthesizing extant literature on social movements and social media affordances, we conducted discourse analysis on discursive data collected from Twitter for the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Fraud Conspiracy Theory. Through the analysis, we delineate the formation of conspiracy theory into four stages and characterize each stage according to its mobilizing structure, participants, mode of interaction, content created, and discernible collective action. We also identify social media affordances facilitating the formation of conspiracy theories within and across stages. Findings of this study advance contemporary knowledge on conspiracy theories by not only extending our understanding of the role of social media in conspiracy theory formation, but they also aid practitioners in comprehending the formation process of conspiracy theory formation, the latter of which constitutes the foundation for devising appropriate prevention and mitigation strategies.
Corpus analysis allows researchers to inform, illuminate, and investigate many problems. This chapter provides easy access to some of the central tools commonly used in corpus linguistics. After a short exploration of pre-built corpora and a brief literature review surveying corpus-analytic studies in philosophy, we illustrate these tools by running several corpus analyses on the term “conspiracy theory.” These analyses show that “conspiracy theory” is a strongly evaluative term. The reader of this chapter can follow each of the steps of the corpus analyses using the online material that is freely available.
The health policies imposed by multiple national governments after the emergence of SARS‐CoV‐2 were publicly justified by official figures on the deaths that the new virus would have caused and could cause in the future. At the same time, however, groups of people from different countries expressed their scepticism about those figures. Although they were categorised as ‘anti‐science’, ‘spreaders of misinformation’ or ‘conspiracy theorists’ in some media, many of those sceptics claimed to be based on scientific evidence. This article qualitatively analyses a sample of the content published by sceptics on their social media between 2020 and 2022. More specifically, it examines the shared documents supposedly coming from the scientific community. We find very diverse content ranging from unsubstantiated assumptions to documents produced by prestigious scientists inviting questions about the fatality rates, the mathematical models anticipating millions of deaths, and the real numbers of people who died from COVID‐19. The disputes surrounding the official figures lead us to a reflection about the relationship between, epistemic diversity, the dissemination of science, censorship, and new forms of political opposition. We also touch upon the nature and ethics of scientific controversy in times of a ‘war’ against ‘misinformation’.
Western governments have long used manufactured fear as a means of keeping the population susceptible to propaganda. A “pandemic” is a powerful fear concept; yet, there is no credible evidence of a viral pandemic in 2020. “Covid-19” does not meet any credible (pre-2009) definition of a “pandemic,” and attempts to present “Covid-19” as a new “Spanish flu” are bogus. The exaggerated threat of “Covid-19” was a function of military-grade propaganda, emanating from governments and the media, involving a barrage of terrifying images, messages, and “alert levels.” The BBC played a particularly culpable role in spreading fear. Death statistics were manipulated. Propaganda about hospitals being overwhelmed by “Covid-19” admissions camouflaged a sinister attack on public health. The primary purpose of face masks and PCR tests was to spread fear. Waves of fear/terror were sent by “new variants,” “immunity escape,” and the open letter by Geert Vanden Bossche. The spurious concept of “long Covid” projects the danger out into the future.
