Login
Why are conspiracy theories so alluring? Sure, we’ve all had a hunch about something that ran counter to conventional wisdom, but that is vastly different from a systematic belief that a group of powerful people is planning to carry out evil deeds. Yet, during COVID-19, conspiracy theories proliferated, especially on social media platforms like Twitter. Conventional explanations may blame strongman personalities and exploitative media algorithms, but a new study in the American Sociological Review highlights how conspiracy theories are also about sense-making and social connection during unsettled times.
Aggregating over 700,000 tweets from 8,000 users, including both humans and bots, Henrich Greve and his team of colleagues from Stanford University identified 13 distinct COVID-19 conspiracies that fell into two broad clusters: COVID-19 as a hoax or exaggerated threat (e.g., hospitals are secretly empty) and COVID-19 as a bioweapon spread intentionally by bad actors (e.g., Bill Gates or the Chinese). Importantly, human engagement with conspiracy theories was much more nuanced than bots’; non-human posts tended to focus on a single theory in an effort to stoke moral panic. For humans, engaging with one conspiracy theory was found to act as a “gateway” to engaging with multiple conspiracy theories, especially when faced with a perceived threat (e.g., rising case rates) and when their conspiratorial posts were affirmed by other users via retweets.
Not surprisingly, when a user tweets and is engaged with by others, not only do they feel validation, but they become motivated to seek out further conspiratorial content in an act of “collective sense-making.” While we often think of conspiracy theories as irrational beliefs held by people wearing tinfoil hats, this research pushes us to consider how they also provide a sense of solidarity and security, both ontological and social, in times of unrest.
Imagine yourself, driving home from a long workday late some Thursday evening. In those moments, the neon glow of fast-food burger joints can seem to have a primal pull. But your choice among the various options isn’t only about hunger, convenience, or desperation, attests a recent Cultural Sociology article, it’s also about morality.
In “Moral Entrepreneurialism for the Hamburger: Strategies for Marketing a Contested Fast Food,” University of Toronto scholars Natália Otto, Josée Johnston, and Shyon Baumann use critical discourse analysis to analyze the websites and marketing campaigns of three major hamburger chains. In doing so, the authors identify three primary moral frames used by these chains as they push back against negative (often moral) perceptions of meat: global sustainability (McDonald’s), natural simplicity (A&W), and nostalgia and freshness (Wendy’s). Each of these frames bounds morally coded language and images aimed to associate products with particular values and evoke emotional reactions in consumers. Moral frames that mesh with target markets’ values build brand trust, loyalty, and desirability.
This form of “moral entrepreneurship” is a direct response to the increasing public scrutiny of fast food and the fast-food industry’s effects on personal and environmental health. By using moral frames to undermine negative impressions, the brands hope to make their burgers that much more palatable.
When was the last time anger or fear got the best of you? A jump scare, a close call, a confrontation? For most of us, most of the time, fight-or-flight events are memorable because they are rare. But in studying Christian Nationalist youth in the United States, Pew research associate Michael Rotolo found a more long-term and hard-wired sense of being under constant attack. This enduring threat perception, Rotolo writes in a recent issue of Sociological Forum, has both deep emotional underpinnings and severe political consequences.
Using a combination of interviews, ethnography, and surveys, Rotolo demonstrates that young Christian Nationalists’ biographies are often marked by the sorts of traumatic childhood experiences that lead to heightened, chronic states of rage or fear. As they enter early adulthood, these emotional states harden into a dominant belief that their cultural identity is perpetually precarious, which in turn shapes how they view contemporary social and political issues. The author argues that those with a disposition toward rage develop a “fight-for-America” emotional system that supports tribalism, nativism, and racialized sentiments, while those with a disposition toward fear develop a “flight-for-America” emotional system characterized by anxiety, passivity, and indifference.
Through his “fight-or-flight for America” framework, the author shows how the development of particular emotional dispositions throughout childhood, or “affective conditioning,” plays a fundamental role in shaping cultural and political attitudes in adulthood, especially among distinct cultural groups such as Christian Nationalists. This can have severe political consequences when the affective condition of a particular group is empirically associated with racist, sexist, and xenophobic attitudes and actions. To shift these enduring emotion systems, Rotolo suggests exposing people to unfamiliar -emotional stimuli, but also encourages us to look further upstream to the cultural contexts in which they were developed.
FreshRSS