One important reason to share conspiracy theories appears to be to pursue a political agenda. For example, Nefes (2017) found that people’s preexisting political views predicted whether or not they would be willing to share conspiracy material about the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul in 2013. Similarly, Wood & Finlay (2008) found that members of the British National Party (a far-right UK political party) explained the events surrounding the London 7/7 bombings as conspiracy theories regarding the intentions of Muslim immigrants in the United Kingdom, spreading an anti-Muslim political agenda and creating the conditions for extremism and political violence (see also Lee 2017).
In a similar vein, research suggests that conspiracy theories are not shared indiscriminately and do not bounce around on social media at random (DeWitt et al. 2018). Instead, they are shared within, and typically stay within, the groups and communities who already agree with them (Metaxas & Finn 2017, Sunstein & Vermeule 2009). As these online communities become more distinct, their sentiments can become more extreme. For example, Zollo et al. (2015; see also Bessi et al. 2015, Del Vicario et al. 2016) found that users’ comments and posts became more negative in tone as the users became more actively involved in communication between polarized communities.
People also seem to share conspiracy theories to subvert dominant political and ideological assumptions (Enders & Smallpage 2018). For example, Sapountzis & Condor (2013) found that politically engaged Greek citizens used conspiracy theories to challenge Greece’s political legitimacy when discussing conflicts with other groups. In a similar vein, research suggests that fictitious politicians who use conspiracy theories are viewed as rogue political outsiders who might be able to effect change (Green et al. 2023). Therefore, sharing conspiracy theories may be a way to signal the intention to challenge and change the status quo.
However, evidence is also building that people who share or express support for conspiracy theories risk being stigmatized. For example, Lantian et al. (2018) asked French Internet users to write text that either supported or criticized conspiracy theories about the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris in 2015. People who were asked to write statements supporting the conspiracy theories were more fearful of social exclusion than people who were asked to criticize the conspiracy theories. This effect was mediated by a fear of being evaluated negatively. Furthermore, conspiracy believers are often viewed as gullible (Klein et al. 2015), and people often reject the label “conspiracy theory” when referring to their own views, instead using terms like “conspiracy facts.” Further evidence suggests that people reserve the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” for ideas that they reject (Douglas et al. 2022).
People might therefore be aware of the skepticism associated with these labels and use or avoid using them according to their own (dis)belief in conspiracy-related statements (Nera et al. 2020). People might indeed use these terms in an attempt to deliberately discredit another person’s views and dismiss them as implausible (deHaven-Smith 2013, Harambam & Aupers 2017) and to try to remove them from the realm of legitimate debate (Coady 2018). It is also worth noting, however, that there is little evidence that applying the label “conspiracy theory” to an alternative narrative does anything to reduce its credibility with an audience (Douglas et al. 2022, Wood 2016).
LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH
Research over the past 20 years has revealed much about the causes, consequences, and transmission of belief in conspiracy theories; but this remains a relatively new field, and one that is already revealing some important limitations. Some of these reproduce the common pitfalls of psychological research, such as an overreliance on samples from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries (Douglas et al. 2019; but see cross-national investigations such as Adam-Troian et al. 2021, Imhoff et al. 2022b). Even the most developed aspect of this
