How To Help People You Love When They Fall Down The Conspiracy Theory Rabbit Hole. Its more common than you think
It's more common than you think.The term ‘conspiracy theory’ used to conjure images of men typing frantically in their mother’s spare room while wearing a tinfoil hat. Or a laugh as you discussed the possibilities of aliens roaming around a military base in America. For the most part among our own social circles, they can seem like harmless silly rumours you chat to your friends with over pints.
Aoife Gallagher, author of Web of Lies and Senior Analyst with the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, puts it simply: people are looking for comfort when it comes to conspiracy theories. They want answers to questions that are unanswerable. “It gave them an answer to why everything was going on when there were no answers. It gave people a sense of comfort. That nice, neat narrative that it wasn’t a deadly virus it was a part of a global plot and there’s something to fight back against, gave people purpose.” The way the social media targets users plays a huge factor. For example, you might like a post that isn’t strictly a conspiracy theory, but it is misinformation.
Aoife’s quick to point out that our idea of who believes in conspiracies might not be accurate. Anyone is susceptible to these theories. There is a combination of factors, Aoife adds: “People are looking for answers and meaning that they have lost somewhere in their lives. And if that is coupled with that distrust of institutions, these conspiracy theories are very good at giving people that purpose that maybe they lost at some point in their life. When you get into that level of conspiratorial thinking and that mindset, then they start to snowball. A lot of the themes of conspiracy are the same.
Conspiracy theories were once confined to one part of the internet – think website 4Chan and conspiracy group QAnon. But now the internet is morphing and changing. “Everyone is bound to come across at least some misinformation on social media, especially on TikTok where you don’t get to choose what you see. If you look at Instagram and Twitter which have changed their feed, it has accounts that are pushed in there that you don’t follow.
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