The “Russiagate” deception played a significant role as part of drives to demonize the Russian Federation and, simultaneously, uphold public perceptions regarding the unassailability of Western claims to be the leading force for good in the world. These drives have, predictably, escalated with the Ukraine War. Other issues and associated propaganda campaigns have also played a role and dovetail with “Russiagate”. One such case concerns that of the controversy over the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) and the alleged chemical weapon attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. Here, despite the emergence of credible testimony from OPCW scientists and leaked documents, the US and key allies have sought to discredit the controversy as part of an alleged Russian “disinformation campaign”. It is demonstrated that the empirical record shows that it is US-led states and supporting organizations that have sought to censor information by blocking whistleblower testimony and engaged in smearing involving allegations of ‘disinformation’ and ‘conspiracy theory’. It is argued that the case of the OPCW controversy is consistent with a wider pattern of propaganda, potentially amounting to a strategic deception, that has been employed by Western governments to project power domestically and internationally.KeywordsPropagandaDeceptionOPCWChemical weaponsSyria
Tüm dünyada olduğu gibi Türkiye’de de komplo teorileri daha görünür hale gelmekte ve akademik araştırmalara konu olmaktadır. Fakat mevcut çalışmaların, bu anlatılar içerisinden, sadece belirli tipteki teorilere ve inançlara odaklandığı görülmektedir. Hâlbuki komplo inancı, çoğu zaman bir zihniyetin ürünü olarak düşünülmekte ve bizatihi komplo zihniyetinin kendisine odaklanılması gerektiğine inanılmaktadır. Söz konusu boşluktan hareketle bu tez, karma bir yöntemle Türkiye’de komplo inancını belirleyen zihniyetin kimlerde bulunduğunu açığa çıkarmak için tasarlanmıştır. Bu doğrultuda araştırma dört bölüm altında yapılandırılmıştır. Birinci bölümde kavramsal ve kuramsal bir tartışma yapılmış, bilhassa komplo zihniyeti adı altında ifade edilen sosyolojik perspektifin önemi ortaya konulmuştur. İkinci bölüm, araştırmanın metodolojisini içermektedir. Burada araştırma merakını oluşturan Covid�19 çalışmasının (n=660), ölçme araçlarının geliştirilmesi adına yapılan Birinci (n=112), İkinci (n=220) ve Üçüncü Ön Uygulamanın (n=154) sonuçları raporlanmıştır. Ayrıca, 4 kitap üzerinden yapılan Eleştirel Söylem Analizinin ve nihai uygulamayı teşkil eden Türkiye araştırmasının (n=1110) yöntemi burada ifade edilmiştir. Araştırmanın üçüncü bölümünde nitel, dördüncü bölümünde ise Düzey 1 bölgelerine göre yapılan nicel araştırma sonuçları raporlanmıştır. Sonuç olarak nitel araştırmayla komplo teorilerinin sofistçe bir mantık örgüsüne ve ikna edici söylemsel özelliklere sahip olduğu görülmüştür. Üstelik nicel araştırmada bu inanç biçiminin sosyo-demografik özellikler bakımından, toplumun bütün kesimlerine nüfuz edebildiği anlaşılmıştır. Araştırmada “derin devlet” komplosuna daha çok sol, “ezoterik” ve “yabancı sermaye” komplosuna da sağ ideolojiye yakın kişilerin inandığı bulgulanmıştır. “Cinsellik” ve “deney komplosuna” ise her kesimden aktörlerin inanabildiği görülmüştür. Nihai olarak komplo zihniyetini tetikleyen en önemli değişkenlerin, “Türkiye’deki bölünme korkusu”, “şüphecilik”, “yabancılara duyulan güvensizlik”,“içeriden ya da dışarıdan birilerinin ülkenin huzurunu bozduğu düşüncesi” olduğu saptanmıştır.
This paper aims to provide clear guidelines for researchers studying conspiracy theory belief. It examines the meta-linguistic question about how we should conceptaulize 'conspiracy theory' and its relationship to the evaluative question of how we should evaluate beliefs in conspiracy theories, addressing normative issues surrounding the meaning, use, and conceptualization of ‘conspiracy theory’, as well as how these issues might impact how researchers study conspiracy theories or beliefs in them It argues that four norms, the Empirical Accuracy Norm, the Linguistic Norm, the Social Norm, and the Academic Fecundity Norm, underlie debates about how we should conceptualize or define ‘conspiracy theory’. We zoom in on the linguistic norm, as it has been treated as more fundamental than the other norms. We then scrutinize the argument that normative conceptualizations prematurely settle the question of how conspiracy theories and belief in them should be evaluated, and argue that it fails. Subsequently, we turn to the risks normative conceptualizations pose when it comes to certain assumptions and biases in the study of conspiracy theory belief. Finally, we explore where this leaves us regarding the meta-linguistic and evaluative questions, and formulate seven guidelines for studying conspiracy theory belief, whether it be theoretical, historical, or empirical.
