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Saturday, December 3, 2022

Conspiracy theories in United States politics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conspiracy theories in United States politics are beliefs that an event or situation in US politics is the result of a secret plan made by powerful people striving to harm a rival group or undermine society in general.

Such theories draw from actual conspiracies, in which individuals work together in secret to unravel a larger system. Often, the struggle between a real conspiracy theory and a misconception of one leads to conflict, polarization in elections, distrust in government, and racial and political divisions.

Many political conspiracies begin and spread from politically charged circumstances, individuals' partisan affiliations, and online platforms that form echo chambers with like-minded individuals. Belief in American political conspiracy theories applies to all parties, ideologies, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic levels, and genders.

Contributions

Circumstantial fear

Conspiracy theories often arise during new political or social circumstances in which one group of people feels threatened by another group that is politically, religiously, ethnically, racially, or economically different from them. Theories began as early as the European colonization of the Americas when colonizers deemed Native Americans as threats. As a result, many colonizers, including Cotton Mather, speculated that Native Americans were controlled by the devil. Some even believed in the "myth of the super-chief," in which every Indigenous attack was orchestrated by a tribal chief, who controlled thousands of Native American fighters and strived to wipe out the whites.

Northern Republicans in the mid 1860s believed President Andrew Johnson was conspiring with ex-Confederates to undo the abolition of slavery.

Theories also arose in response to the counterculture, feminist, and anti-war era of the 1960s. Many conservatives felt threatened and began to believe that the movements had been formed with communist motivations to undermine the U.S. government. During the 1990s, many right-wing conspiracy theorists also feared that the Clintons were involved in drug cartels and assassinations. Some have theorized that the government is planting drugs in predominately-black neighborhoods to breed a greater rate of incarceration and crime in the community. In 2020, many conspiracy theories circulated during the coronavirus pandemic partly because of the increased anxiety, larger number of people staying at home, and greater focus on the Internet and social media outlets. One such conspiracy that proliferated from the 2020 Presidential election was QAnon.

Conspiracy theories exist because of fear of the other or frustration with one's own disenfranchisement. They correlate with an increase in social, political, or economic changes in society and are often responses to rationalize anxiety about such events. Conspiracy theories tend to be brought into context with the country's ideals and laws. Frank Donner, a 1980s civil liberties lawyer, claimed:

Especially in times of stress, exaggerated febrile explanations of unwelcome reality come to the surface of American life and attract support. [The new conspiratorial movements] illuminate a striking contrast between our claims to superiority, indeed our mission as a redeemer nation to bring a new world order, and the extraordinary fragility of our confidence in our institutions. [That] has led some observers to conclude that we are, subconsciously, quite insecure about the value and permanence of our society.

Conspiracy theories arise among all races and parties because of the fear of a society and a country destabilizing and how that would affect one's own life. Conspiracy theories, according to Benedictine University Professor of Psychology James Davis, come in three related types:

A recent review proposes three categories of motivations underlying belief in conspiracy theories.... The motivation people have to seek causal explanations to reduce uncertainty... and to feel in control and safe in their lives.... A third motivation for conspiracy theory endorsement is the desire for individuals to see themselves and their group in a more positive light.

Class structures and lack of trust in government

The class structure is also likely to influence one's belief in a political conspiracy theory. Those with a low income, a lack of higher education, or a lack of secure employment are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories due to a general feeling of helplessness. This lack of control is correlated with class: individuals from higher classes have been proven to feel more in control of their lives, employment, education, and standard of living. A low socioeconomic status can generate political and economic anxiety and a desire to explain the dire circumstances. That helplessness may lead several to find a psychologically-soothing explanation: the idea that a group of government actors is plotting against them.

Those with higher education or a higher IQ level still engage in conspiracy theories. In fact, many conspiracy theories require substantial mental effort to understand. Believers are defined by more than just their class; they also engage in the psychological phenomenon of confirmation bias in which they accept information validating their beliefs and reject information that is inconsistent with their theories.

