The Infrastructure of Conspiracy Theory

• In Event: Outsider Ideas and Elite Policymaking

Abstract

The persistence of the QAnon movement, the most politically significant recent conspiracy movement, is particularly puzzling. Conventional models emphasize the role played by media and partisan elites in opinion formation. Yet, the movement persists in spite of its condemnation by bipartisan elites, subjection to intense media scrutiny, and rejection by broad swathes of the public. The resilience of conspiracy theory beliefs despite the presence of factors which existing models predict to be strongly mitigating have led some political scientists to treat conspiracy theories as a distinct type of opinion, with its own unique psychological mechanisms governing uptake that work differently than traditional models of opinion formation. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic observation and interviews with conspiracy theorist practitioners in the QAnon movement, I point out that these accounts have largely ignored what QAnon conspiracy theorists designate as the main factor responsible for these beliefs' unique staying power: the huge amount of informational infrastructure created by movement practitioners to provide mutual support for their beliefs, including online communities, publications and conspiracy research groups. In an effort to de-center the outsized role played by the psychology of personal belief in this literature, the objective of this chapter is to highlight the role played by this infrastructure in practically shoring up adherents' beliefs. I argue that conspiracy theory beliefs are resilient when this infrastructure, including digitally-enabled institutions through which conspiracy theorists procedurally certify new claims, distribute information and manage internal disputes, is resilient. These infrastructures are technological, but they are also political, involving human deliberation and design. Their institutional resilience depends on the ongoing activities of individuals who take on institutionalized roles in the movement resembling those of elites in classic public opinion literature. By following the emergence of new claims throughout the archive, the study uncovers the QAnon community’s epistemic division of labor, examining each step in the process of knowledge formation, from the idea-generating activities of online researchers, through the promotion and dissemination strategies of influencers, to the everyday struggles of their audiences to integrate conspiracy theorist knowledge into the minutiae of ordinary life.

Author

• Winston Berg, University of Chicago