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Conspiracy theories pose risks to consumers, businesses, and society. The present research investigates the role of scientific literacy in a variety of conspiracy beliefs with implications for consumer well-being and sustainability (e.g. regarding coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19], genetically modified organisms, and climate change). In contrast to the mixed effects of education in prior work, we find that scientific literacy undermines conspiracy beliefs and, in turn, conspiracy-related behaviors. This finding is explained by people's ability to use two dimensions of scientific literacy—scientific knowledge and reasoning—to accurately assess conspiracy evidence. For robustness, we assess scientific literacy through both measurement and manipulation (i.e. interventions), identify two moderators (evidence strength and narration) that attenuate the effect, and further validate our theorizing using national and international datasets (regarding COVID-19 vaccination and Google search, respectively). We discuss the implications of our findings for consumers, companies, nonprofit organizations, and governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the notion of platformed conspiracism to conceptualize reconfigured forms of conspiracy theory communication as a result of the mutual shaping between platform specificities and emergent user practices. To investigate this relational socio-technological shaping, we propose a conceptual platform-sensitive framework that systematically guides the study of platformed conspiracism. To illustrate the application of the framework, we examine how platformed conspiracism unfolds on BitChute and Gab during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that both platforms have positioned themselves as technological equivalents to their "mainstream" counterparts, YouTube and Twitter, by offering similar interfaces and features. However, given their specific services, community-based and politically marketed business models, and minimalist approaches to content moderation, both platforms provide conspiracy propagators a fertile refuge through which they can diversify their presence and profit monetarily from their supply of conspiracy theories and active connection with their followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Believing conspiracy narratives is frequently assumed to be a major cause of vaccine hesitancy, i.e., the tendency to forgo vaccination despite its availability. In this scoping review, we synthesise and critically evaluate studies that assess i) the occurrence of vaccine-related conspiracy narratives on the internet, ii) the prevalence of belief in vaccine-related conspiracy narratives, iii) the relationship between belief in conspiracy narratives and vaccination intention or vaccination uptake, and iv) interventions that reduce the impact of conspiracy narratives on vaccination intention. In July 2022, we conducted a literature search using three databases: PubMed, PsychInfo, and Web of Science. Following the PRISMA approach, of the 500 initially identified articles, 205 were eligible and analysed. The majority of identified studies were conducted in Europe and North America, were published in 2021 and 2022, and investigated conspiracy narratives around the COVID-19 vaccination. The prevalence of belief in various vaccine-related conspiracy narratives varied greatly across studies, from 2 to 77%. We identified seven experimental studies investigating the effect of exposure to conspiracy narratives on vaccination intentions, of which six indicated a small negative effect. These findings are complemented by the evidence from over 100 correlative studies showing a significant negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intention or uptake. Additionally, the review identified interventions (e.g., social norm feedback, fact-checking labels, or prebunking) that decreased beliefs in vaccine-related conspiracy narratives and, in some cases, also increased vaccination intentions. Yet, these interventions had only small effects. In summary, the review revealed that vaccine-related conspiracy narratives have spread to varying degrees and can influence vaccination decisions. Causal relationships between conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intentions remain underexplored. Further, the review identified a need for more research on interventions that can reduce the impact of conspiracy narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the presence of a subliminal thesis—with conspiratorial and apocalyptic content—in the discourse of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition based on a documentary analysis of Adventist publications from the 1900s to the 1990s. The history of the development of this thesis is classified into three periods: (1) Proto-Adventist Subliminal Thesis, from 1900s to 1940s, with a discourse of anti-spiritualist emphasis; (2) Adventist Subliminal Thesis' First Wave, from 1950s to 1960s, with a discourse of anti-media emphasis in the context of James Vicary's experiments in the 1950s; and (3) Adventist Subliminal Thesis' Second Wave, from 1970s to 1990s, with a discourse of conspiratorial emphasis in the context of the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s. The Adventist subliminal thesis is configured in a way of thinking that considers (1) the human being