Pandemics, Power, and Conspiracy Theories

Humans seem drawn to dark conspiracy theories, often in favor of the simple truth In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation and conspiracy theorizing have surged President Trump, for example, praised the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a "game changer" despite scant empirical evidence of its efficacy and safety for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Others in the administration have promoted the unsubstantiated theory that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese lab, despite scientific consensus that the virus likely originated in an animal source before zoonotic transfer and that no evidence indicates that the virus emerged through deliberate lab manipulation of a related virus Here, Friedman discusses why humans are vulnerable to conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories are not fringe ideas, tucked away in society’s dark corners. Conspiracy theories are everywhere, and like other ideas they have consequences. When people believe conspiracy theories they may act on them. In democracies, conspiracy theories can drive majorities to make horrible decisions. Conspiracy beliefs can conversely encourage political abstention: if one believes the system is rigged, they will be less willing to take part. Conspiracy theories form the basis of some people’s medical decisions. For a select few, conspiracy theories are instructions to fight fire with fire, to use violence. There is no time in recorded history without conspiracy theories. Whether we are examining accounts of ancient Rome, medieval Europe, or twentieth-century America, conspiracy theories have inspired millions to take action. Scares, panics, purges, and bloodshed have sometimes been the result. Conspiracy theorizing is an enduring part of politics. Despite this, researchers and journalists continually struggle to understand the phenomenon. Why do people believe conspiracy theories? What are their effects on politics and society? How do conspiracy theories differ across the world? What should be done about conspiracy theories? Are we currently living through the conspiracy theory renaissance?

Editorial—The truth is out there: The psychology of conspiracy theories and how to counter them

Vaccination is considered a key factor in the sanitary resolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, vaccine hesitancy can undermine its diffusion with severe consequences on global health. While beliefs in conspiracy theories, mistrust in science and in policymakers, and mistrust in official information channels may also increment vaccine hesitancy, understanding their psychological causes could improve our capacity to respond to the pandemic. Thus, we designed a cross-sectional study with the aim of probing vaccine propensity in the Italian population and explored its relationship with sociodemographic and psychological variables, and with misbeliefs in COVID-19. A battery of questionnaires was administered to a sample of 374 Italian adults during the first national lockdown (April 2020). The materials included an original instrument—Beliefs in COVID-19 Inventory—and questionnaires measuring perceived stress, anxiety, death anxiety, psychological distress, psychoticism, paranoia, anger, and somatization. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on Beliefs in COVID-19 suggested the existence of three factors: belief in conspiracy theories, mistrust in medical information, and mistrust in medicine and science. These factors were positively correlated with female sex, age, religious beliefs, psychiatric conditions, and psychological variables, while negatively correlated with education levels. We conducted a mediation analysis by means of a structural equation model, including psychological factors as predictors, beliefs in COVID-19 scales as mediators, and vaccine propensity as an outcome. The model showed that death anxiety had a direct positive effect on the propensity to get vaccinated. It also showed that death anxiety reduced the propensity to get vaccinated through a mediated path in believing in conspiracy theories, whereas paranoia was linked to a reduction in vaccination adherence with the mediation effect of mistrust in medical science. Psychological distress reduced vaccination propensity by increasing both conspiracy beliefs and mistrust. On the other hand, anxiety increased the propensity to get vaccinated through a decrease in both belief in conspiracy theories and mistrust in science. Our results suggest that psychological dimensions are differentially related to belief in conspiracy theories, to mistrust in science, and to the propensity to get vaccinated. Based on this result, we propose an original interpretation of how conspiracy beliefs build on a paranoid and suspicious attitude. We also discuss the possible clinical implications of treatment for such pathological beliefs.