Many individuals also live-in positions in which specific government policies may cause economic distress. For example, many Americans believe that the government is forcing health industries to hide the cure for cancer. They also have been taking drugs that are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration because they do not trust the medical industry. This likely stems from a fear of and frustration with current U.S. policies on public health. Many ill Americans cannot afford healthcare and may look to sources that blame the medical industry, including conspiracies. This may also originate from a history of fear about the government's lack of transparency or truth in terms of medication since American doctors once approved mercury, radioactive material, and cigarettes and falsely deemed them to be healthy.

Partisan affiliations

Partisan affiliations sometimes help determine belief in conspiracy theories, but this depends on the theory. There is a correlation between political parties and beliefs in the "birther" conspiracy, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, the "truther" conspiracy, the "levee branch" theory, and the "death panel" conspiracy. Partisanship loyalty affects beliefs in some theories, and "conspiratorial thinking," a general paranoia about the government, determines others. Conspiracies directly affiliated with the Obama administration (e.g., the "birthers" and "death panel" conspiracies) leaned politically to the right, and Democrats were less likely to believe in theories that lobbied against Obama and his policies. As for the "levee branch," "truther," and Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, both political parties had a similar number of people believing in them. Individuals who believed in those specific theories also had a previous affinity for conspiratorial thinking or questioning the credibility of governmental actors. However, it has also been studied that conspiratorial thinkers may be more focused on an anti-governmental mindset because of their lack of trust for higher authority rather than a specific theory or party.

Each partisan group is partial to believing in conspiracies that target the opposite party because it disbelieves the other party's ideologies and policies. Therefore, conspiracies can come from both political affiliations. In fact, the University of Miami political scientist Joseph Uscinski stated that "both sides are equally conspiratorial in their thinking... No one has a monopoly."

Intuitionist versus rationalist model

University of Chicago Political Science Professor Eric Oliver has created a theory that intuitionism and rationalism are two psychological patterns of thought that can shape specific conspiracies and perhaps even catalyze partisan divisions. Intuitionism is individuals relying on their emotional responses to current events and then using heuristics to create an explanation for why the events are happening. Rationalists instead determine the causes and effects of events based on quantitative evidence. Both intuitionists and rationalists believe in conspiracies, Oliver argues, but intuitionists more commonly associate themselves with conspiracies for their association with more qualitative emotional data stemming from anxiety about society.

Polarization

Olivers speculates that the current polarization occurs because of increasingly far-right and far-left thinking, but it also might come from the conflict between intuitionists and rationalists. Throughout history, the right-wing has become intuitionist increasingly, often using Biblical or Christian themes to justify political beliefs or trust in conspiracies. The left-wing has been commonly associated with basing belief on quantitative thought rather than religious affiliation. Conspiratorial beliefs may stem from a misinterpretation of numerical data.

Often, political parties engage in an us versus them mentality when understanding theories and believing that the opposite party started the conspiracy. By tying specific theories to. political affiliation, many party members become polarized. In fact, Steven Small page, Adam Enders, and Joseph Uscinski, political researchers and authors of Research and Politics, explained:

Although conspiracy theories are often attributed to cognitive hiccups, psychological traits, or psychopathologies, they actually follow the contours of more familiar partisan battles in the age of polarization... Many conspiracy theories function more like associative partisan attitudes than markers of alienated psychology.

Political ignorance

Lack of awareness of political issues may also perpetuate belief in conspiracy theories. Often, because individuals believe that they have "just one vote" with little impact, they have little motivation to look at politics objectively or to discover credible information about current events. Individuals apathetic towards politics may remain ignorant about issues. As voters latch onto ignorance and apathy, some may care little whether political information is biased or sometimes even true. Lack of knowledge about how political systems function or about a given political candidate makes people much more likely to believe extreme or false claims, such as conspiracy theories.

Echo chambers and spread

Conspiracy theories have evolved with the media. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media sites use algorithms to bring up posts, videos, and news that correlate with past searches and interests. Conservative users commonly receive conservative information, liberal users usually receive liberal news, and every opinion in between likely receives likewise. Social media is a key element in creating echo chambers for conspiracy theorists.

Alex Jones, the creator of InfoWars.