This article reports the findings of a diachronic sociopragmatic study on the politically loaded Italian hashtag #HaStatoPutin based on an automatically generated corpus of tweets ( N = 31,334), encompassing two datasets from before and after what Putin originally called Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine that commenced on 24 February 2022. #HaStatoPutin appeared on Twitter in 2015 to mark tweets criticizing what Italian users considered to be unsupported conspiracy theories targeting Vladimir Putin, viewed by these users as a scapegoat in mainstream political rhetoric spread in the Western world. As this comparative study shows, the emergent applications of the hashtag are hardly affected by the events of 2022, indicating the stability of the expression and the political opinions of polarized Italian society, regardless of the socio-political context. Specifically, four tweet categories, which express tweeters’ political opinions or serve humorous purposes, are identified in both datasets: dissociative echo, counter-criticism, mock conspiracy theories, and metacomments. Given the specificity of #HaStatoPutin, its political contextualization, and applications, with which the users need to be familiar to create and understand tagged tweets, it is proposed that the tweeting practice makes for a “hashtag affinity space” on Twitter.
Bu makalede, içinde bulunduğumuz pandemi döneminde hayatî bir sorun haline gelen komplo teorilerinin gelişimi, şüphecilik ve bilimsel otorite etmeniyle bağlantılı olarak ele alınmaktadır. Komplo teorileri, bilimin insanî bir etkinlik olması nedeniyle kaçınılmaz olarak beliren epistemolojik boşluklara yerleşmektedir. Bu bağlamda, insanları komplo teorilerine inanmaya sevk eden düşünce yapısındaki şüphecilik ve otoritenin sorgulanması etmenlerini çözümlemek, özünde olumlu olan bu etmenlerin komplo teorilerinde nasıl dogmatik bir yola saptığını anlamak adına önemlidir. Makalede, ilgili problem sosyal epistemoloji açısından tartışılmaktadır. Bilimsel düşünceyi destekleyen yapıcı (metodolojik) şüphecilik yaklaşımı, bilginin olanaksızlığına değin varan genel skeptik yaklaşımdan ayrı olarak değerlendirilmelidir. Bilimin şüpheci epistemolojik temellere sahip olması, açık uçlu ve tarih boyunca değişime uğrayan bir etkinlik oluşuyla yakından bağlantılıdır. Öte yandan, komplo teorilerinin şüphecilikle ilişkisi farklı boyutlarıyla değerlendirilmektedir. Komplo teorisi olarak etiketlenen varsayımlara da yapıcı şüpheci bir tarzda yaklaşılmalıdır. Bu doğrultuda, birçok komplo teorisinin ardındaki bilimsel olmayan düşünüş tarzı ile varsayımın içeriğinden ayrı olarak hesaplaşılmalıdır. Makalede son olarak bilimsel otoritenin tanıklığının araçsal bir rolü olduğu ve bu nedenle devre dışı bırakılamayacağı vurgulanacak, bununla birlikte epistemik otorite etmenine eşlik eden felsefî problemler irdelenecektir. Modern bilimin doğuşuyla birlikte epistemik otoritede skolastik temelden kanıta dayalı temele bir dönüşüm gerçekleşmiştir. Bilimde kanıta dayalı yaklaşım, bireyi temele alır. Otoritenin rolü ise, bilimsel etkinliğin epistemik ağlar içerisinde, tek bir insanın sınırlarını hayli aşan bir yoğunlukta gerçekleştirilmesine bağlı olarak ortaya çıkar. Bu tür bir araçsal işlevi nedeniyle bilimde otoritenin rolü reddedilmemeli, fakat diğer yandan, ilk izlenimde olası görülmeyen açıklamalar kimden gelirse gelsin, bilimsel değerlendirme kapsamına alınmalıdır.