as a "mass-man" and culture as "mass culture"; (2) the media as having the power of manipulation and mental control; (3) adherence to moral panic phenomena as reactions to media threats to traditional values; and (4) the cosmic narrative of the Great Controversy as a worldview for understanding media messages and products as part of a satanic conspiracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews anthropological explorations of conspiracy theories—in dialogue with insights from other disciplines, primarily political science, philosophy, and social psychology—to frame conspiracy theories as productive social practices. While conspiracy theories are often depicted through their epistemological shortcomings and associated with social and political margins, this article traces the nascent threads across anthropological scholarship to reach an emic understanding of those narratives and their sociopolitical reverberations and proposes approaching conspiracy theories through their style, agentive implications, and political effects. Conspiratorial style, the article argues, pertains not to the content of the narrative but to its incessant seeking of covert operations beyond readily visible forms as well as a growing flexibility regarding the narrator's belief in the narrative's veracity. The agentivizing dynamic generated through conspiracism differentiates contemporary conspiracism from its predecessors and involves an empowering current. Finally, the article focuses on how contemporary conspiracism is intricately linked to political contestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Believing conspiracy narratives is frequently assumed to be a major cause of vaccine hesitancy, i.e., the tendency to forgo vaccination despite its availability. In this scoping review, we synthesise and critically evaluate studies that assess i) the occurrence of vaccine-related conspiracy narratives on the internet, ii) the prevalence of belief in vaccine-related conspiracy narratives, iii) the relationship between belief in conspiracy narratives and vaccination intention or vaccination uptake, and iv) interventions that reduce the impact of conspiracy narratives on vaccination intention. In July 2022, we conducted a literature search using three databases: PubMed, PsychInfo, and Web of Science. Following the PRISMA approach, of the 500 initially identified articles, 205 were eligible and analysed. The majority of identified studies were conducted in Europe and North America, were published in 2021 and 2022, and investigated conspiracy narratives around the COVID-19 vaccination. The prevalence of belief in various vaccine-related conspiracy narratives varied greatly across studies, from 2 to 77%. We identified seven experimental studies investigating the effect of exposure to conspiracy narratives on vaccination intentions, of which six indicated a small negative effect. These findings are complemented by the evidence from over 100 correlative studies showing a significant negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intention or uptake. Additionally, the review identified interventions (e.g., social norm feedback, fact-checking labels, or prebunking) that decreased beliefs in vaccine-related conspiracy narratives and, in some cases, also increased vaccination intentions. Yet, these interventions had only small effects. In summary, the review revealed that vaccine-related conspiracy narratives have spread to varying degrees and can influence vaccination decisions. Causal relationships between conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intentions remain underexplored. Further, the review identified a need for more research on interventions that can reduce the impact of conspiracy narratives.

The article analyzes the socio-demographic characteristics and value-worldview self-positioning of the distributors of conspiracy narratives (“conspiracy theories”) about vaccination against COVID-19 on the Russian social network “VK”. The research material consists of 33,674 profiles of VK users who published at least two messages during the pandemic that explicate the stated narrative. The collection and analysis of the material was carried out using big data analysis technologies. The purpose of the study is to determine whether it is possible to identify typical socio-demographic and ideological traits of anti-vaccer conspiracy theorists, which to a certain extent explain their penchant for conspiracy thinking. The results obtained refute the marginal dominance of conspiracy theorists in a pandemic situation. Versions popular in the scientific literature about the predominance of insufficiently educated people among “conspiracy theorists”, or the elderly as more gullible, or women as more suggestible, or residents of villages and small provincial towns as more conservative, etc. are not confirmed by the large-scale empirical studies of large user data. The results of the study may be useful for developing countermeasures and strategies to address public mistrust of institutions and official trends in public health, in particular vaccination policies. The traditional focus on information and educational measures (explanations about the dangers of the disease and the benefits of the vaccine) seems to be ineffective in the context of the emergence of value systems, cognitive distortions, general socio-political tension and other reasons that are still awaiting serious study.