One example of echo chambers is Alex Jones, the talk show host of InfoWars. A far-right host who discusses and analyzes political issues, Jones has frequently brought up information that was deemed extreme and sometimes even false, several times with little evidence to back up his claims. Because of the ability of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms to connect individuals with similar thinking and beliefs, InfoWars and its community grew quickly, and like-minded individuals were given extreme information that they were more likely to believe because of their political affiliations.

Nationalism and multiculturalism

The fear of a divided nation, or the definition of what it means to be "American" also causes several conspiracies. Often, whenever a nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender differs from specific identities with which someone already affiliates, fear of national overthrow, oppression by a separate group, or attack on one's own way of life form a distinct "us versus them" mentality. As such fears and mentalities proliferate within like-minded groups, conspiracy theories form on the opposing party to justify the group's existence and beliefs.

For example, conspiracies have been perpetuated in the African-American community that the U.S. government instigated AIDS or cocaine into the population, which follows the fear of one group oppressing another (in this case, white Americans). Conspiracies have also been created concerning Native Americans that either argues against or advocates for them.

Robert Alan Goldberg, a University of Utah professor of history, also states that both stigmatized and more privileged groups struggle with conspiracy theories about the other:

"Recall a uniquely American word – Un-American. There are no unFrench, or UnSwedish, or UnIsraeli counterparts. Americans harbor this suspicion, the danger of betrayal from within...."

Americans are afraid of having their identity as "Americans," compromised by the "other" group that is different from them culturally, ethnically, racially, or religiously. Thus, several conspiracies have affected the social life of the Indigenous, blacks, and whites.

Impacts

Elections

Several conspiracies have been generated out of elections; one election-specific conspiracy is the belief in election fraud. The fear that ballots may have been faked or cast incorrectly spans political parties, genders, and races. Partisan affiliations and conspiratorial thinking are both to blame. Before the election, a belief in widespread voter fraud influencing the election outcomes commonly came from conspiratorial thinking and distrust in higher authority. After the election, belief in fraud was likely to come from partisan affiliations and usually originated from the losing party. While both Democrats and Republicans believe in election fraud, they generally mean different types of fraud. Republicans often fear illegal ballots, such as from noncitizens, and Democrats worry that their supporters will be prevented from voting by voter suppression. Conspiracy theories, the fear of an opposite party, and their influence as a result may also drive citizens to vote and influence the outcomes of an election.

2016

During the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, many conspiracy theories developed and spread on social media about the opposite candidate, particularly theories against Clinton or Trump's other opponents. As a result, social media, especially Facebook, came under fire for fanning the flames of fake news. Because 44% of Americans receive their news from Facebook, some claim that if Facebook does not filter disinformation in extreme posts, the conspiracies could be dangerous. Many also argue about the potential conflicts censorship has with the First Amendment.

2020

Symbol of QAnon

In response to the 2020 presidential election from fears generated out of whether Trump or Joe Biden would win, several conspiracies spread on social media, particularly on Facebook and Twitter. The QAnon conspiracy theory originated in the U.S. and alleges that Trump is fighting against a deep state cabal of "child sex-abusing" and "Satan-worshipping" Democrats. QAnon is a conspiracy with a massive following and has generated over 100 million comments and likes on Facebook in the year 2020 alone.

The number of QAnon adherents is unclear, but the group maintains a large online following. Many have expressed the fear that QAnon's influence and its belief that Donald Trump will save the world make it support Trump's threats to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. Since the Associated Press declared Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, however, QAnon followers have experienced a crisis of faith or been in denial and believe that Trump is working behind the scenes to defeat the "shadowy forces" that determined Biden's win.

Facebook has banned over 790 QAnon-related groups, 100 pages, and 1,500 advertisements in an attempt to dispel it. Instagram has also taken action by restricting over 10,000 accounts for which QAnon could affect population and the election. To avoid the creation of echo chambers and further political polarization, Facebook prevents QAnon groups from forming but allows individuals to post their support occasionally. Facebook has also prevented followers from organizing fundraisers and selling merchandise to raise money for the organization. After Trump lost the election to Biden, updates from Q declined dramatically, with the last post by Q made in December 2020. QAnon beliefs became a part of attempts to overturn the election and culminated in Trump supporters attacking the United States Capitol. That has led to a further crackdown on QAnon-related content on social media.