Conspiracy theories in online spaces, such as anti-vaccination or QAnon, present a unique amalgamation of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda disguised in entertaining, attention-grabbing content that may appeal to peoples' cultural, moral, or social identities. Studies aiming to understand how people may engage with conspiracy theory content online, or how they may lose belief in conspiracy theories often approach research from a purely theoretical or empirical point of view. In this work, through in-depth interviews with former believers of more than 12 conspiracy theories, with experiences across almost two decades and numerous online platforms, we aim to contribute an understanding of how various online and offline factors synergize to shape a user's engagement, tenure, and disengagement in online conspiracy theorizing. We further investigate how some users recover from conspiracy theorizing with the help of online recovery communities. We find how pre-existing biases and predispositions towards conspiracy theorizing often carry over in online spaces where a user's conspiracy theory worldviews further evolve through content recommendations, interactions in online communities, and socially-primed self-reflections. We also find reasons, such as exposure to inconsistencies in theories or toxicity and anti-social attitudes in online spaces, through which users get disillusioned from conspiracy theories. Our work has implications in bringing forward often unobserved impacts of internet-mediated conspiracy theorizing on the believers---the resulting mental health issues such as depression, distrust and anxiety, and social isolation---which is comparable to the indoctrination trauma. Moreover, our interviews reveal an important role played by online communities in helping users recover from conspiracy theory beliefs by finding empathy and solidarity in fellow former believers. We conclude by providing a path forward for how social computing researchers can contribute online community designs that aid existing issues surrounding safety, inclusivity, and lack of resources in existing online conspiracy theory recovery communities.

“We live in an age of conspiracy” says Don DeLillo (1989). In 2014 it seems that conspiracy theories, and speculation concerning the “truth” about major events, has become a popular theme and pastime in contemporary society. From sold out eleven hour David Icke presentations at Wembley Stadium in the UK (as well as his world tours), to the ever expanding radio and television network of Alex Jones in the United States, it is clear that there is more than just a fringe interest in conspiracy theories. In the academic literature dating back to Richard Hofstadter (1964) though, the phenomenon has been cast as a purely pathological or paranoid behaviour. Recent works, such as that of Sunstien and Vermeule (2009), Aaronovitch (2011) and van der Linden (2013) go further in suggesting that engagement with conspiracy theories is not only a pathological behaviour, but a danger both to modern society and one which threatens to bring an end to the “age of reason.” Others however, such as Jane and Fleming (2014) have suggested that conspiracy theories are actually a direct result of Enlightenment thinking, and that they offer a valuable counterweight to modern forms of propaganda. In this thesis I seek to challenge the view that conspiracy theories are a pathological behaviour, and offer instead that in contemporary engagement with conspiracy theories is a form of political resistance that allows the excluded and disaffected a political voice. I also offer that conspiracy theories are best understood as social, cultural and political narratives that are in the words of Michael Barkun (2003) a form of stigmatized knowledge. From this perspective it is possible, I argue, to contextualise conspiracy theories in terms of contemporary political and social issues. Finally, I suggest that conspiracy theories may be a method that is used by those who engage to negotiate social ambivalence as outlined by Bauman (1991). To do this, I interviewed eight Melbournians who were either engaged with conspiracy theories or considered themselves “sceptics.” Each of the participants, shared stories of their everyday experiences with conspiracy theories with me. I have analysed their responses using a thematic narrative analysis and underpinning my research were four research questions: [1] How do people living and working in Melbourne define and use conspiracy theories in their everyday lives?; [2] In my data, are conspiracy theories being discussed (and used) as a form of political action for the alienated and marginalized? [3] Does my data collected conform to the two broad understandings that I have outlined in the literature review (the cultural and psychological approaches)? [4] Following question 3, do my participants engage with conspiracy theories as social, cultural and political narratives that offer a new or alternative means of political resistance?

How Google Autocomplete Algorithms about Conspiracy Theorists Mislead the Public

Social media has been an effective vector for spreading disinformation about medicine and science. Informational hygiene can reduce the severity of falsehoods about health.