Conspiracy beliefs (i.e. beliefs in specific conspiracy theories or the more general conspiracy mentality) are associated with a need for uniqueness and lower adherence to social norms. These findings suggest that conspiracy beliefs might be generally associated with less influence by majority opinions – absolutely and compared to minority opinions. In five experiments involving scenarios unrelated to conspiracy theories (overall N = 1669), participants were informed about the majority/minority opinion on a given issue (e.g. the building of a tunnel), afterward indicating their evaluation or voting intentions regarding the issue. We then tested whether the influence of a majority/minority opinion on evaluation or voting intentions is moderated by conspiracy beliefs. Across studies, we find no significant moderation. A meta-analysis confirms no correlation between conspiracy beliefs and susceptibility to majority influence. Taken together, our studies provide no evidence for the assumption that those holding conspiracy beliefs reject majority opinions per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS), this study examines the impact of closed-minded communication in the secondary digital information market in crisis situations where controversial issues about large corporations can unduly deteriorate the relationship between the business and publics. A combination model was constructed to examine the influence of the situational antecedents of STOPS and the conspiracy orientation on selective forfending. An analysis of online survey data (N = 700) revealed the influences of conspiracy orientation and factors other than problem recognition were significant among the factors for problem situations. Publics was subdivided into "non-conspiracy theorists," "conspiracy theorists," and "situational problem solvers" groups with the "conspiracy theorist" group performing selective forfending of business ethics issue information, engaging in the most prominent degree of acquisition and transmission of the information among the groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to the particularist project, one that has become the consensus in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory, is the claim that a general dismissal of these things called `conspiracy theories' is unsustainable. That is, if we want to say a conspiracy theory is suspicious such that we should not believe it, then we have to engage in at least some investigation of it. Particularists have detailed just why a general attitude of skepticism towards conspiracy theories is implausible; they have, in effect, created the case against generalism. The case for particularism, then, has largely been about challenging and rebutting generalist arguments. But what of the bigger picture? If particularists argue that we should not assume conspiracy theories are mad, bad, or dangerous but, rather, investigate them, then how should we go about that investigation? In this paper I describe (some) of the preliminary concerns the particularist (and the generalist) needs to account for when developing an ethics of investigation into these things called `conspiracy theories.' Whilst this paper does not provide a framework for the investigation of conspiracy theories, it provides the framework for such a framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to this special issue of Inquiry looks at recent work in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory. Looking at two related worries expressed in the wider conspiracy theory theory (the academic study of conspiracy theories) – the Problem of Conspiracy Theories and the Problem of Conspiracy Theorists – this special issue argues that recent work in the philosophy of conspiracy theories is getting all the more closer to not just an epistemic understanding of what, if anything, is wrong with belief in conspiracy theories, but also a framework for both investigating conspiracy theories and understanding how we should talk about the beliefs of conspiracy theorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of conspiracy culture and the growing influence of conspiracy theories have attracted the attention of scholars from a range of fields. In recent years, Daniel Jolley, Asbjørn Dyrendal, and others have noted the prevalence of conspiracy theories amongst adolescent schoolchildren in Scandinavia and the UK. This article draws on Paulo Freire's concept of the 'banking model' of education to make the case against a 'debunking' approach to anticonspiracist education. It argues that conspiracism should be understood as a feature of our culture and as such it should be interrogated rather than dismissed by educators who are engaged in the process of educating for democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging from an ad hoc effort to counter Trump supporters at a 2017 Women's March, the Birds Aren't Real movement has transformed from viral performance art into a Gen Z response to political conspiracy culture. This article explores the campaign as an extension of the kind of postmodern parody that became iconic with shows like The Colbert Report in which comedians engage in absurd reproductions of increasingly absurd political realities. Inspired by the work of cultural theorist Nidesh Lawtoo, we argue that Birds Aren't Real engages in parodic hypermimesis, or an ironical meta-mimicking of the digitally networked and infective mimetics responsible for the contemporary proliferation of conspiratorial misinformation. After explaining how parodic hypermimesis works, we illustrate its enactment in the Birds Aren't Real movement, particularly in the way that it relies on doubling to debase conspiracy rhetoric as a predictable set of topoi, cultivates a conspiracy community via intoxicating affect, and derides the mainstream media by baiting outlets with parodic spectacles. Ultimately, this