Conspiracy Theory Discourses

Conspiracy Theory Discourses
Editorial page
Title page
Copyright page
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Conspiracy theory discourses: Critical inquiries into the language of anti-science, post-trutherism, mis/disinformation and alternative media
1. The nature of conspiracy theories, old and new
2. The need for a discourse approach to conspiracy theories (and to those who oppose them)
3. Structure of the book
Acknowledgements
References
Part I. Conspiracy theories: Epistemological Questions
Chapter 2. A corpus-driven exploration of conspiracy theorising as a discourse type: Lexical indicators of argumentative patterning
1. Introduction, aim and scope of research
2. Corpus and method
3. The 911CT corpus: Preliminary insights from corpus analysis
3.1 Delving deeper into the data: Qualitative investigation
4. Conclusions
References
Chapter 3. Is my mobile phone listening to me?: Conspiratorial thinking, digital literacies, and everyday encounters with surveillance
1. Introduction
2. Technology, surveillance and conspiratorial thinking
3. Digital literacies and discursive practices
4. Data and methods
5. Skeptics
6. Believers
7. Discussion and conclusion
References
Chapter 4. “Go ahead and ‘debunk’ truth by calling it a conspiracy theory”: The discursive construction of conspiracy theoryness in online affinity spaces
1. Introduction
2. Theorising in and about conspiracy theories
3. Methodology
3.1 Framework
3.2 Data
4. Results
4.1 Constructing knowledge about conspiracy theories
4.2 Factual-conceptual knowledge
4.3 Procedural knowledge
4.4 Meta-cognitive (identity) knowledge
5. Conclusion
References
Chapter 5. “You want me to be wrong”: Expert ethos, (de-)legitimation, and ethotic straw men as discursive resources for conspiracy theories
1. Introduction
2. Conspiracy theories as argumentative objects
3. Ethos: A multi-layered notion
3.1 Situational ethos
3.2 Communicational ethos
3.3 Discursive ethos
4. The straw man fallacy: From propositional to non-propositional misrepresentations
5. Case study
5.1 Delegitimating the media by misrepresenting their true nature
5.2 Delegitimating the media by misrepresenting their intentions and emotions
5.3 Legitimating authority by ridiculing the interviewer
5.4 Legitimating an ethos of victim by misrepresenting media intentions
6. Why ethotic straw men are likely to appeal to conspiracy theories
References
Chapter 6. Fake conspiracy: Trump’s anti-Chinese ‘COVID-19-as-war’ scenario
1. Introduction
2. Methodology
3. Trump’s “Chinese virus” claim as part of a figurative war scenario
4. Discussion: The advantage of combining conspiracy theory and metaphor scenarios
5. Conclusions
Part II. Conspiracy theory-related communicative phenomena
Chapter 7. Exploring the echo chamber concept: A linguistic perspective
1. Introduction
2. Background: Echo chambers
3. Methods
4. Corpus analysis: Preliminary overview
5. Focus on hoax: Background
6. Analyzing hoax in the News
7. Hoax on Twitter
8. Inside the inferential path: The embeddings
9. Conclusions
References
Chapter 8. “If you can’t see the pattern here, there’s something wrong”: A cognitive account of conspiracy narratives, schemas, and the construction of the ‘expert’
1. Introduction
2. Conspiracy theories
2.1 False flags
3. Analysing ‘false flags’: Methods and Data
3.1 Sandy Hook: Context
3.2 Ethical considerations
3.3 Data
4. Analysis
4.1 Narrative schemas and mental archives
4.2 Figure-ground configuration: Confirmation Bias
5. Conclusion: ‘If you can’t see the pattern here, there’s something wrong’
References
Chapter 9. Complementary concepts of disinformation: Conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’
1. Introduction: Contrasting categories of disinformation
2. Definitions, differences and similarities
3. Conspiracy theories as a genre
Purpose (or goal)
Outlook (or worldview)
Narrative
Structure
Idiom
Context
Resources
Expectations
4. A return to ‘fake news’
5. ‘Stop the Steal’
6. Conclusion
References
Chapter 10. COVID-19 conspiracy theories as affective discourse
1. Introduction
2. Conspiracy theories and COVID-19 origins
3. Conspiracy theories as mediatized affective discourse
3.1 Emotion, affect, and online hate speech
3.2 COVID-origin conspiracy theories as discursive action of affect
4. Data and categories of analysis
5. Discursive construction of COVID-origin conspiracy theories
5.1 Nomination/referential strategies
5.2 Scare tactics and hypothetical future
5.3 Quasi-rational fallacious argumentation
5.4 Intensifying and mitigation strategies
6. Conclusion
References