The stolen election conspiracy theory claims that the 2020 United States presidential election was "stolen" from Donald Trump, who lost that election to Joe Biden. It justifies attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, including the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. A particular variant of this theory is the "Soros stole the election" conspiracy theory that claims that George Soros stole the election from Trump. Polls conducted since the aftermath of the 2020 election have consistently shown that the majority of Republicans believe that the election was "stolen" from Trump.

List of conspiracy theories

Peter Knight, ed. Conspiracy theories in American history: an encyclopedia (2 vol. ABC-CLIO, 2003) contains 300 entries by 123 experts in 925 pages.

  • AIDS and the African American community: Statements that the AIDS epidemic was actually started by the U.S. government to disenfranchise and weaken the African American community. These ideas have been promoted by mainstream Black media and celebrities, furthering conspiratorial beliefs. Some of the theories state that a cure for the disease already exists, but pharmaceutical companies are withholding it from the general public. Some attribute the popularity of this conspiracy theory to historically consistent mistreatment of the African American community and say that such mistreatment has led to mass anxiety and distrust of American governmental systems.
  • Vaccine hesitancy is reluctance and often refusal to vaccinate oneself or one's children, from fear of rare vaccination complications. It is often encouraged by conspiracy theories. A belief that a link exists between vaccines and autism has been widely disproven, but false information continues to circulate and to found such claims of conspiracy. Opposition to vaccination was named one of the top ten threats to public health in 2019 by the World Health Organization and its prevalence is increasing.
  • Area 51, also known as Dreamland and Paradise Ranch, is a U.S. Air Force base located within the Nevada Test and Training Range, about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Originally created for the purposes of surveillance development, Area 51 has become a conspiracy topic. Many believe it to be a center for testing crashed alien spacecraft and a meeting center for extraterrestrials. Though such theories have been disproved and explained by the U.S. military, its real purpose is still unclear as it remains shrouded in secrecy.
  • Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories: The term "birther" refers to someone who subscribes to the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. The false allegation was initially made in 2004 by Andy Martin, who claimed that Obama was a hidden Muslim rather than a Protestant Christian, as he publicly stated. The theory was amplified by Donald Trump in 2011 amid speculation about a presidential run, when he claimed that there was something wrong with Obama's birth certificate. Obama later publicly released his birth certificate, which showed that he was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii.
  • The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory stems from an April 2015 email to Hunter Biden from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to a Ukrainian privately-owned energy company, to thank Hunter Biden for inviting him to meet his father, Joe Biden, then the U.S. vice-president. Joe Biden has been accused of participating in corrupt activities involving Ukraine as well as influence-peddling to serve his son's career. Donald Trump and some of his conservative supporters pointed to that conspiracy theory in the hopes of derailing Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
  • COVID-19 misinformation: After the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020, false information regarding the virus's place of origin, treatment, diagnosis, etc. has been widely spread through social media, news outlets, and political biases. That caused an "infodemic," as dubbed by the World Health Organization. The numerous false claims regarding the treatment of the virus have caused harm on various fronts in the fight to subdue it.
  • Deep state: The term "deep state" refers to the belief that hidden figures within U.S. power structures such as the CIA and the FBI control US policy instead of the nation's elected officials.
  • Death panel: First coined by former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, "death panel" refers to the politically charged theory that government healthcare will lead to government control and ultimately result in panels of politicians and doctors to decide the fates of America's elderly, disabled, and physically vulnerable. No change or implementation of policy then or since has factually proved any such claims to be true.
  • False flags: The term "false flag" originated with pirate ships flying literal false flags with the colours of recognized nations to convince merchant ships into thinking that they were safe in interacting with them. Since then, the term has been adopted to describe an operation that is carried out by one nation or people and then attributed to another to deflect or hide blame. Documented false flag operations have been carried out by numerous nations in different eras of war. While some such instances have proved to be real, some attribute certain occurrences to the U.S. government under the guise of a false flag operation; an example is 9/11 conspiracy theories.
The Moon landing is one of the most commonly-known conspiracy theories. It theorizes that the government staged the landing.
