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. Conspiracy theories play a troubling role in political discourse.
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