Representations of gender in conspiracy theories: a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines how gender is represented within conspiracy theories by drawing on data from a corpus composed of conspiracy theory documents. It presents an analysis of the collocates of gendered nouns, highlighting the ways that conspiracy theorists use language to reinforce connections between religiosity and masculinity and understandings of femininity that rely on biological gender essentialism. Further, this paper highlights the overlap in values between religious masculinity and hegemonic masculinity that occur within this discourse. It also argues that the ways in which gender is represented in conspiracy theory discourse shares links to far-right ideology, even when the conspiracies in question do not have direct or overt connections to the far-right.