  • FEMA camps conspiracy theory: The belief that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing concentration camps around the United States to hold its citizens once martial law is declared. Such ideas first emerged in a 1982 newsletter sponsored by a far-right group that believed that the most patriotic citizens are most at risk to be imprisoned, tortured, and even killed. Conspiracy theories involving FEMA still persist in chatrooms and social media of today's ultraconservatives.
  • Death of Jeffrey Epstein: Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender, sex trafficker, and financial broker. Shortly after his New York arrest and sentencing, he was taken and placed in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in Lower Manhattan. On August 10, 2019, he was found in his cell with significant neck bruising. Unconscious and in cardiac arrest, Epstein was taken to the New York Downtown Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead by suicide. Epstein was well-connected among political, cultural, and fiscal elites and had friends and enemies in high places, so many believe that he did not take his own life. The conspiracy theories surrounding his death have attributed it to both the Clinton family and Donald Trump, supposedly motivated by information that Epstein might have had that would harm powerful figures. Multiple investigations have been launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Prisons into the death of Epstein, but no definitive conclusion has been reached.
  • John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories: On November 22, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was shot in the head on a campaigning trip in Dallas, Texas. He died at 1:00 pm that afternoon at the Parkland Memorial Hospital. The conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's death have ranged from the involvement of the Cuban government to that of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
  • Malcolm X assassination: Malcolm X, a black nationalist leader and prominent member of the Nation of Islam (NOI), was assassinated on February 21, 1965, while he was giving a speech in Manhattan. His killer has yet to be identified, which fuels conspiracy theories surrounding his death. The most prominent theory is that his death was sponsored by the Nation of Islam, since he had a dispute with it. His family members are still actively searching for answers to his untimely death.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. assassination conspiracy theories: On April 4, 1968, the civil rights activist and leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. There have been numerous conspiracies concerning his death, some even involving the U.S. government. The King family openly opposed the sentencing of the supposed assassin, James Earl Ray, and believes that King's death was caused by "mightier forces." His wife, Coretta Scott King, strongly maintained that his death was wrapped in "high-level conspiracy" that possibly involved the American Mafia and the U.S. government.
  • Moon landing conspiracy theories: On July 20, 1969, the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on the moon. Over 530 million people watched one of the greatest human achievements occur. In the following years, some Americans came to believe that the entire event had been a very expensive hoax created by the U.S. government. Conspiracy theories regarding the moon landing began and were popularized in the mid-1970s after numerous demonstrations of governmental dishonesty such as the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal. Many of the claims of the moon landing being faked have to do with various "errors" in the photographs and video taken during the event. One theory, based on the depiction of space in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, is that the famed director Stanley Kubrick actually staged and filmed the moon landing. Such claims have since been debunked by various experts but they continue to live in American cinema, popular culture, and websites.
  • October Surprise conspiracy theory: The term "October surprise" was coined by the Reagan administration during the tumultuous 1980 election. Minutes after the completion of Reagan's inaugural address, the Islamic Republic of Iran released the 66 Americans whom it had been holding hostage since November 4, 1979. That incredible timing of that release made many believe that the Reagan administration had worked out a deal with the Iranian government to hold off on releasing the hostages until after the inauguration. Since that episode, the term "October surprise" has been used to describe attention-grabbing information and events that occur in the final days prior to a presidential election like Hillary Clinton being affected by WikiLeaks releasing her Wall Street speeches and Donald Trump being affected by a video coming out in which he brags about sexually assaulting women.
  • Pizzagate conspiracy theory: A month before the 2016 presidential election, some far-right followers of Donald Trump used a Reddit forum and 4chan message board to pour through a hacked email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's former campaign chairman, in search of a potential scandal. What they found was correspondence about a dinner between Podesta and his brother, with language involving pizza. The conservative devotees connected the phrase "cheese pizza" with "c.p." for child pornography, an abbreviation often-used in pedophile chatrooms. The connection between Podesta and James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant, quickly led internet users to start conspiracy theories about a child sex trafficking ring involving Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other high-profile Democrats. Other theories involved underground tunnels, kill rooms, Satanism, and even cannibalism. On December 4, 2016, a 28-year-old man, Edgar M. Welch, drove from North Carolina with a military-style gun in the hope of freeing the child sex slaves he supposed were being held captive in the Washington restaurant. He was quickly apprehended and arrested after he had fired a shot but injured no one. The restaurant was searched, and evidence of such a sex trafficking ring was not found, but #Pizzagate theories still persist on social media.
