The thread from conspiracist mentality to negative affectivity could be extended to include various aspects of emotional instability (i.e. proneness toward psychological stress and susceptibility to unpleasant emotions, like anxiety and depression) and neuroticism (Swami,…
Tag: conspirologic
Estrella Gualda Caballero on echo chambers
It is common to find polarized communication networks on social media expressing situations of extremism, separation, rupture, etc. This means that the information is produced in a kind of closed system or echo chamber. Polarization…
Estrella Gualda Caballero on disintermediation, or look who’s talking
Disintermediation involves the now widespread social practice of being informed without any filter, that is to say through direct contact with information circulated via mass or social media. With no intermediary – i.e. an authoritative…
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Julien Giry & Pranvera Tika on what political science thinks of conspiracy theorists
Taking these investigations and concerns as a point of departure, it is now possible to present the main findings in this discipline. In brief, it appears that conspiracy theories are not a marginal phenomenon and…
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Türkay Salim Nefes & Alejandro Romero-Reche on K. Popper’s ‘conspiracy theory of ignorance’
Popper’s influential contribution to the analysis of modern conspiracy culture is complemented by the lesser – known concept of the ‘conspiracy theory of ignorance’: The notion that our ignorance is deliberately caused by some conspiring…
Annika Rabo on witchcraft
Mass media have played, and continue to play, a large role in the ‘uncovering’ of evil forces. Not only newspapers, radio and television spread news of witchcraft, but in films produced for a mass audience…
Juha Räikkä & Juho Ritola on what is a conspiracy
In some cases, it may be difficult to say whether an explanation refers to a ‘conspiracy’ rather than to some other sort of confidential cooperation. However, secret cooperative activities whose aims and nature conflict with…
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Andrew McKenzie-McHarg on (a)temporality of conspiracy theories
Bratich’s [Bratich, J.Z. (2008) Conspiracy panics: political rationality and popular culture, Albany: State University of New York Press] line of argument, implies that conspiracy theories, if they exist at all, only do so from the…
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Todor Hristov, Andrew McKenzie-McHarg & Alejandro Romero-Reche on conspiracy theories, uncanny valley & competition
On the one hand, they [conspiracy theories] are an object of study like any other phenomenon that engages the attention of social scientists and scholars in the humanities. On the other hand, conspiracy theories us…
Michael Butter & Peter Knight cite G. Cubitt, M. Barkun, J.Z. Bratich & C. Birchall on conspiracy theories
According to historian Geoffrey Cubbit [‘Conspiracy Myths and Conspiracy Theories’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 1989, 20(1): 12-26], conspiracy theories are a way of making sense of current events and the grand sweep…