essay ponders whether, in reverberating conspiracy logics, such well-intentioned parody can successfully ascend the cardinal sins it critiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns have been raised by both researchers and authorities regarding conspiracy theorists rejecting experts. To address the validity of these concerns, we need to delve into two key inquiries regarding who qualifies as an expert on conspiracy theories, and what constitutes an epistemically rational response (from a conspiracy theorist) when faced with expert testimony. The first inquiry presents a challenge when considering a reputationalist versus a realist account of experts. On the reputationalist account rejecting experts may be viewed as little more than rejecting those whom society has collectively deemed as experts. Alternatively, adopting a realist account raises the challenge of determining who the genuine experts are. I argue that the realist account is the more compelling option for pursuing the first question. Moreover, I explore two prevalent accounts from existing literature that prescribe how epistemic agents should respond to expert testimony: the Preemptive View and the Community View. Through an examination using the simulation program Laputa, I demonstrate that both accounts are insufficient. Consequently, I argue that without a clear identification of experts in the broader context of conspiracy theories, the initial concern lacks a solid foundation, and the sense of urgency may be unwarranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some people deliberately spread conspiracy theories. What are the reputational benefits and costs of doing so? The Adaptive‐Conspiracism hypothesis proposes that it pays to be vigilant against possible conspiracies, especially in case of intergroup threat. Those who spread conspiracy theories may therefore be seen as valuable group members. Few studies have focused on the reputational impact of spreading a conspiracy theory. We conducted five studies (NPilot = 303; NStudy1 = 388; NStudy2 = 560; NStudy3 = 391; NStudy4 = 373) where participants rated a conspiracy spreader (vs. a neutral person) on a range of personality traits in different intergroup contexts. The results indicated that conspiracy spreaders were consistently perceived as more dominant and less warm than people making non‐conspiratorial claims about certain events. Moreover, intergroup conflict attenuated the negative effects of spreading conspiracy theories on competence and warmth. These findings support the notion that besides drawbacks, spreading conspiracy theories can have benefits for the spreader's reputation, particularly during an intergroup conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Generalists’ hold that conspiracy theories, as a class, have epistemic defects. Well confirmed theories that invoke conspiracies, such as the theory that the Nixon administration conspired to orchestrate the break in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, on 17 June 1972, – the ‘Watergate theory’ – raise a problem for generalists as it’s hard to understand how such theories can have epistemic defects. The Watergate theory is often not considered a mere conspiracy theory, because it enjoys ‘official theory’ status and in folk usage that means it is not a conspiracy theory. However, most people concede that the Watergate theory was a conspiracy theory before obtaining official status. So, appealing to folk usage does not make the problem go away. Recently however, several generalist scholars including, Cassam, Mandik, Thalman and Butter, have argued that theories invoking conspiracies that enjoy official status were never conspiracy theories. I’ll consider their reasoning and show where they go wrong. I’ll work with the examples of the Watergate theory and the ‘false flag’ theory of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, which has it that this massacre of over 100 people was led by white Utahn Mormons disguised as Native Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a questionnaire, this study investigated the numerous factors affecting the Jordanian population's rejection of COVID-19 vaccines. The data were collected in 2020 to 2021. Using the chi-square test, t -test, Cramer's V -test, and analysis of variance, we found that most of the Sample (72.6%) obtained information on COVID-19 and its vaccines from social media, radio, and television. In comparison, 31.1% and 35.4% of the Sample obtained from government/official sources or health specialists, respectively, with a lesser share relying on colleagues (13.7%) and scientific lectures (17.5%). Furthermore, depending on the participants' characteristics, there were significant differences in the information sources or abstinence factors. Several factors were associated with vaccine refusal and hesitancy, including contradictory/conflicting information, lack of trust in vaccines/manufacturers, doubt about the vaccines' effectiveness, and the belief that the risks of COVID-19 are minimal. Based on these findings, we present several recommendations for policymakers. Plain Language Summary: Vaccine Refusal Factors associated with vaccination refusal among a sample of the Jordanian population This study aimed to comprehend what causes Jordanians to refuse vaccinations. Most participants of the present study learned about COVID-19 and vaccines from radio, television, and social media. Fewer of them turned to official and professional sources. Conflicting information about COVID-19, skepticism about the effectiveness of vaccines and potential side effects, skepticism toward vaccine manufacturers and media sources, uncertainty regarding the efficacy of vaccines, and mistrust in information sources regarding the virus and vaccines have led to confusion and resistance to following health recommendations. These factors