Conspiracy theories are abundant in social and political discourse, with serious consequences for individuals, groups, and societies. However, psychological scientists have started paying close attention to them only in the past 20 years. We review the spectacular progress that has since been made and some of the limitations of research so far, and we consider the prospects for further progress. To this end, we take a step back to analyze the defining features that make conspiracy theories different in kind from other beliefs and different in degree from each other. We consider how these features determine the adoption, consequences, and transmission of belief in conspiracy theories, even though their role as causal or moderating variables has seldom been examined. We therefore advocate for a research agenda in the study of conspiracy theories that starts—as is routine in fields such as virology and toxicology—with a robust descriptive analysis of the ontology of the entity at its center.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 74 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
In the social sciences, research on conspiracy theories is accumulating fast. To contribute to this research, here I introduce a computational model about the psychological processes underlying support for conspiracy theories. The proposal is that endorsement of these theories depends on three factors: prior beliefs, novel evidence, and expected consequences. Thanks to the latter, a conspiracy hypothesis might be selected because it is the costliest to reject even if it is not the best supported by evidence and by prior beliefs (i.e., even if it is not the most accurate). In this way, the model implies a key role for motivated reasoning. By examining the social conditions that favour the success of conspiracy theories, the paper embeds the model, whose focus is primarily psychological, within the broader social context, and applies this analysis to probe the role of conspiracy theories within contemporary Western societies. Altogether, the paper argues that a computational outlook can contribute to elucidate the socio-psychological dynamics underlying the attractiveness of conspiracy theories.
The present article is multidisciplinary, drawing on and synthesizing narrative media theories, philosophy of epistemology, conspiracy theory research, and creativity studies. I will explore the following central theoretical problem: whether it is conceptually enriching to (i) further develop the notion of and hence advance the scholarship in “conspiracy theorizing” and (ii) in doing so, would it be productive to ponder the role of peoples’ affective state of suspicion in engaging with ambiguous representations, something that is thrown into especially sharp relief by the conspiracist discourse. Accordingly, my point of departure is the concept of ambiguity and the related semantic field (including its antithesis, closure). Hereby, the concept of suspicion is introduced and treated as a creativity-enhancing, productive affect rooted in narrative thinking and construction. In particular, a specific manifestation of ambiguity apparent in digital sense-making discourses is foregrounded—a self-reproduced ambiguity. These dynamics are explored in the context of, while aspiring to overcome the scholarly emphasis on its negative valence, the practice of “conspiracy theorizing”. This popular practice is hence reconceptualized as contra-plotting. It is understood as a form of sense-making undertaken by the plotters of suspicion in challenging official explanations found unsatisfying and straining one’s belief. Such activity emerges and becomes instrumental in the face of explanatory uncertainty, such as the unsolved nature (“the how”) of the shipwreck, and is posited to be an individual and collaborative creative construction characterized by “continual interpretation”. For, as I will argue, the functional outcome of contra-plotting is to self-reproduce—not to obtain closure for the—ambiguity. Motivated by the suspicious stance, it is a necessary operative mode of such interpretation itself. In attempting to overcome their suspicions about official explanations, plotters inadvertently also ‘plot’ suspicion. Consequently, such an interpretative process corresponding to disambiguation plotting always feeds back into its own ever-expanding (narrative) ‘middle’, searching for yet immediately disregarding, as if by design, any final crystallized ‘truth’. In this context, the perhaps more understated meaning of “to interpret”—namely, to creatively supplement “deficiencies” (supplentio)—may gain in conceptual relevance. In staking the proposed theoretical apparatus, I will draw on my preliminary findings from analytical work on ‘real-time’ digital discussions—observable as a chronological forum archive—on the 1994 shipwreck of the cruise ferry MS Estonia. In order to instrumentalize the outlined tentative theoretical vocabulary, an interpretative close reading of posts from different time periods from the conspiracist forum Para-Web will be provided. This analysis combines textual and narrative analyses. The article ends with some concluding thoughts and aims for further research.
Using the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is widely perceived to be a way of discrediting wild ideas and unsubstantiated claims. However, prior research suggests that labelling statements as conspiracy theories does not reduce people's belief in them. In four studies, we probed this effect further, and tested the alternative hypothesis that the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is a consequence rather than a cause of (dis)belief in conspiracy‐related statements. Replicating prior research, Study 1 (N = 170) yielded no evidence that the label ‘conspiracy theory’ affects belief in statements. In Study 2 (N = 199), we discovered that the less people believed in statements, the more they favoured labelling them as ‘conspiracy theories’. In Studies 3 and 4 (Ns = 150 and 151), we manipulated the relative believability of statements and found that participants preferred the label ‘conspiracy theory’ for relatively less believable versus more believable statements. The current research therefore supports the hypothesis that prior (dis)agreement with a statement affects the use of the label ‘conspiracy theory’ more than the other way around.
