Special US Elections: Conspiracy Theories
from the web-project Radicalization by Design
Tomorrow (we hope) we’ll know who won the US presidential elections: Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Meanwhile, people are speculating on social media, such as Twitter and YouTube. It’s safe to say that if Trump loses the elections, this will result in new conspiracy theories. Trump has repeatedly alluded to the fact that he might not accept the results because, according to him, they are being frauded. But even if he wins misinformation will keep having a major influence on the public opinion. Many issues in our society are becoming the topic of crazy speculation, semi-scientific explanation and gut responses. Why are these theories so popular? What role do the Internet and social media play in this?
IMPAKT has developed Radicalization by Design: an interactive, discursive web-project that questions social media as one of the possible causes of radicalization and polarization in our society. One of the questions that we specifically address deals with the phenomena of conspiracy theories, its history and the way in which the internet is putting them right in the middle of our political reality.
Especially for the US elections, we produced a video preview of the web-project. Have a look and enjoy the Conspiracy Theories section of Radicalization by Design, featuring Bharat Ganesh (University of Groningen), Dimitri Tokmetzis (journalist), Richard Rogers (University of Amsterdam), Florian Cramer (Willem de Kooning Academy), curated by Marc Tuters (University of Amsterdam).
Or check out the entire web-project at radicalization.impakt.nl