Why some conspiracy theories just won’t die | Elise Wang | TEDxDuke
Summary
TLDRThe video script challenges the stereotype of conspiracy theorists as uneducated and unemployed, revealing that belief in such theories cuts across demographics. It discusses the evolution of conspiracy theories, from the moon landing hoax to more violent and political beliefs like Qanon. The script argues against the effectiveness of media literacy in combating conspiracy theories, highlighting the role of social media algorithms in radicalization. It suggests that addressing conspiracy theories requires more than just fact-checking, emphasizing the need for de-platforming radicalizers and promoting community and shared responsibility for societal issues.
Takeaways
- 😌 The stereotype of a conspiracy theorist as an uneducated, unemployed individual is outdated and misleading.
- 📊 A significant portion of Americans, approximately three-quarters, believe in at least one conspiracy theory, with demographics varying based on the specific theory.
- 🔍 Conspiracy theories are not limited to a single demographic; they can attract individuals from diverse backgrounds, including those with higher education and income levels.
- 🚨 The rise of internet and social media has made it easier for individuals to be radicalized and to find communities that reinforce their conspiracy beliefs.
- 🔗 There is a growing link between belief in conspiracy theories and acts of violence, as illustrated by several tragic incidents mentioned in the script.
- 📚 Media literacy alone is not sufficient to combat conspiracy theories, as people often cling to their beliefs even when confronted with contradictory evidence.
- 🌐 Search engines and social media platforms can inadvertently lead users down a 'rabbit hole' of radicalization by exploiting data voids and algorithmic recommendations.
- 🔑 People are drawn to conspiracy theories not just due to misinformation, but also because they seek meaning, community, and a sense of belonging.
- 🛑 De-platforming individuals who promote conspiracy theories and radicalize others has proven to be an effective strategy in reducing their influence.
- 🌟 It's important to address the underlying social issues that make individuals susceptible to conspiracy theories and to foster a sense of collective responsibility.
Q & A
What is the common stereotype of a conspiracy theorist?
-The common stereotype of a conspiracy theorist is that they are typically unemployed, uneducated, and might live in their mom's basement, often depicted as a harmless and easily dismissible individual.
What does the speaker suggest about the demographics of conspiracy theory believers?
-The speaker suggests that the demographics of conspiracy theory believers vary depending on the theory. For example, believers in the moon landing hoax tend to be male, lower income, lower education, Republican, and older, while those who believe in vaccine conspiracies tend to be female, younger, upper middle class, with post-secondary education, and are Democrats and Republicans in equal numbers.
How does the speaker describe the evolution of conspiracy theory beliefs?
-The speaker describes the evolution of conspiracy theory beliefs as changing from a fringe, easily dismissed group to a more diverse and complex demographic, with some beliefs being linked to violent acts and radicalization.
What is an example given of how a person can be radicalized through the internet?
-An example given is of a young man who researched Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, leading him to a white supremacist website, and eventually to a deep dive into similar forums, culminating in a manifesto and a tragic act of violence.
What is the speaker's perspective on the effectiveness of media literacy in combating conspiracy theories?
-The speaker believes that media literacy, while seemingly a good solution, has been shown to not work effectively. People tend to cling harder to their beliefs when presented with contradictory information, and the core principles of media literacy are also used by conspiracy theorists themselves.
How does the speaker explain the role of social media algorithms in promoting conspiracy theories?
-The speaker explains that social media algorithms are designed to keep users engaged by recommending increasingly radical content, as users become desensitized to the initial level of excitement. This can lead users down a path of radicalization.
What is the speaker's view on the root cause of people seeking out conspiracy theories?
-The speaker views the root cause as a search for meaning and community. People seek patterns and narratives to make sense of their suffering, and conspiracy theories provide a community and a narrative that can be comforting and unifying.
What historical context does the speaker provide to understand the appeal of conspiracy theories?
-The speaker provides historical context by comparing past social problems, such as the Great Depression and World War, which were understood as collective issues, to modern problems that are often individualized, leading some to seek out conspiracy theories that provide a collective narrative.
What solution does the speaker propose to combat the spread of conspiracy theories?
-The speaker proposes de-platforming radicalizers and enforcing strong norms on social media platforms, as well as changing the narrative around social problems to alleviate the 'I suffer because of me' mentality.
How does the speaker argue against the idea of trying to debate conspiracy theorists out of their beliefs?
-The speaker argues that debating conspiracy theorists is not effective because radicalization is about belief and anger, not misinformation. It suggests that efforts should be redirected towards actions that can have a broader impact on the phenomenon.