resulted in vaccine rejection by considerable percentages of the Jordanian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conspiracy theories are a constant feature of human society but have recently risen in prominence with the flurry of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and their public display in social media. Conspiracy theories should be studied not only because of their potential harm but also because they are related to other sources of misinformation such as folk theories, rumors, and fake news. Recent understanding of their spread has shifted the focus from investigating the believers to characteristics of the social processes that motivate and persuade, with a new view of the conspiracy theorist as a bricoleur dealing with threats through social (re)construction of reality. These tendencies are strengthened by the markets for attention and approval constructed by social media platforms, and bots also amplify them. We identify an agenda of multiple important and urgent paths for future research that will help understanding of conspiracy theories in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a personal discussion on the topic of anti-Semitism, this article brings together the common issues that lead to the conceptual complexity of anti-Semitism. The breach of anti-Semitism into public politics and the organized left through the two-axis points of Israel and conspiracy theories are discussed, in particular recent controversies in the Labour Party, attacks on religious centers, and discordant views on what qualifies as anti-Semitism. Weaving together personal narratives, the essay unpacks the difficulty of considering anti-Semitism in the contemporary understanding of oppression, colonialism, and white supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract Despite hundreds of studies examining belief in conspiracy theories, it is still unclear who—demographically—is most likely to believe such theories. To remedy this knowledge gap, we examine survey data containing various operationalizations of conspiracism across diverse sociopolitical contexts. Study 1 employs a 2021 U.S. survey (n = 2021) to examine associations between sociodemographic characteristics and beliefs in 39 conspiracy theories. Study 2 similarly employs a survey of 20 countries (n = 26,416) and 11 conspiracy theory beliefs. Study 3 reports results from a 2020 U.S. survey (n = 2015) measuring perceptions about which groups are engaging in conspiracies. Study 4 interrogates data from nine U.S. surveys (2012–2022; n = 14,334) to examine the relationships between sociodemographic characteristics and generalized conspiracy thinking. Study 5 synchronizes studies 1–4 to provide an intersectional analysis of conspiracy theory belief. Across studies, we observe remarkably consistent patterns: education, income, age (older), and White identification are negatively related to conspiracism, while Black identification is positively related. We conclude by discussing why conspiracy theories may appeal most to historically marginalized groups and how our findings can inform efforts to mitigate the negative effects of conspiracy theories.

The vaccine hesitancy developed during the COVID-19 pandemic has spread the disease, delayed immunity, and increased death rates. Social media platforms have contributed to the spread of doubts, misinformation about vaccines. Twitter, being one of the most popular social networks in Türkiye, has become a significant platform for vaccine polarization. This study aims to examine the reasons for vaccine hesitancy and conspiracy theories developed by Turkish users on Twitter. 3939 tweets were analyzed with the hashtags #aşıyahayır (#notovaccine), #aşıolmayacağım (#Iwillnotgetvaccinated), #denekolmaTürkiye (#donotbeatestsubjectTürkiye), #aşıolmakistemiyorum (#Idonotwanttogetvaccinated). The examined categories are as follows: scientific (the highest number of comments in this category were related to medical side effects), miscellaneous (the highest number of comments were about the lack of mentioning reasons for vaccine hesitancy), conspiracy theories (the highest number of comments were about major pharmaceutical companies), and general content (opinions against administering Covid-19 vaccines to children).

Abstract A conspiracy theory (CT) suggests covert groups or powerful individuals secretly manipulate events. Not knowing about existing conspiracy theories could make one more likely to believe them, so this work aims to compile a list of CTs shaped as a tree that is as comprehensive as possible. We began with a manually curated ‘tree’ of CTs from academic papers and Wikipedia. Next, we examined 1769 CT-related articles from four fact-checking websites, focusing on their core content, and used a technique called Keyphrase Extraction to label the documents. This process yielded 769 identified conspiracies, each assigned a label and a family name. The second goal of this project was to detect whether an article is a conspiracy theory, so we built a binary classifier with our labeled dataset. This model uses a transformer-based machine learning technique and is pre-trained on a large corpus called RoBERTa, resulting in an F1 score of 87%. This model helps to identify potential conspiracy theories in new articles. We used a combination of clustering (HDBSCAN) and a dimension reduction technique (UMAP) to assign a label from the tree to these new articles detected as conspiracy theories. We then labeled these groups accordingly to help us match them to the tree. These can lead us to detect new conspiracy theories and expand the tree using computational methods. We successfully generated a tree of conspiracy theories and built a pipeline to detect and categorize conspiracy theories within any text corpora. This pipeline gives us valuable insights through any databases formatted as text.

