Don’t (Just) Blame Echo Chambers. Conspiracy Theorists Actively Seek Out Their Online Communities
Where Do the Beliefs Come from?
To dig deeper, we examined the interactions between where and what r/conspiracy users posted.
In political subreddits, the language used by them and their matched pairs was quite similar. However, in Reddit’s very popular general-purpose subreddits, the linguistic differences between the two groups were striking.
So far, psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have struggled to find anything distinct about conspiracy believers or their environments.
Social media can play a role in spreading conspiracy theories, but it mostly entrenches beliefs among those who already have them. Thus it can be challenging to measure and understand how conspiracy beliefs arise.
Traditional survey and interview approaches don’t always give reliable responses. This is because conspiracy theorists often frame their life in narratives of conversation and awakening, which can obscure the more complex origins of their beliefs.
Furthermore, as philosopher David Coady pointed out, some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Insiders do sometimes uncover evidence of malfeasance and cover-ups, as recent debates over the need for whistleblower protections in Australia reflect.
Echo Chambers Worsen the Problem
Research about online radicalization from philosophy has focused on the passive effects of technologies such as recommended algorithms and their role in creating online echo chambers.
Our research instead suggests individuals seem to have a more active role in finding like-minded communities, before their interactions in such communities reinforce their beliefs.
These “person-situation interactions” are clearly important and under-theorized.
As the psychologist David C. Funder puts it: “Individuals do not just passively find themselves in the situations of their lives; they often actively seek and choose them. Thus, while a certain kind of bar may tend to generate a situation that creates fights around closing time, only a certain kind of person will choose to go to that kind of bar in the first place.”
We suspect a similar process leads users to conspiracy forums.
A Complex Web of Interactions
Our data indicates that conspiracy beliefs, like most beliefs, are not adopted in a vacuum. They are actively mulled over, discussed, and sought out by agents in a social (and increasingly online) world.
And when forums like 8chan and Stormfront are pushed offline, users often look for other ways to communicate.
These complex interactions are growing in number, and technology can amplify their effects.
YouTube radicalization, for example, is likely driven by interactions between algorithms and self-selected communities.
When it comes to conspiracy beliefs, more work needs to be done to understand the interplay between a person’s social environment and their information seeking behavior.
And this becomes even more pressing as we learn more about the risks that come with conspiracy theorizing.
Colin Klein is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University. Adam Dunn is Associate professor, Macquarie University. Peter Clutton is Graduate Student in Philosophy, Australian National University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