Outlines
🧐 The Evolution of Conspiracy Theorists
This paragraph challenges the stereotype of conspiracy theorists as uneducated and unemployed individuals. It points out that a significant portion of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory, and the demographics of believers vary based on the specific theory. For instance, believers in the moon landing hoax tend to be male, lower-income, less educated, and Republican, while those who believe in pharmaceutical conspiracies are more likely to be female, younger, upper-middle-class, and have post-secondary education. The paragraph also illustrates how conspiracy theories can lead to radicalization and violence, using the example of Dylann Roof, who was influenced by white supremacist content online and went on to commit a mass shooting in a church.
📚 Media Literacy and Its Limitations
The speaker discusses the limitations of media literacy as a solution to conspiracy theories. They explain that simply providing contradictory information to someone's firmly held beliefs can backfire and cause them to cling more tightly to those beliefs. The paragraph also highlights the irony that the same principles advocated by media literacy are also used by conspiracy theorists, such as the Flat Earth Society. The speaker argues that media literacy is not enough because it assumes people are misled due to misunderstandings, whereas conspiracy theorists often seek meaning and community, which conspiracy theories can provide.
🌐 The Role of Social Media in Conspiracy Theories
This paragraph explores how social media platforms contribute to the spread of conspiracy theories. It explains that groups seeking to radicalize individuals exploit data voids with unique search terms to direct traffic to their sites. Additionally, the algorithmic nature of content platforms tends to promote increasingly radical content to keep users engaged. The speaker shares a personal experiment where they created a new YouTube account and quickly found themselves recommended extremist content after just a few clicks, starting from a neutral news video. This illustrates how easy it is to be exposed to conspiracy theories online.
🤝 Addressing Conspiracy Theories Through Community and Action
The final paragraph suggests that addressing conspiracy theories is not just about correcting misinformation but about conversion, which requires an internal desire to change. It emphasizes that conspiracy theorists believe not because they lack information but because they seek meaning and community. The speaker argues that focusing on individual debates with conspiracy theorists is often futile and suggests redirecting efforts towards larger societal changes. They propose treating social media like communities with enforceable norms and standards, de-platforming radicalizers, and finding ways to discuss social problems that acknowledge collective suffering rather than individual blame.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Conspiracy Theorist
💡Media Literacy
💡Radicalization
💡Dylann Roof
💡QAnon
💡De-platforming
💡Algorithm
💡Flat Earth Society
💡Pattern Recognition
💡Self-Radicalization
💡Sandy Hook
Highlights
The stereotype of a conspiracy theorist is often an unemployed, uneducated individual, but this is a false belief.
Three-quarters of Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory, with demographics varying by the theory.
Conspiracy theories are not just held by the uneducated; they can be believed by individuals with post-secondary education as well.
The example of Dylann Roof illustrates how online searches can lead to radicalization and violence.
Conspiracy theories have been linked to acts of violence, such as bombings and mass shootings.
The belief in conspiracy theories is not just a crisis of media literacy or truth; it's a crisis of meaning and community.
Media literacy alone is not effective in changing firmly held beliefs and can sometimes backfire.
Conspiracy theorists seek meaning and community, which conspiracy theories provide.
The shift from collective to individual blame for societal problems has led some to seek answers in conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories offer a narrative that externalizes blame for personal suffering.
De-platforming radicalizers on social media has proven to be an effective strategy in reducing their influence.
The principle of free speech does not equate to the right to amplification on any chosen platform.
Social media should be treated like communities with enforceable norms and standards of conduct.
Efforts should be redirected from trying to change the minds of conspiracy theorists to addressing the larger phenomenon.
It's important to take responsibility for societal problems and to alleviate the feeling of individual suffering.