It has long been recognized that conspiracy narratives may be seen as a special kind of myth. In most cases, however, this is taken as a sign of their irrational and unsubstantiated nature. I argue that mythical modes of reasoning are actually far more pervasive in modern political and cultural discourse than we commonly admit and that the difference between mainstream discourse and conspiracy narratives is not one between "rational" and "mythical" thought but rather one between different types of mythical thinking. The specific nature of conspiracy myths is best understood in relation to two other types of social myths: political myths and fictional myths. Conspiracy myths are a hybrid of these two genres: like fictional myths, they make use of imaginative elements, but like political myths, they are understood as having a relatively straightforward relation to reality and not just a metaphorical one. They are essentially anti-systemic, and their chief ethos is that of distrust. Nevertheless, the degree to which they reject the system varies, and it is thus useful to distinguish between weaker and stronger conspiracy myths. While the latter reject the system altogether and are incompatible with political myths, the former are capable of co-operating with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than seeking to recuperate the ideal of a digital public sphere or lament its demise with the rise of social media platforms, in this paper I seek to identify the dangers of precisely this insistence to imagine the Internet as a public sphere. It is this curious insistence and persistence that, I claim, may feed into precisely those post-truth media dynamics such critical accounts worry about and rally against. The success of viral conspiracy narratives like Pizzagate and QAnon, as well as other forms of mis- and disinformation, hinges not (only) on the absence or distortion of a healthy democratic public sphere, as is typically assumed, but (also) on its persistence as an imaginary in an environment that obeys an altogether different set of logics, namely that of ‘communicative capitalism’ and ‘information warfare.’ Whereas the former has drawn most critical attention in connection to current post-truth dynamics (e.g., the effects of targeted advertising and the role of algorithms in creating polarizing echo chambers and filter bubbles), I will instead focus on the latter. The unique problem and ‘cunning’ of what I refer to as ‘post-truth conspiracism’ is that it draws on idea(l)s of digital publicness to establish its own epistemic legitimacy, as well as derive its unique powers of persuasion, while also mobilizing the full tactical arsenal of information warfare in a global attention economy. The resulting weaponization of digital public sphere imaginaries complicates attempts to recuperate the idea(l) of a digital public sphere as a solution to a ‘polluted’ information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two preregistered online studies with U.S. adults, we provide evidence of a common psychological profile characterizing belief in prejudicial and non‐prejudicial epistemically unwarranted claims. We solicited self‐report ratings of beliefs in prejudicial and non‐prejudicial pseudoscientific, conspiratorial, and paranormal claims, as well as individual difference measures related to cognitive style, social dominance orientation (SDO), and trust in science. We found moderate to strong positive correlations between endorsing prejudicial and non‐prejudicial unwarranted claims, and robustly replicable associations between endorsement of all the assessed varieties of epistemically unwarranted beliefs, SDO, and perceptions of the credibility of science. Our findings suggest that individuals who endorse epistemically unwarranted beliefs are not only characterized by a rejection of epistemic authority (e.g., science), but also by preferences for a rigid, inequitably stratified society. This suggests that successfully challenging epistemically unwarranted beliefs may benefit by incorporating explicit challenges to social dominance motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conspiracy seems to be everywhere, and not only in the United States, where the "rigged election" conspiracy led a US president to reverse the results of a national election. We consider what is distinctive about contemporary conspiracism and argue that the prevalence of fact-free conspiratorial narratives marks a shift from what Hofstadter called the "pedantic" style of conspiracy theory. We show how conspiracism today threatens democratic institutions and sketch how the articles in this volume (on conspiracism) advance our understanding of conspiracy and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attention to and concerns about conspiracy theories have increased in recent years, fuelled by a surge in conspiratorial discourse during the Donald Trump presidency in the United States. Responding to this development, the scholarship on how democracies should deal with conspiracy theories has focused on what new regulations and institutions ought to be introduced to tackle its threats to democracy. In this article, I consider this practical question from a different angle by exploring the discursive strategies that are available to political elites when they encounter a conspiracy theory. I flesh out three general strategies – ignore, rebut and embrace – and identify the circumstances that shape when each strategy should be used in order to maximize the effects of discourse as an anti-conspiracy mechanism. This perspective thereby aims to reveal the elements of skill and nuance that are required of a politician who seeks to engage a conspiracy theory in a way that advances democratic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a surge in existing anti-vaccine sentiments in Ukraine, posing a threat to public health. This study aims to analyze the anti-vaccine campaign in the Ukrainian blogosphere, which intensified during the pandemic and coalesced around issues related to the coronavirus. Relevance of the study. The relevance of the study is determined by the increasing popularity of anti-vaccine sentiments in Ukraine, which are facilitated by the