Part III. Social media and conspiracy theories
Chapter 11. The ID2020 conspiracy theory in YouTube video comments during COVID-19: Bonding around religious, political, and technological discourses
1. Introduction
2. YouTube and conspiracy theories
3. Dataset
3.1 Sampling strategy for YouTube videos
3.2 Sampling strategy for comments
4. Method: Affiliation analysis
4.1 Coupling analysis
4.2 Affiliation analysis
5. Results
5.1 Religious Fanatics
5.2 Anti-technologists
5.3 Anti-Globalists
5.4 Political sceptics
5.5 Anti-Vaxxers and COVID-19 Denialists
5.6 Educators
6. Bond cluster diagram of personae and their bonds
7. Conclusion
References
Chapter 12. #conspiracymemes: A Framework-Based Analysis of conspiracy memes as digital multimodal units and ensuing user reactions on Instagram
1. Introduction
2. Understanding DMUs and conspiracy theory discourse on Instagram
2.1 From memes to DMUs
2.2 Conspiracy theory discourse on Instagram
3. Methodology and data
3.1 Analytic framework
3.2 Data
4. Empirical analysis
4.1 Hashtags, image types and topics in the corpus
4.2 Qualitative analysis of selected posts
4.3 DMU comparison
5. Conclusion
References
Chapter 13. The New World Order on Twitter: Evaluative language in English and Spanish tweets
1. Introduction
2. Conspiracy theories, the NWO, Twitter and their language
2.1 The New World Order
2.2 Language and sentiment in conspiracy theories discourse
2.3 Appraisal Theory
3. Corpus and methodology
4. Results and discussion
4.1 Attitude results
4.2 General observations
5. Conclusions
References
Part IV. Stancetaking and (de-)legitimation within conspiracy and anti-conspiracy discourses
Chapter 15. Ideologies and the representation of identities in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories: A critical discourse analysis of the MMR vaccine-autism debate
1. Introduction
1.1 CDA and the study of ideology and identity
1.2 Anti-vaccination CTs and the MMR vaccine
2. The corpus
3. Analysis
3.1 Discourses of and about anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and theorists
3.2 Framing and defining anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists
3.3 Conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers
4. Concluding remarks
References
Dictionary entries
Chapter 16. Collective identities in the online self-representation of conspiracy theorists: The cases of climate change denial, ‘Deep State’ and ‘Big Pharma’
1. Introduction
2. Conspiracy theories and the importance of group identity
3. Collective identities
4. Text collection criteria
4.1 Topics
4.2 Sources
4.3 Article collection
5. Method of analysis
6. Results and discussion
6.1 Preliminary quantitative analysis
6.2 Qualitative analysis
7. Conclusion
References
Part V. Political and international dimensions of conspiracy theories
Chapter 17. Anti-Sorosism: Reviving the “Jewish world conspiracy”
1. Introduction
2. History of the ‘Jewish World Conspiracy’
3. Functions of antisemitic Feindbilder
3.1 The emergence of a Feindbild – anti-Sorosism
4. Multimodal discourse-historical analysis
5. Analysis
5.1 Context
5.2 Posters
6. Conclusions
References
Chapter 18. “These cameras won’t show the crowds”: Intradiscursive intertextuality in Trumpian discourse’s crowd size conspiracy theory
1. Introduction
2. Related work
3. Key terminology
4. Methodology
5. Discursive strategies
5.1 Stock phrases
5.2 Numbers
5.3 Insults
5.4 Intertextuality
5.5 Recursivity
6. Conclusion
Transcription notations
References
Chapter 19. From strategic depiction of conspiracies to conspiracy theories: RT’s and Sputnik’s representations of coronavirus infodemic
1. Introduction
2. The model of textual strategies of strategic (conspiracy) narratives
3. Empirical material and analysis procedure
4. Analysis of representations of conspiracies and conspiracy theories
4.1 Viral spread of 5G and anti-vaccination COVID-19 conspiracy theories
4.2 States/high officials accuse one another of a conspiracy concerning the coronavirus as a biological weapon
4.3 Corona infodemic and coronavirus anxiety are being used maliciously
4.4 False accusations of disseminating conspiracy theories as part of hostile information influence activities
5. Discussion
Funding
References
Analysed materials
Chapter 20. “Gender ideology” and the discursive infrastructure of a transnational conspiracy theory
1. Introduction
2. Anti-gender conspiracy narratives
3. Data and methodology
4. Analysis
5. Concluding remarks
References
Epilogue. Beyond discourse theory in the conspiratorial mode?: The critical issue of truth in the age of post-truth
References
Notes on contributors
Index