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All Ethical Issues

Conspiracy Theorists

Category: Bad Actors

A conspiracy theorist is a person or group who promotes an alternative narrative alleging a  coordinated campaign of disinformation, usually on the part of recognized authorities or institutions. Conspiracy theorists often replicate analytical methods and dissemination, and sometimes subject existing analytics for their own purposes.

During the recent Covid-19 pandemic conspiracy theories abounded. One such was a campaign organized around the #FilmYourHospital hashtag, alleging that because hospital parking lots were empty, assertions that there was a pandemic in progress must be fake (Gruzd, 2020).

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Examples and Articles

In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer)
"Ever since the philosopher Sir Karl Popper popularised the expression in the 1950s, conspiracy theories have had a bad reputation. To characterise a belief as a conspiracy theory is to imply it’s false. More than that, it implies people who accept that belief, or want to investigate whether it’s true, are irrational. On the face of it, this is hard to understand. After all, people do conspire. That is, they engage in secretive or deceptive behaviour that is illegal or morally dubious. Conspiracy is a common form of human behaviour across all cultures throughout recorded time, and it has always been particularly widespread in politics." Direct Link

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Conspiracy theory as heresy
2021 "Educational Philosophy and Theory" journal article behind paywall: "Although the term ‘conspiracy theory’ lacks any fixed definition, it does serve a fixed function. Its function, like that of the word ‘heresy’ in medieval Europe, is to stigmatise people with beliefs which conflict with officially sanctioned or orthodox beliefs of the time and place in question. Whenever we use the term ‘conspiracy theory’ pejoratively we imply, perhaps unintentionally, that there is something wrong with believing in conspiracies or wanting to investigate whether they’re occurring. This rhetoric silences the victims of real conspiracies, and those who, rightly or wrongly, believe that conspiracies are occurring, and it herds respectable opinion in ways that make it more likely that powerful interests will be able to get away with conspiracies. So one bad effect of the current use of this term is that it makes it is easier for conspiracy to thrive at the expense of openness. Another bad effect is that it is an injustice to people whose beliefs are characterised as "conspiracy theories." This is what philosopher Miranda Fricker (2007) calls a ‘testimonial injustice’. When someone asserts that a conspiracy has occurred (especially when powerful people or institutions are involved) that person’s word is inevitably given less credence than it should because of an irrational prejudice produced by the pejorative connotations of these terms." Direct Link

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Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response
"Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping." Jay J. Van Bavel, et.al., Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 460–471 (2020) Direct Link

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