I decided to write this chapter the last moment. It was September–October of 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic was at its highest point, or that was what we were thinking at that time, so were conspiracy theories concerning the virus and the outbreak in general. Later this would focus specifically on vaccines. It was more than clear that in the years to come, one of the new topics, if not the real battlegrounds that will occupy the attention of society, will be the conspiracy theories. Psychiatry will likely be involved in this, since the main characteristics of the problem are irrationality, intense emotions including anger, and problematic behaviors that pose dangers to public health and safety, including vaccination denial, following harmful alternative medicine ways, violent acts, and more recently failure to follow the COVID-19 lockdown and safety measures. This new “battlefront” is so new, so uncharted and difficult, and so peculiar that the side of conspiracists includes at least three Nobel laureates, editors of prominent medical journals, and a significant number of reputed scientists, while an additional significant number walks a tightrope between radical unconventional thinking and conspiracism.
This chapter highlights the move from experimental texts of Samuel Beckett and Jorge Luis Borges and into the postmodern world of Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon. Beckett and Borges both play with paradoxes of infinity, complicating the idea of closure that we count on our detectives to achieve. Borges rewrites Poe’s early stories and, with just a few twists, turns the central question of truth on its head: what if it is our desire for order, not order itself, is leading our investigative attempts. Pynchon and DeLillo further complicate the architecture of doubt; whereas previously doubt could be eliminated by finding one final clue, these postmodern novels deal with the problem of information overload. This chapter explores this new problem and how it has helped the growth of conspiracy theories.
Was haben eigentlich die sogenannte „lab leak theory“ und QAnon miteinander zu tun? Wenn man ehrlich ist, gibt es kaum Gemeinsamkeiten, bis auf die öffentlich zur Schau gestellte Unterstützung durch den ehemaligen amerikanischen Präsidenten Donald Trump und deren mediale Präsenz während der Coronapandemie. Dies ist ein wichtiges Problem hinsichtlich der Erforschung von „Verschwörungstheorien“: Was meinen wir, wenn wir den Begriff Verschwörungstheorie verwenden und warum fallen so unterschiedliche Phänomene unter den Sammelbegriff?
This chapter presents findings from an ethnographic study of conspiracy theorists, vociferously present among today’s critics of science. Typically branded by scientists as dangerous, irrational, and deluded loonies, they do however not reject the scientific endeavor per se, but accuse modern universities, research institutes, and the scientists they employ of being insufficiently scientific. They feel that science lacks a skeptical, open-minded, and critical edge and pride themselves on being less dogmatic and more critical than most scientists. They accuse universities of having degenerated into dull, routinized research factories that stand in the way of the free spirit of science: lost in bureaucratic and economic side issues, enlisted by powerful states and corporations, and no longer hospitable to “real” science, driven by open-mindedness and curiosity.
Many people use conspiracy theories to make sense of a changing world and its ever more complexif social structures (e.g., international financial systems, global bodies of governance), tragic events (e.g., terrorist attacks, man-made catastrophes, or natural disasters), or socio-political and economic issues (e.g., security, migration, distribution of resources, health care). The widespread flourishing of conspiracy theories in this context has prompted much interest from the academic community. There is often an expectation that it is the responsibility of researchers to engage with conspiracy beliefs by debunking them. However, like everything that relates to conspiracy theories, even the subject of debunking is not straightforward. An answer to the question as to whether researchers should debunk conspiracy theories varies across disciplines and schools, and is closely related to specific ethical codes of conduct, research methodologies, and specific approaches to conspiracy theories. While scholars who study this cultural phenomenon from a non-normative and epistemologically neutral position might wish to refrain from debunking conspiracy theories, others who see conspiracy theories as the irrational, overly suspicious and even dangerous ideas of people who don’t quite understand what is ‘really’ going on, might lean towards the debunking stance. In this special issue, we explore different approaches that academics may take in relation to conspiracy theories.
