Emily Godwin
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Year 4 Student – 2020 Intake – Cohort 2 My PhD project harnesses the concept of collective sense making to better understand how conspiratorial narratives and rumours develop at scale in online environments. Its aim is to widen the scope of intervention, whether that be platform specific, forms of counter messaging, regulatory proposals, or a push for improved digital literacy. Both qualitative and data intensive techniques are utilised. |
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| PhD Project |
Exploring the content and development of conspiracy narratives in online environments Groups of individuals have long come together to question social and political events, developing alternative narratives – or “conspiracy theories” – involving secret plots by powerful actors (Douglas et al., 2019). In doing so, they attribute what first appear as complex and troubling issues to internally consistent explanations, allowing them to make sense of a situation they’re mutually facing and thus regulate anxieties related to the unknown (van Prooijen, 2012). With individuals increasingly relying on the Internet to acquire information and communicate, researchers have begun to question the role online networks play in the development and circulation of particularly harmful conspiratorial ideas (Zollo et al., 2017). For instance, social media and discussion platforms have been branded a fertile ground for the development of conspiracy theories as they aggregate individuals around common interests and thus strengthen pre-existing beliefs. Despite the interest online conspiracy theories have drawn, little research has been done to examine their narrative structure: the relationships between people, places, and things they bring to light, as well as their sequencing of those relationships. This may highlight the threats envisioned by the conspiracy theorists, the supposed hidden knowledge on which their theorising rests, as well as the strategies they put forward to counteract those threats (Tangherlini et al., 2020). As strategies can have real world consequences – with the spread of Covid-19 conspiracy theories leading to wide-scale defiance of public health mandates, for example – understanding how they emerge through story could benefit policymaking as well as public safety initiatives.
Supervisors: Professor Adam Joinson (Bath) Dr Timothy Hill (Bath)
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| PhD Poster |