Online conspiracy
theories can lead people to dismiss authoritative public health
information, to perpetrate violence, distrust
authoritative scientific information, attack democratic institutions, and
harass fellow citizens. With the rise of social media, conspiracy theories can
reach scores of people at unprecedented speed. To counter the spread of belief
in conspiracy theories, one must first understand how and why such beliefs form
and spread online. CONNECT is multi-disciplinary group of scholars to investigate and uncover the nature and spread
of conspiracy theories online. Our main objectives are to examine why
conspiracy theories appeal to people and affect psychological processes, and how
online groups accelerate the spread of belief in conspiracy theories.
CONNECT adopts
a multi-disciplinary approach, synthesizing text and visual rhetorical
analysis, computational and cognitive linguistics, social and behavioral
science, network science, and signal and information processing. Our project investigates
how past and contemporary conspiracy theories are constructed using a common
set of narrative and rhetorical forms, and how they are designed to appeal to
people's prior attitudes or beliefs, social identity, and aesthetic tastes. We
will study how conspiracy theory texts’ narrative and manipulative rhetorical
forms stimulate specific psychological processes that increase belief. Our work
entails examining how psychological predispositions, moral values, political
beliefs, sociocultural attitudes, social identity, and group affinities drive
people's receptivity to conspiracy theory messaging and affect whether they
take subsequent action in response. The project also addresses how network
structures shape the spread of belief in conspiracy theories. Our research
approach will help us reveal the connections among conspiracy theory content,
social and behavioral processes, and group and network structures.
"The Dark Side of Twitter: A Framing Analysis of Conspiratorial Rhetoric Stoking Fear, presented at the International Communication Association (ICA) conference, Paris, France.
Mompelat*, L., Tian*, Z., Kessler*, A., Luettgen*, M., Rajanala*, A., Kübler, S. & Seelig, M.I. (2022, upcoming). How “Loco” is the LOCO Corpus? Annotating the Language of Conspiracy Theories, in Proceedings of the Sixteenth Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW), Marseille, France.
Murthi, M., & Premaratne, K. (2022). Clustering Edges in Directed Graphs. arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.12265
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver featured our work, "Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories?"
"We are very excited to launch this NSF
SaTC project to continue studying the flow of unsubstantiated information over
the internet," said Manohar Murthi, Principle Investigator at the
University of Miami. "Our team seeks to answer how and why people spread
this type of information online, and with what consequences. In answering these
questions, our ultimate objective is to formulate countermeasures to these
dangerous narratives.”
Our research aims to explore the connections among conspiracy theory content, social and behavioral processes, and group and network structures.
Uscinski,
J., Enders, A., Klofstad, C., Seelig, M.,Wuchty, S., Funchion, J., Murthi, M. Premaratne, K. & Everett, C. (2020). “Why Do People Believe COVID‐19 Conspiracy Theories?”
Harvard
Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 1
(3),
https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-015
Enders, A., Uscinski, J., Seelig, M., Wuchty, S., Everett,
C., Klofstad, C.., Murthi, M., Premarante, K., & Funchion, J. (2021) “The Relationship between
Social Media Use and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation,” Political
Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09734-6
Enders,
A., Uscinski, J. E., Wuchty, S., Everett, C., Klofstad, C., Murthi, M., Premarante, K., Seelig, M., & Funchion, J. (2021).
“The 2020
presidential election and beliefs about fraud: Continuity or change?” Electoral
Studies, 72, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102366
Uscinski, J. E., Enders, A. M., Seelig, M. I., Klofstad, C. A., Funchion, J. R., Everett, C., Wuchty, S., Premaratne, K., & Murthi, M. N. (2021). American Politics in Two Dimensions: Partisan and Ideological Identities versus Anti‐Establishment Orientations. American Journal of Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12616
Enders, A., Uscinski, J., Klofstad, C., Wuchty, S., Murthi, M., Premarante, K., Seelig, M. & Funchion, J. (2021) “Do Conspiracy Beliefs form a Belief System? Examining the Structure and Organization of Conspiracy Beliefs,” Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 9(1), 255-271, https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.5649
Enders, A., Uscinski, J. E., Klofstad, C., Wuchty, S., Seelig, M., Funchion, J., Murthi, M., Premaratne, K., & Stoler, J. (2021). Who supports QAnon? A case study in political extremism. The Journal of Politics. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/717850
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