The concept of üst akıl, an all-powerful and sinister agency, has recently been socially and politically influential in the public sphere in Turkey. From the time it was first used in 2014 to today, the concept has served as an enabling device to legitimize a political motive, to delegitimize dissident views, to make an assertion of difference, to safeguard political status and to gain mainstream recognition. In this article, I examine specific conspiracy narratives in Turkey, which are by-products of the üst akıl discourse, and attempt to understand how they, in their own ways, contribute to the formation of a conspiratorial climate and a hegemonic consensus in Turkish mainstream media. Journalists and popular authors creatively allude to üst akıl in a wide range of styles. Analysing the discourse of üst akıl, I demonstrate how the concept has been strategically used by many circles, pro-government and sometimes critical, to endorse a new nationalistic agenda intensified by the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
The uncertainties and scale of the Covid-19 pandemic has mobilised global anxieties and insecurities, and many cultural groups have conjuncturally embedded conspiracy theories within millennial and apocalyptic thought to explain and find meaning in the pandemic. The apocalypse lends itself well to conspiratorial thinking because conceptually it is flexible enough to reflect any crisis. To this end, the global development of Covid-19 conspiracism is what the authors term ‘contagious conspiracism’ which is defined as viral global cultural conspiracism. The paper explores how millennialist responses to Covid-19 in various media outlets transcend academic categories of analysis and cultural boundaries between, say, religious and secular, far-right and radical left. First explored is how the crisis became embedded in established (mainly American) contemporary millennial beliefs and prophecies through selected far-right, evangelical and radical left narratives. Second, it is shown how these theories have been ‘improvised’ to include 5 G and also travelled to Europe and taken on geographical significance in Belfast and Berlin. Third, the authors illustrate the shared ingredients, motivations, and semiotics across apocalyptic conspiratorial Covid-19 narratives, all of which resonate with concerns about power, specifically emergent surveillance technologies, governmental abuse of power, and neoliberal capital, with divergent truths about who is blame from 5 G/vaccine theories to corporate technocapitalism. The paper concludes that these shared discourses across apocalyptic and conspiratorial Covid-19 narratives mean many of us are conspiracists and/or conspiracy theorists at some level and is therefore both revealing of the similarities and has the potential to create democratic constituencies.
Este artigo tem como objetivo propor uma definição de virtudes e vícios intelectuais relativos a uma investigação. Por investigação aqui entende-se qualquer busca que proporcione um produto epistêmico como por exemplo Conhecimento ou Entendimento. Para isso, faço uma análise da definição de virtudes e vícios oferecida por Quassim Cassam e discuto alguns problemas desta definição. Proponho que, ao contrário de Cassam e de Duncan Pritchard, a meta de uma investigação não é apenas Conhecimento ou apenas Entendimento. Em seguida, na parte final do artigo, proponho duas aplicações práticas a definição de virtudes e vícios intelectuais. A primeira eu descrevo como o uso da Internet pode proporcionar em nós mais vícios que virtudes intelectuais, e a segunda descrevo que na prática e pesquisa médica, ao que parece, também há mais vícios que virtudes intelectuais.
The terrorist attack against the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the subsequent hostage-taking in the kosher supermarket in Paris on the 7th and 9th January 2015 profoundly shocked the French public. The term ‘conspiracy theory’ very rapidly came to be used in the media to account for accusations of a ‘false flag operation’ and for the circulation of doubts concerning certain details relating to these events. The use of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ in these contexts seemed to show up an extremely broad application of it, an application, which, in some cases, was accompanied by a rather impassioned approach to the events and one not always free from ideological presuppositions which aligned phenomena which, even though linkages between them could be shown, should more properly be distinguished one from another.
This article proposes to examine the media and institutional applications of this term during the episode of the ‘anti-conspiracy theory panic’, which followed upon the Paris incidents. This study will permit the very notion of ‘conspiracy theory’ to be brought into question, both on the level of definition and from a heuristic perspective.
