Numerous psychological accounts purport to explain the attraction of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are not socially innocuous: aside from obvious political effects, endorsement of conspiracy theories is associated with rejection of science and unwillingness to donate to prosocial causes (van der Linden, 2015). The open discussion promoted by these forums forms a key mechanism for the spread of misinformation, including false conspiracy theories (Dunn et al., 2015 Zhou et al., 2015 Del Vicario et al., 2016). The role of conspiracy theorizing has been intensified by a move to online discussion forums. Indeed, conspiracy theorizing has long been a part of American politics (Hofstadter, 1964). Considering recent political discourse, this seems optimistic. Instead, we suggest, those who endorse conspiracies seem to be primarily brought together by epistemological concerns, and that these central concerns link an otherwise heterogenous group of individuals.Īlexis de Tocqueville wrote that the American commitment to freedom of association prevented the formation of conspiracies (de Tocqueville, 1831). Neither simple irrationality nor common preoccupations can account for the observed diversity. We argue that traditional “monological” believers are only the tip of an iceberg of commenters. The diversity of the distinct subgroups places constraints on theories of what generates conspiracy theorizing. Further, we argue, these differences are interpretable as differences in background beliefs and motivations. We show that within the forum, there are multiple sub-populations distinguishable by their loadings on different topics in the model. This subreddit provides a large corpus of comments which spans many years and numerous authors. We describe a unique approach to studying online conspiracy theorists which used non-negative matrix factorization to create a topic model of authors' contributions to the main conspiracy forum on. Yet this online activity can be difficult to quantify and study. Online forums provide a valuable window into everyday conspiracy theorizing, and can give a clue to the motivations and interests of those who post in such forums. More and more Twitter and Instagram users created their own versions of the template going into the rest of November 2021.Conspiracy theories play a troubling role in political discourse. The above meme was reposted to other platforms like Instagram in the days following. The meme (shown below) received 494 likes over the course of six days. Their chart made references to other memes like Squirting Isn't Real. Their meme (shown below) received roughly 500 likes over the course of six days.Īlso on November 23rd, 2021, Twitter user posted the first known version of the meme on Twitter. On November 23rd, 2021, Instagram account posted the first known exploited version of the chart, inserting other words and phrases into the pyramid via caption changing. Her tweet reply roughly 450 likes over six days. For instance, Twitter user posted a reply on November 23rd, 2021, that noted the omission of the "Celebs moisturize with baby foreskins" conspiracy from the original 2020 version. The post received roughly 22,400 likes over the course of six days.Īfter the November 22nd, 2021, tweet, people on Twitter reacted to the chart. She also posted the new version to her Instagram on November 23rd. The tweet (shown below) received roughly 73,200 likes over the course of seven days. On November 22nd, 2021, Richards posted an updated 2021 version of her conspiracy chart to her Twitter. It was reposted to other sites like Imgur in the days following. On October 3rd, 2020, she posted a 2020 version of the chart to her Twitter, which received roughly 31,700 likes over the course of one year. The original conspiracy chart was created by social-media personality Abbie Richards.
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