Conspiracy thinking and the role of media use: Exploring the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions

Abstract

In contrast to beliefs in specific conspiracy theories, conspiratorial predispositions refer to people's propensity to view the world in conspiratorial terms. As such, they are one of the most important antecedents of beliefs in specific conspiracy theories. Understanding the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions is hence important. Despite this, there is still only limited research on the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions. Previous research has also not taken the role of media use into account, even though media constitute the most important source of politically and societally information. To remedy this, in the current study we use a large-scale panel study in Sweden to investigate the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions, with a particular focus on the role of media use. Among other things, the results show that use of right-wing political alternative media is one of the most important antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions, even when accounting for ideological leaning and ideological extremity.

Mapping Digital Wellness Content

“…We next examined how the attitudes and beliefs of those who were exposed to or sought wellness content. First concerning attitudes, we considered two measures related to naturalness, preference for natural (e.g., "In general, I prefer natural products over anything humans have created") and aversion to tampering with nature (e.g., "Human beings have no right to meddle with the natural environment;" Raimi et al, 2020), in addition to conspiratorial thinking (e.g., "Much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places;" Strömbäck et al, 2022) and belief superiority (e.g., items ask to what extent one's views on different topics are "No more correct than other viewpoints" to "Totally correct (mine is the only correct view point);" Raimi & Jongman-Sereno, 2020). Exposure to wellness content was not correlated with any of these attitudes.…”

Refugees versus ‘refugees’: the role of Islamophobia in Swedish alternative media’s reporting on Ukrainian asylum seekers

“…The fact that right-wing alternative immigration-critical media has been shown to foster negative attitudes towards immigrants (Theorin and Strömbäck, 2018) and make people more conspiratorial (Strömbäck et al, 2022) is concerning in itself. However, with previous research showing that the prevalence of digital far-right alternative media is higher in Sweden than in other parts of northern and central Europe (Schulze, 2020), and potentially likely to only keep growing as the 2022 general election rendered the far-rightist Sweden Democrats Sweden’s the second largest party, alternative media’s reporting is perhaps of particular importance in a Swedish context.…”

Diversity of News Consumption in a Digital Information Environment

“…Perceiving a lack of diversity can be described as experiencing a lack of variance (e.g., too few women being mentioned), a lack of balance (e.g., one side being overrepresented), or a lack of disparity (e.g., all media talking about the same thing). People often describe this phenomenon by claiming that the 6 media system or specific sources within it are biased or that they lack trust in media and journalism Strömbäck et al, 2022). I argue that diversity researchers should care about user perceptions and reflections on diversity for two reasons: first to obtain an enhanced understanding of diversity benchmarks and how they vary and second due to the impact that perceptions have on people's behavior.…”