growing influence of the blogosphere as a powerful channel for disseminating destructive content. The study aims to identify the key categories that bloggers appealed to while conducting the campaign against vaccination for coronavirus disease in Ukraine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology. To determine the most influential representatives of the anti-vaccine movement in Ukraine, a media monitoring was conducted focusing on the exposure of fakes and misinformation regarding COVID-19. A list of the channels of the most popular Ukrainian bloggers who are corona-skeptics and opponents of vaccination was compiled. Subsequently, 232 videos published on these bloggers’ channels were studied. The content analysis method was applied to identify the key messages and calls used by vaccination opponents. Results. The most popular representatives of the anti-vaccine movement in Ukraine were found to be lawyers, pseudo-experts, citizen journalists, and proponents of conspiracy theories. The media activity of anti-vaccination bloggers was recorded throughout the entire pandemic of the coronavirus disease in Ukraine and for some time after its end. The chronology and reasons for the main surges in their activity and audience interest are revealed. The study identified the most common categories appealed to by bloggers in the anti-vaccination campaign, as well as their calls to action and objects of their criticism. Conclusions. The study demonstrates that Ukrainian vaccination opponents politicize vaccination issues, actively using conspiratorial rhetoric. The key categories of coronaskeptics bloggers’ messages include violations of rights (both fundamental rights and rights to work, choice, etc.), safety (of vaccines or the disease itself), conspiracy theories and moral. The most popular appeal of vaccination opponents is to “think critically” and not comply with requirements related to vaccination or quarantine restrictions. The main objects of criticism are authorities, various institutions, and the media. Further investigation into the discursive strategies of antivaccine campaigns will contribute to the formation of an effective counter-narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From #Pizzagate to anti‐vaxxers, passing by 9/11 or Obama 'birthers', we have seen many communities growing on social media around conspiracy theories and thereby gaining public prominence. Debunking or presenting alternative views to conspiracy theories often fails because individuals within these communities can grow more resolute, encouraging and reinforcing their beliefs online. Instead of withering in the face of contradiction, such communities hunker down; escalating their commitment to their conspiratorial beliefs. By interacting over social media platforms, they develop a sense of a shared social identity, which in turn fosters escalating behaviours and can lead to radicalization. For some people, the choice of abandoning or moderating these beliefs is unthinkable because they are too deeply invested to quit. This study advances a second‐order affordance for identity‐driven escalation that explains the process of conspiracy theory radicalization within online communities. We offer a theoretical account of the way social media platforms contribute to escalating commitment to conspiracy radicalization. We show how the sequential and combined actualization of first‐order affordances of the technology enables a second‐order affordance for escalation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conspiracy theory (CT) suggests covert groups or powerful individuals secretly manipulate events. Not knowing about existing conspiracy theories could make one more likely to believe them, so this work aims to compile a list of CTs shaped as a tree that is as comprehensive as possible. We began with a manually curated 'tree' of CTs from academic papers and Wikipedia. Next, we examined 1769 CT-related articles from four fact-checking websites, focusing on their core content, and used a technique called Keyphrase Extraction to label the documents. This process yielded 769 identified conspiracies, each assigned a label and a family name. The second goal of this project was to detect whether an article is a conspiracy theory, so we built a binary classifier with our labeled dataset. This model uses a transformer-based machine learning technique and is pre-trained on a large corpus called RoBERTa, resulting in an F1 score of 87%. This model helps to identify potential conspiracy theories in new articles. We used a combination of clustering (HDBSCAN) and a dimension reduction technique (UMAP) to assign a label from the tree to these new articles detected as conspiracy theories. We then labeled these groups accordingly to help us match them to the tree. These can lead us to detect new conspiracy theories and expand the tree using computational methods. We successfully generated a tree of conspiracy theories and built a pipeline to detect and categorize conspiracy theories within any text corpora. This pipeline gives us valuable insights through any databases formatted as text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Science and Society Research Group at the Ludovika University of Public Service organised a conference in Budapest on 13 October 2023 titled: ‘Science and disinformation: how science can support society against disinformation’. The conference explored the complex relationship between science, society, and disinformation. A panel discussion was held with the aim of examining the challenges and strategies for science communication in the context of the ever-increasing issues of dis-/misinformation. The discussion highlighted the multifaceted factors that influence public trust in science; the role of digital culture on science communication and scientific knowledge production; the impact of artificial intelligence; and the relationship between science and business developments on science disinformation, especially on science-related conspiracy theories. The participants helped shed light on how science communication strategies can be improved to stabilise trust in a multi-stakeholder information environment. This article summarises the main insights