Academic discussions concerning what to do about conspiracy theories often focus on whether or not to debunk them. Less often discussed are the methods, audiences and effectiveness of debunking efforts. To motivate a closer examination of the ‘how’ of debunking, a slightly different issue is addressed: conspiracy theory attributions (CTAs), which are claims that someone or some group believes in a conspiracy theory. Three cases of discrediting CTAs in the vaccination debate are examined: general assumptions that vaccination critics are conspiracy theorists, a claim that a vaccine-critical group subscribed to a particular conspiracy theory, and a claim that a PhD thesis endorsed a conspiracy theory. Struggles over CTAs can be analysed in terms of the tactics that powerful perpetrators use to reduce outrage over injustice: cover-up, devaluation, reinterpretation, official channels, and intimidation/rewards. Options for responding to CTAs include ignoring, ridiculing, debunking, engaging, counterattacking and accepting. Potential responders, to decide between options, should take their goals into account.
International Relations (IR) scholars uncritically accept the official narrative regarding the events of 9/11 and refuse to examine the massive body of evidence generated by the 9/11 truth movement. Nevertheless, as calls for a new inquiry into the events of 9/11 continue to mount, with the International 9/11 Consensus Panel and World Trade Centre Building 7 Evaluation inquiries having recently published their findings, and with a U.S. Federal Grand Jury on 9/11 having been announced, now would be an opportune moment for IR scholars to start taking the claims of 9/11 truth seriously. A survey of the 9/11 truth literature reveals that the official 9/11 narrative cannot be supported at multiple levels. Two planes did not bring down three towers in New York. There is no hard evidence that Muslims were responsible for 9/11 other than in a patsy capacity. Various U.S. government agencies appear to have had foreknowledge of the events and to have covered up evidence. Important questions regarding the hijacked planes need answering, as do questions about the complicity of the mainstream media in 9/11. IR scholars avoid looking at evidence regarding the events of 9/11 for several reasons. They may be taken in by the weaponized term, “conspiracy theory.” A taboo on questioning the ruling structures of society means that individuals do not wish to fall outside the spectrum of acceptable opinion. Entertaining the possibility that 9/11 was a false flag requires Westerners to reject fundamental assumptions that they have been socialized to accept since birth. The “War on Terror” has created a neo-McCarthyite environment in which freedom to speak out has been stifled. Yet, if IR scholars are serious about truth, the first place they need to start is 9/11 truth.
This article examines “soft facts” about security issues in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign. Soft facts arise when information provenance is uncertain, and are forms of malleable and contingent knowledge, such as rumors, conspiracy theories, and propaganda. There is a growing appreciation that digital communications environments are especially conducive to the dissemination of these kinds of information. Informed by empirical data comprising forty‐five thousand nine hundred and fifty‐seven data points collected by monitoring social media before and after the UK Brexit referendum campaign (June 16–October 12, 2016), the analysis examines how and why a series of soft facts concerning Brexit were mobilized. By developing the concept of “digital prophecy,” the article explores how influence is exerted by online prophets who were connecting current events to past grievances, to advance negative predictions about the future. This starts to capture the tradecraft of digital influencing, in ways that move beyond the structural topologies of communication networks. In policy terms, the analysis reminds us of the need to attend not just to how influence is achieved through fake news (e.g., using social media bots to amplify a message), but also why influence is sought in the first place.
Judging the warrant of conspiracy theories can be difficult, and often we rely upon what the experts tell us when it comes to assessing whether particular conspiracy theories ought to be believed. However, whereas there are recognised experts in the sciences, I argue that only are is no such associated expertise when it comes to the things we call ‘conspiracy theories’, but that the conspiracy theorist has good reason to be suspicious of the role of expert endorsements when it comes to conspiracy theories and their rivals. The kind of expertise, then, we might associate with conspiracy theories is largely improvised – in that it lacks institutional features – and, I argue, ideally the product of a community of inquiry.
Conspiracies play a significant role in world politics. States often engage in covert operations. They plot in secret, with and against each other. At the same time, conspiracies are often associated with irrational thinking and delusion. We address this puzzle and highlight the need to see conspiracies as more than just empirical phenomena. We argue that claims about conspiracies should be seen as narratives that are intrinsically linked to power relations and the production of foreign policy knowledge. We illustrate the links between conspiracies, legitimacy and power by examining multiple conspiracies associated with 9/11 and the War on Terror. Two trends are visible. On the one hand, US officials identified a range of conspiracies and presented them as legitimate and rational, even though some, such as the alleged covert development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, are now widely considered false. On the other hand, conspiracies circulating in the Arab-Muslim world were dismissed as irrational and pathological, even though some, like those concerned with the covert operation of US power in the Middle East, were based on credible concerns.