What, If Anything, Do Populism and Conspiracy Theories Have to Do with Each Other? Jan-Werner Müller (bio) populism and conspiracy theories are often mentioned in one breath.1 Populists, it is frequently claimed, are characterized as being "critical of elites" or "angry with the establishment." And "the elites," or so populists claim, are all conspiring against "the people" somehow: a simplistic and, above all, Manichean picture, with good and evil clearly allocated on different sides, something that is also often said to characterize conspiracy theories (Priester 2012; Castanho, Vegetti, and Littvay 2017; Bergmann 2018; Bergmann and Butter 2021). Populists' audiences are taken to be receptive to claims about elites conspiring (usually, it is asserted, "behind the scenes"); this observation in turn prompts what has also become conventional wisdom for many politicians, pundits, and even social scientists: those supporting populist leaders and parties are likely to be irrational, if not outright paranoid, for they fall for conspiracy theories that evidently lack a factual basis but are very effective at riling up supposedly "ordinary people" (see also Hofstadter 1964). Populist leaders, in turn, can safely be assumed to be lying—maybe not all the time, but much more frequently than other politicians (here the sum of former US president Donald Trump's lies immediately comes to mind: in total, a staggering 30,000 or so instances over a four-year period [Kessler, Rizzo, and Kelly 2021]). [End Page 607] If one broadly accepts this picture, what follows? For one thing, liberals (in the broadest sense of that term, not in the specific partisan American sense) have license to indulge what would seem a recycling of the arguments from late nineteenth-century mass psychology: "ordinary people" are ill informed and incapable of rational decisions; instead, they are easily swayed by mass sentiments and ready to be seduced by talented demagogues peddling falsehoods. It is perhaps telling that, in our era, political science—always plagued by feelings of insecurity when it comes to its own methods and status as a discipline—has increasingly been dominated by psychology, especially the kind of psychological inquiry that purports to demonstrate the limits of human rationality ("if I demonstrate to highly partisan citizens the falsehood of their beliefs, they will double down on them"—that kind of thing [Nyhan and Reifer 2010]). What used to be mainly economics envy among political scientists has, for plenty of practitioners, been displaced by psychology envy, or so it seems. Second, it becomes very easy for liberals (again, in the broadest sense) to dismiss what populist leaders are saying as simply false. The question is no longer what precisely particular politicians are claiming, but why people would possibly believe them. This is not to suggest that liberals have necessarily been complacent about the success of populist politicians; on the contrary, we have witnessed a kind of moral panic among liberals in the past half decade or so about the success of populists (and, as Michael Butter [2022] has put it, we have seen panic because of conspiracies in one part of society and panic about conspiracy theories in another). Yet the success of populists at the polls has largely been treated as a symptom; for those taking this perspective, the challenge then is to identify the underlying cause (be it economic, cultural—often enough a euphemism for racism—or somehow a mixture of the two). Here liberals have sometimes gone from one extreme to the other: from assuming that populists are always simply lying and engaged in conspiracy theorizing, to becoming convinced that, in fact, populist leaders are ultimately, at least in an indirect way, telling us the truth about what is really happening in [End Page 608] society. Populists, it is assumed, make visible problems long ignored by "liberal elites." I want to question these familiar frames and move away from too easily and quickly associating populism and lying in politics, and the propounding of conspiracy theories in particular. But I don't want to suggest that there is no relationship at all. Rather, I argue that there exists what, with Max Weber, one might call an elective affinity between populism and conspiracy theories—but the link is weaker...

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019 and the subsequent lockdowns led to widespread conspiracy theories often involving one particular actor: Bill Gates. Adherents of these conspiracy theories believed Gates was behind the pandemic for some nefarious purpose, including chipping and/or eugenics. This was, however, no fringe sentiment: celebrities and other prominent voices articulated some iteration of the Gates-COVID-19 conspiracy theory beginning in 2020. Though the conspiracy theory appears to have come out of nowhere, it does have a (pre-)history. Some have tried to point to a single or recent origin, but it is in fact much older, more complex, and informed by real developments over the previous two decades. This article traces the origins of the conspiracy theory going back to its prehistory in the 1990s, describes the narrative in its various iterations and (per)mutations – along with Gates’s shifting role in them – and charts the dissemination of this dynamic conspiracy theory while examining some of its notable tropes.

Conspiracy theories can have particularly harmful effects by negatively shaping health-related behaviours. A significant number of COVID-19 specific conspiracy theories emerged in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic outbreak. The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature on conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic (2020), to identify their prevalence, their determinants and their public health consequences. A comprehensive literature search was carried out in PubMed and PsycINFO to detect all studies examining any conspiracy theory related to COVID-19 between January 1st 2020, and January 10th 2021. Forty-three studies were included with a total of 61,809 participants. Between 0.4 and 82.7% of participants agreed with at least one conspiracy belief. Certain sociodemographic factors (young age, female gender, being non-white, lower socioeconomic status), psychological aspects (pessimism, blaming others, anger) and other qualities (political conservatism, religiosity, mistrust in science and using social media as source of information) were associated with increased acceptance of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy beliefs led to harmful health-related behaviours and posed a serious public health threat. Large-scale collaborations between governments and healthcare organizations are needed to curb the spread of conspiracy theories and their adverse consequences.

