Conspiracy Accounts as Intergroup Theories: Challenging Dominant Understandings of Social Power and Political Legitimacy

Abstract

Conspiracy accounting is often regarded as an atypical, pathological form of political reasoning, and little research has considered how ordinary social actors may refer to political conspiracies in the course of argument. In this article, we consider the spontaneous use of conspiracy narratives by politically engaged Greek citizens in interview discussions of the Macedonian crisis. Analysis revealed that conspiracy narratives were typically used to challenge dominant representations that attributed the Macedonian crisis to Greek xenophobic nationalism. Specifically, conspiracy accounts were used to dispute assumptions concerning Greece's majority status by representing the political opposition as a consortium rather than a single out‐group, by recasting the threat posed to Greece as a matter of realistic rather than symbolic competition, and by extending the historical frame of reference to encompass past and prospective future threats to the Greek people and the Greek state. In conclusion, we note how the use of conspiratorial reasoning may be used to construct complex causal arguments concerning intergroup relations and to challenge dominant ideological assumptions about social hierarchy and political legitimacy. In this respect, conspiratorial reasoning might be regarded as a prototypical form of intergroup representation.

We believe in your conspiracy if we distrust you: the role of intergroup distrust in structuring the effect of Islamic identification, competitive victimhood, and group incompatibility on belief in a conspiracy theory

“…This definition implies that at a group level, belief in a conspiracy theory signifies a categorization of the powerless in-group as the believer of the conspiracy theory and a powerful out-group as the perpetrator (Kofta, 1995;Sapountzis & Condor, 2013). Indeed, some studies (e.g., Abalakina-Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999;Crocker, Luhtanen, Broadnax, & Blaine, 1999) have observed that the more individuals feel powerless the more they believe in a theory that certain events are created by a conspiracy of powerful agents.…”

Online communication as a window to conspiracist worldviews

“…By portraying a disliked outgroup as a sinister enemy of ambiguously vast power, conspiracy theories may help to manage threat and anxiety (Kofta and Sędek, 2005; Swami, 2012; Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013; Sullivan et al, 2014; Mashuri and Zaduqisti, 2015). Finally, theoretical and qualitative works present a convincing case that conspiracy theorizing is very often an anti-authoritarian activity, focused on challenging dominant societal power structures and providing counter-narratives to mainstream understandings of the world (Raab et al, 2013; Sapountzis and Condor, 2013; Harambam and Aupers, 2015). …”

The effect of intergroup threat and social identity salience on the belief in conspiracy theories over terrorism in indonesia: collective angst as a mediator

“…The content of conspiracy beliefs is specific, in the form of framing an out-group as a dangerous, powerful, or deceptive adversary (Kofta, 1995). As contended by Sapountzis and Condor (2013), belief in conspiracy theories signifies a dualistic account of intergroup relations with which members of the ingroup are apt to ascribe any events to a direct design on the part of a powerful out-group. In support of this notion, Imhoff and Bruder (2014) recently reported that participants' belief in conspiracy theories related to their negative stereotyping against powerful outgroups regarded as less likable and more threatening.…”