Transcripts
[Music]
when i say conspiracy theorist who do
you see
is he
and let's be honest it's he right
unemployed
uneducated
maybe he lives in his mom's basement
does he look
a little like this
so we like this picture this picture
feels safe you know
we feel no threat from this man
and we're not this man
we especially like this picture here at
duke because it helps us to believe that
education is the best defense against
false belief
but this itself is a false belief a
comforting conspiracy theory if you will
the contemporary picture of conspiracy
theory belief looks a little different
than this first of all and let's just
get this out of the way three-quarters
of americans believe at least one
conspiracy theory
and the demographics depend on the
theory so if we're talking about the
theory that the moon landing was a hoax
maybe we are talking about our tin foil
hat man right
the average believer tends to be male
lower income lower education republican
he also tends to be a little bit older
if we're talking on the other hand about
the theory that vaccines are
a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies
to make you sick and take your money
the average believer is female and tends
to be younger upper middle class with a
post-secondary education and democrat
and republican in equal numbers
so what does belief look like today
here's an example
so in 2012 a young man about your age
wanted to know what all the fuss was
about trayvon martin and george
zimmerman he didn't really watch the
news so he went to wikipedia you know as
you do which gave a fairly neutral
account
but someone had dropped a phrase in
there black on white crime
and he was interested so he googled it
and his first hit was the council of
conservative citizens which is a white
supremacist website
he was hooked and he spent the next two
years deep diving into similar paranoid
forums finally posting a manifesto
online that detailed this awakening
which is how we know the steps that he
took
and then on june 17th 2015 dylan roof
walked into a bible study in the black
church and killed nine people hoping to
start a race war
so i've been teaching conspiracy
theories for one year
and here are a few things that happened
during that time
so
three adherents of the q anon conspiracy
theory which if you don't know is the
theory that trump and mueller are
secretly working together to bring down
the global ring of pedophiles
bombed a mosque in minnesota
another man sent half a dozen
pipe bombs through the mail to prominent
politicians and journalists who he
believed were part of a globalist
conspiracy
and finally a man in pittsburgh
believing that there is a jewish
conspiracy to flood america with
refugees
walked into a synagogue at worship and
killed 11 people
and you might say
well these are not the conspiracy
theories that i meant right
my tinfoil hat man believes that aliens
landed at roswell not these violent
racist theories and you might be right
the face of conspiracy theorizing has
changed but we also forget that in their
time these theories were
polarizing and political
and racist too
as a student of mine pointed out
the frenzy over ufo sightings and aliens
at roswell can be linked to the same
fear of infestation and infiltration
that led to japanese internment
so there is a growing connection between
conspiracy theorizing and violence
and many have rightly recognized this as
a crisis
but the crisis of what
it's a good question
a popular answer is it's a crisis of
media literacy of truth
we're in a crisis of truth the argument
goes that we're you know fundamentally
rational beings that above all we really
do seek truth it's just that in this
post-truth moment we've been left
without the tools to verify our facts as
we would like
to and the idea then is that this has
led us to live in the divided times that
we live in which can all kind of be
chalked up to some massive
misunderstanding
if this is true media literacy really
would be the right answer it would help
us to
sift through information critically and
to correct the misunderstanding
ourselves
so let's start with this proposed
solution media literacy
the first problem with this is that
unfortunately it just doesn't work
study after study has shown that being
presented with information that
contradicts a firmly held belief is more
likely to backfire to make you cling to
that belief harder than it is to change
your mind
the second problem with it is this
so i took this from a
famous website but i've sort of blacked
out the
the society the society believes that
there is a difference between believing
and knowing if you do not know something
and cannot demonstrate it by first
principles then you should not believe
it we must at the very least know
exactly how conclusions were made and
the strengths and weaknesses behind
those deductions our society emphasizes
the demonstration and explanation of
knowledge
so these are pretty sound media literacy
principles right sound scientific
principles for that matter
the only problem is that it comes from
our friends at the flat earth society
so unfortunately the core tenets of
media literacy don't believe everything
you read do the research yourself think
for yourself are also the watch words of
conspiracy theorists
the final problem with this is that the
premise is wrong
so media literacy is designed to
counteract misunderstanding
the ideological equivalent of losing
your way
but dylann roof didn't lose his way
his path online was not an aberration it
is literally built into our media
landscape in a couple of ways
so
first groups that are seeking to
radicalize seeking people like dylann
roof craft unique search terms like
black on white crime
crisis actors false flag to take
advantage of data voids where there are
relatively few existing hits and then
use those data voids to direct traffic
to their sites
secondly
the tendency of content platforms to
produce more and more radical content
is not a bug it's a feature it's
designed to keep you on the site the
more exciting a video is the more likely
you are to keep clicking and because you
would quickly become inured to the same
level of excitement
the algorithm will recommend more and
more radical content the longer you're
there
so i did a little bit of an informal
experiment on my own in august
and i created a dummy youtube account
you know with no watch history
and i began watching a video on abc an
abc video on the removal of silent sam
so that's what this is
and
i watch that
and i don't recommend trying this at
home this led me in one click
to
a video on the unite the right rally in
charlottesville produced by russia today
which led me in one more click
to a homemade hit piece on heather heyer
the woman who was murdered at that rally