Abstract. People endorse conspiracy theories particularly when they experience existential threat, that is, feelings of anxiety or uncertainty often because of distressing societal events. At the same time, such feelings also often lead people to support groups frequently implicated in conspiracy theories (e.g., the government). The present contribution aims to resolve this paradox by proposing an Existential Threat Model of Conspiracy Theories, which stipulates under what conditions existential threat does versus does not stimulate conspiracy theories. The model specifically illuminates that feelings of existential threat increase epistemic sense-making processes, which in turn stimulate conspiracy theories only when antagonistic outgroups are salient. Moreover, once formed conspiracy theories are not functional to reduce feelings of existential threat; instead, conspiracy theories can be a source of existential threat in itself, stimulating further conspiracy theorizing and contributing to a generalized conspiracist mindset. In the discussion, I discuss implications of the model, and illuminate how one may base interventions on the model to breaks this cyclical process and reduce conspiracy beliefs.

Although people who endorse conspiracy theories related to medicine often have negative attitudes toward particular health care measures and may even shun the healthcare system in general, conspiracy theories have received rather meager attention in bioethics literature. Consequently, and given that conspiracy theorizing appears rather prevalent, it has been maintained that there is significant need for bioethics debate over how to deal with conspiracy theories. While the proposals have typically focused on the effects that unwarranted conspiracy theories have in the public health context, Nathan Stout's recent argument concentrates on the impacts that such theories have at the individual level of clinical decision-making. In this article, I maintain that duly acknowledging the impacts of conspiracy theories that raise Stout's concern does not require bioethics debate over the proper response to the influence of conspiracy theories in healthcare. Having evaluated two possible objections, I conclude by briefly clarifying the purported import of the response to Stout.

What drives conspiracy theorizing in the United States? Conspiracy theories can undermine the legitimacy and efficacy of government policy, and sometimes lead to violence. Unfortunately prior studies on the topic have been anecdotal and impressionistic. For purchase on this problem, we attempt the first systematic data collection of conspiracy theories at the mass and elite levels by examining published letters to the editor of the New York Times from 1897 to 2010 and a validating sample from the Chicago Tribune. We argue that perceived power asymmetries, indicated by international and domestic conflicts, influence when and why conspiracy theories resonate in the U.S. On this reasoning, conspiracy theories conform to a strategic logic that helps vulnerable groups manage threats. Further, we find that both sides of the domestic partisan divide partake in conspiracy theorizing equally, though in an alternating pattern, and foreign conspiracy theories crowd out domestic conspiracy theories during heightened foreign threat.

Conspiracy theories (CTs) are widespread ways by which people make sense of unsettling or disturbing cultural events. Belief in CTs is often connected to problematic consequences, such as decreased engagement with conventional political action or even political extremism, so understanding the psychological and social qualities of CT belief is important. CTs have often been understood to be “monological,” displaying the tendency for belief in one conspiracy theory to be correlated with belief in (many) others. Explanations of monologicality invoke a nomothetical or “closed” mindset whereby mutually supporting beliefs based on mistrust of official explanations are used to interpret public events as conspiracies, independent of the facts about those events (which they may ignore or deny). But research on monologicality offers little discussion of the content of monological beliefs and reasoning from the standpoint of the CT believers. This is due in part to the “access problem”: CT believers are averse to being researched because they often distrust researchers and what they appear to represent. Using several strategies to address the access problem we were able to engage CT believers in semi-structured interviews, combining their results with analysis of media documents and field observations to reconstruct a conspiracy worldview – a set of symbolic resources drawn on by CT believers about important dimensions of ontology, epistemology, and human agency. The worldview is structured around six main dimensions: the nature of reality, the self, the outgroup, the ingroup, relevant social and political action, and possible future change. We also describe an ascending typology of five types of CT believers, which vary according to their positions on each of these dimensions. Our findings converge with prior explorations of CT beliefs but also revealed novel aspects: A sense of community among CT believers, a highly differentiated representation of the outgroup, a personal journey of conversion, variegated kinds of political action, and optimistic belief in future change. These findings are at odds with the typical image of monological CT believers as paranoid, cynical, anomic and irrational. For many, the CT worldview may rather constitute the ideological underpinning of a nascent pre-figurative social movement.