Has the US military been weaponising the weather? On what evidence might we begin to know? This essay begins by acknowledging the obstacles a classified military facility imposes on what we can know of it. Yet such State-sanctioned obstructions of knowledge are merely official iterations of a much broader problem basic to vernacular environmental knowledge: that we denizens of the Anthropocene now routinely face epistemological challenges in relation to earthly signs and their ambiguous production in ways quite independent of security protocols. In order to parse the visual and popular cultural responses to HAARP that follow, this essay turns to the ancient practice of geomancy (through which sensitive interpreters ‘flesh out’ natural signs). I repurpose geomancy to describe a model of anxious environmental reading, one that fuses the material and symbolic into an uncanny symbiosis with Earth. The new geomancy is best regarded as that structure of feeling that addresses itself to our planet’s ungraspably complex changes. In this theorisation of the new geomancy, HAARP – together with its symptomatic epistemological constraints – thus serves as a hyperbolic instance and a norming bellwether.
In view of the negative connotations associated with conspiracy theories, what have been the effects of the term's entry into popular vocabulary in the second half of the twentieth century? Has the ascendancy of the term “conspiracy theory” been correlated with a reluctance to allege conspiracy? In this article, the authors use Hansard, the record of British parliamentary debates, as a source of empirical data in demonstrating a significant and steady reduction in the number of conspiracy claims advanced in parliament; a pattern consistent with the broader marginalization of conspiracy rhetoric. This trend was reinforced by a trope that established itself in the 1980s and juxtaposed “conspiracies” with “cock-ups.” The British expression “cock-up” denotes a blunder or act of incompetence. In the second part of this article, the authors argue that the preference for “cock-up theories” over “conspiracy theories” reflects how a policy geared towards privatization and deregulation tended to characterize government action in terms of incompetence, and not of malfeasance.
Der vorliegende Beitrag rekonstruiert im Rahmen einer diskursethnographischen Untersuchung die Interaktion zwischen digitalen Alternativ- und Gegen-Öffentlichkeiten und der durch den professionellen Leitjournalismus etablierten hegemonialen Öffentlichkeit. Diese Interaktion stellt sich als ein Deutungskonflikt zwischen einem, dem Selbstverständnis nach, neuen digitalen Aktivismus und einem wesentlich in Print und TV verwurzelten traditionellen Journalismus dar. Gegenstand dieser Auseinandersetzung sind nicht nur konfligierende politische, soziale und kulturelle Deutungen der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit. Primär geht es um die Form der massenmedialen Herstellung von Diskursen und Öffentlichkeit und damit auch eines substanziellen Teils dieser Wirklichkeit selbst.
The paper is a contribution to current debates about conspiracy theories within philosophy and cultural studies. Wittgenstein’s understanding of language is invoked to analyse the epistemological effects of designating particular questions and explanations as a ‘conspiracy theory’. It is demonstrated how such a designation relegates these questions and explanations beyond the realm of meaningful discourse. In addition, Agamben’s concept of sovereignty is applied to explore the political effects of using the concept of conspiracy theory. The exceptional epistemological status assigned to alleged conspiracy theories within our prevalent paradigms of knowledge and truth is compared to the exceptional legal status assigned to individuals accused of terrorism under the War on Terror. The paper concludes by discussing the relation between conspiracy theory and ‘the paranoid style’ in contemporary politics.
Le présent article propose d’étudier la « panique » suscitée par les « théories du complot » dans les semaines suivant les attentats de Paris des 7 et 9 janvier. L’expression « théorie du complot » fait très rapidement son apparition dans les médias pour rendre compte de la circulation de questionnements sur certains détails des événements et marque l’ouverture de deux semaines de « panique médiatique » autour du phénomène. Interroger cet épisode permet de rendre compte des évolutions et des usages médiatiques, politiques et scientifiques face au conspirationnisme et de questionner la notion même de « théorie du complot », tant à un niveau définitionnel que dans une perspective heuristique.
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