which led me in one more click to a
video i'm not going to show us still of
but that was produced by the largest
american neo-nazi group
four clicks from abc to neo-nazis
so this helps us to understand
why the path to conspiracy theories is
easy to find
but why do people go looking for it in
the first place and why once they found
it do they keep walking
so one thing that we talk about in my
class is that we all seek patterns
they comfort us and the more out of
control we feel in our personal lives
and our work in our world the more we
seek patterns to compensate
and this preference for patterns over
noise for narrative over data is so
strong that if the facts don't match our
experience of things we will find a
story that does
and there's nothing shameful about this
it has on the whole served us well
communities unite over stories of their
shared history and culture and our
stories of ourselves of who we are and
our values
they're what guide all of our major
decisions even if we don't always live
up to them in fact
stories are how we unite and they're
what get us up in the morning
conspiracy theorists are no different
people don't believe conspiracy theories
because they're irrational
or uneducated or they just don't have
the right information
far above truth people seek meaning and
community
and conspiracy theories create a
community around the answer to a pretty
meaningful question why do i suffer
so at the beginning of the 20th century
americans experienced the suffering that
was caused by the world wars and the
great depression as a result of a social
problem a collective problem a societal
sickness i suffer because we all do
but the social shifts that started in
the 80s the great recession
the end of domestic manufacturing the
end of long-term employment most
importantly for us we understood these
things as things that happen to
individuals and because of individuals
so
the root of poverty is your
irresponsible behavior the root of
climate change is that sometimes i
forget to recycle the root of millennial
financial precarity is that we spend our
money on brunch right
and so we've just decided to work harder
you know rebrand ourselves for a
lifetime of transient work
take on massive private debt and just
hope for the best self-care ourselves
out of mental health crises and when it
doesn't work blame ourselves for not
optimizing our time for not managing our
money well enough
for not getting the optimal summer
internship for our resume
i suffer because of me
it's no wonder that some people reject
this punishing answer
and conspiracy theories are there
with
a happy twist on this it's not you it's
the caravan coming up from the south to
rob you and take your jobs
it's the muslims who are going to come
in and put you under sharia law
it's the chinese who are going to come
in and ruin your culture
i suffer because of them
and with the them comes a we
we who resist who are united in this
awesome feeling of resentment
q anon has a telling catchphrase they
say where we go one we go all
trust the plan they say who wouldn't
want a plan you could trust and to work
together towards a common goal
in the face of all this what do the
facts really matter
so unfortunately a realization that
conspiracy
theorists don't believe
because they don't have the right
information they're misinformed they're
stupid it's a little bit of a
double-edged sword
it helps us to sympathize with their
position
but it also makes them responsible for
it
dylann roof was led and groomed yes but
he also wanted to believe
so confronting conspiracy theories is
not about correcting a misunderstanding
it's about conversion
something any religious scholar will
tell you is just not possible without
the internal desire for it
so what do we do
so there's a very small thing um but
it's really one of the only things that
we know that works and it's the reason
you can't
repeat that experiment i showed you
earlier
um the platforming
so after much pressure youtube took down
that account that i had blundered into
um so you can't go back and do that
please don't
so we don't think that this should work
but does everybody remember alex jones
so for many years he got attention by
calling sandy hook in similar massacres
a hoax and by directing his supporters
to harass the parents of murder children
at the height of his popularity he got
1.4 million hits per day
and we all sort of wrung our hands about
his popularity you know where there's a
will there's a way on the internet and
if we banned him from social media his
supporters would only be emboldened as
he boasted they would be
but finally last august facebook and
youtube took him down and twitter put
him on a temporary van
now think
when was the last time you heard
anything about alex jones
d platforming works
and to answer the obvious question
this is not a matter of free speech
the principle of free speech is not the
right to amplification on the platform
of your choice
part of believing in education as i
think we all do
is the knowledge that some ideas really
are preferable to others this is the
basis of peer review which is in turn is
the basis of account of the academy you
submit your ideas to
a council of other experts and they
decide whether they should be amplified
so for example the idea that
the tensile strength of a particular
cable is 1500 megapascals is preferable
to the idea that it's 3 000
if only because if you believe the
ladder your bridge is going to fall down
you're not forbidden from believing that
it's 3000 and even telling anyone you
want
you also probably wouldn't expect your
professor to invite you up to her
lecture and proselytize to your
classmates
so the other thing that we can do
is to stop treating this like a matter
of fact an ideological debate
radicalization is not about being
misinformed it's about belief and anger
and violence
so
it might be time to admit that deep
diving into conspiracy theorists
rationale and trying to talk them out of
it is a wasted effort and it's a
distraction from action
we can redirect our efforts to places
where we can actually make an impact on
the larger phenomenon
one thing we can do is to start treating
social media like the communities that
they already are
with standards of conduct and strong
enforceable norms
by de-platforming radicalizers and also
trying to anticipate the ways in which
they might take advantage of social
media algorithms
proactively protecting the people that
conspiracy theorists target
and finding a way to talk about our
social problems that alleviates this
pounding i suffer because of me
but takes real responsibility for the
fact that we do still suffer together
thank you
[Applause]
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