This looks absolutely fascinating. It’s one of those topics I’ve followed closely for years without serious engagement. I’m wondering if I should start.
Special Issue Editors: Zelly C. Martin, Inga K. Trauthig, Alice E. Marwick, Samuel C. Woolley
Conspiracy theories are increasingly present in mainstream American political discourse, from those around Covid-19 to the idea that political forces conspired to “steal” the election from former President Trump. While researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds (psychology, communication, history, political science and so forth) have taken up conspiracy theories as an object of study, many contemporary scholars have focused on right-wing conspiracies, such as Stop the Steal (DeCook & Forestal, 2022), QAnon (Bloom & Moskalenko, 2021), and the Great Replacement Theory (Ekman, 2022). Most recently, researchers have interrogated the blurry boundaries between left- and right-leaning conspiracy adherents on topics like anti-vaccination and spirituality (Chia et al., 2021; Griera et al., 2022). A key element of current scholarship on conspiracies is the extent to which social media facilitates their spread (Enders et al., 2021; Theocharis et al., 2021) and/or allows conspiratorial knowledge-production to thrive (Marwick & Partin, 2022).
Although the stereotype of “the conspiracy theorist” is a “white, working-class, middle-aged man” (Drochon, 2018, p. 344) people from all identity groups believe and produce conspiracies (Bost, 2018). For American communities of color, though, conspiracy theories may be a natural reaction to the invalidation of their embodied experiences (Bogart et al., 2021; Dozono, 2021). The same could be said of other marginalized groups in America, such as queer folks and women (Ngai, 2001). In what ways is “conspiracy-believing” a response to feeling displaced in the public sphere, and perhaps even an attempt to reconfigure a sense of community and recognition (Parmigiani, 2021)? What might researchers learn by rethinking conspiracism? What particular threats do conspiracy theories pose when they are crafted and/or believed by those from marginalized communities? How has the internet contributed to the fringe becoming mainstream? How does this impact and/or relate to contemporary political developments?
We invite papers that engage with the following questions:
* What avenues of conspiracy are understudied when we prioritize the “loudest” conspiracy theories?
* What can we learn from interdisciplinary research on conspiracy?
* How do conspiracy theory beliefs stem from embodied experience
* What are the boundaries of knowledge-production that we encounter when we demarcate conspiracy from disinformation and from embodied experience?
* Which democratic dangers stem from conspiracies?Papers may focus on topics such as, but not limited to:
* Conspiracy theories and their relation to emerging social media and technology, e.g., TikTok, generative AI, etc., particularly as they relate to political and electoral implications,
* Conspiracy theory content as it is imbricated with geopolitical phenomena, particularly in the Majority World (Global South),
* Conspiracy theories as related to the ongoing war in Ukraine,
* Conspiracy theories as alternative forms of knowledge production and creation, for instance as rooted in cultural or embodied truths.
Mark Carrigan 