and conclusions from the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on conspiracy theories has proliferated since 2016, in part due to the US election of President Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasingly threatening environmental conditions. In the rush to publication given these concerning social consequences, researchers have increasingly treated as definitive a 2016 paper by Michael Wood (Political Psychology, 37(5), 695–705, 2016) that concludes that the phrase "conspiracy theory" has no negative effect upon people's willingness to endorse a claim. We revisit Wood's findings and its (re)uptake in the recent literature. Is the label "conspiracy theory" a pejorative? If so, does it sway or affect people's belief in specific claims of conspiracy (i.e. particular conspiracy theories), or is the effect one that concerns claims of conspiracy more generally (i.e. all conspiracy theories)? Through an examination of the conceptual and methodological scope of Wood's work and the results of our similar quasi-experimental design, we argue that it is premature to suggest the label "conspiracy theory" has no impact on the believability of a claim, or that it has no rhetorical power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Conspiracy theory belief – explaining the ultimate causes of social and political events with claims of secret conspiracies – is assumed to arise from a desire to make sense of uncertainty, especially in times of crisis. However, there is no compelling evidence that conspiracy theory belief actually fulfils this function, particularly in terms of evaluating one's life as meaningful. We posit that the adoption of conspiracy theory belief can be explained as a fluid compensation when a more proximal source of meaning, a sense of belonging to society, is threatened. Thus, a positive association between conspiracy theory belief and meaningfulness should emerge when people feel alienated from society. We therefore tested the hypotheses that alienation from society correlates negatively with meaningfulness (H1), and that it moderates the relationship between conspiracy theory belief and meaningfulness (H2). Method: Conspiracy theory belief related to the COVID-19 pandemic, meaningfulness (Meaning and Purpose Scales, MAPS), and perceived alienation from society were assessed in a representative sample of N = 974 German residents. Results: As expected, alienation from society was inversely related to meaningfulness and moderated the relationship between conspiracy theory belief and meaningfulness. According to the interaction, a positive association between belief in conspiracy theory and meaningfulness emerged when individuals experienced themselves as alienated from society. Conclusion: The results suggest that conspiracy theory belief might alleviate a lack of meaningfulness caused by experienced alienation from society. Individuals who felt discriminated against, treated unequally, or having their rights restricted were more likely to hold conspiracy theory belief, which was associated with a greater sense of meaning in their lives.

With the advent of social networking sites, the so-called health dissidents have received unprecedented possibilities for online community building and spreading their views. In particular, the combination of social uncertainty and the platform affordances that bordered antivaxxer communities from outer communication led to formation of (allegedly) closed-up online milieus where vaccination denialists’ (‘antivaxxers’) irrational views resided and grew. The deliberative counter-productivity of such communities needs to be investigated. In this respect, Russia is a special case, characterized by low trust in the public sphere as a ground for the spread of conspiracy theories, and by ‘mixed’ trust to the healthcare system, thanks to highly-reputable Soviet-time medical services but negative attitudes to the current ones. We look at @anti_ covid21, the largest Russian pandemic antivaxxer community on Telegram, to explore by what means destructive opinions accumulate in this community. We investigate the combination of three discursive elements usually studied separately in research on COVID-19 denialism: 1) distrust, including its addressees, and interconnectedness of the destructive features of the antivaxxer discourse, namely distrust, aggression, and conspiracy thinking; 2) the patterns of micro-opinion cumulation that lead to general growth of distrust; 3) content sourcing that supports ‘the discourse of distrust.’ We follow the conceptual framework of cumulative deliberation; it implies that micro-acts of opinionated participation matter both en masse and in deliberative micro-patterns. Our sample includes all posts and comments from @anti_covid21 of six months of 2021, with 1,185 posts and 282,000+ comments altogether. Out of this sample, three datasets were formed. In particular, Dataset 1 was received by semi-automatedly reducing from 282,000+ to 12,188+ texts and then coded by 28 coders. Dataset 2 comprised comment threads of three most active days in terms of commenting, of 411 comments altogether, that were coded as continuous samples by 6 additional coders. Dataset 3 consisted of the 1,185 posts in which the available attracted content (text, photo, or video) was coded by 4 coders on its formal belonging to certain media types and countries of origin. Our results show that @anti_covid21 was a reactive community centered around one-sided anti-vaccination content that left no room for multi-view discussing. Content sourcing united user-generated evidence, criticized mainstream media pieces, and publications of blurred origin of many countries, making the community open to world experience but of highly biased nature. The ‘discourse of distrust’ that emerged in response was politicized, distrust to national and global actors potentially being a mediator to vaccine distrust. We identified two stable micro-patterns of accumulation of distrust triggered by both the published content and user behavior. Altogether, our conclusions differ from other countries’ experiences and call for pre-emptive resolution of the multi-faceted issue of social distrust before new health crises erupt.