  • QAnon is a conspiracy theory created by far-right devotees of Donald Trump. QAnon followers believe that the western world is being run by a group of elite "deep state" Satan-worshipping pedophiles and that it is Trump's charge to defeat them, which he will supposedly do on a day dubbed "The Storm". The term "QAnon" stemmed from an anonymous 4chan user "Q," who claimed to be a government insider with high-level "Q" clearance and special information involving the Trump administration. Millions now subscribe to the QAnon theory including some politicians, celebrities, and many mothers.
  • Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories: On December 4, 2012, a man named Adam Lanza shot and killed his own mother as well as 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students, six staff members, and then himself. Almost immediately after the tragedy, conspiracy theories started to circulate about the cause of the attack. Fueled by far-right conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, many subscribed to the idea that the entire event had been orchestrated by the U.S. government to promote the enforcement and strengthening of gun laws. After he was sued by many of the victims' parents, Jones retracted his previous statements. Such conspiracy theories, though disputed, continue to harm the Sandy Hook victims. Jones was later successfully sued for defamation by the victims.
  • Stop the Steal: A far-right conspiracy theory that alleges the 2020 US presidential election was rigged to support the election of Joe Biden. It falsely claims that there was widespread voter fraud to stop Donald Trump from winning reelection such as rigged voting machines and millions of votes being cast fraudulently. Having been promoted by Trump as well as many of his allies, these beliefs led to attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6th Capitol attack.
  • Illuminati: The Illuminati, also known as the New World Order, is the supposed group of elites that secretly controls the entire world. The term was at first the name of a free thought group for secularist thinkers in Bavaria. It was eventually shut down by the Catholic Church, but many believe that it merely went into hiding and that it eventually evolved into today's New World Order. Supporters of such conspiracy theories believe that certain symbols often used in American imagery are secret communication used by the Illuminati like the Eye of Horus on the U.S. dollar. Another belief is that specific celebrities (Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Eminem, etc.) have been killed and replaced with clones to brainwash society. None of those claims is grounded in fact, but the Illuminati conspiracy theory has continued to be one of the most popular ones in America.
  • Trump-Ukraine affiliations: The Trump-Ukraine conspiracy theory refers to Trump and associates attributing voter fraud in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Ukraine rather than Russia contrary to evidence from various historically reliable sources. In conjunction with those theories are accusations against Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, in affiliation with Ukraine. In August 2019, a CIA officer turned whistleblower filed a complaint that Trump was soliciting for foreign electoral intervention in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. A formal inquiry was then made by the U.S. House of Representatives, and Trump was later impeached and put on trial. No evidence of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election was found. Trump was acquitted.
  • 9/11 conspiracy theories: On September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 Americans died in the wake of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. Four commercial planes were hijacked by Islamic extremists, crashed into the Pentagon, a Pennsylvania field, and the Twin Towers, which changed New York City's skyline forever. Shortly after that tragic event, conspiracy theories formed and spread. Many believe that al-Qaeda was not entirely to blame for the attacks and that the U.S. government was partly responsible by not acting on advanced information that it had received regarding the attacks. One of the most popular theories is that the plane crashes were used to cover up controlled demolitions inside the buildings.

Historical conspiracies

Colonial era

With slavery operational in all the colonies, owners often showed anxiety about slave conspiracies that drew on older English fears about Catholic political plots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However actual slave revolts were not politically motivated and typically bore little resemblance to the highly structured plots that whites fabricated in their heads. Settlers on the frontier often connected isolated incidents to indicate Indian conspiracies to attack them, but these lacked a French diplomatic dimension after 1763, or a Spanish connection after 1820.

American Revolution

Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, was a leader of the forces loyal to the King and focused his attention on uncovering Patriot conspiracies by the likes of James Otis Jr. and Samuel Adams. The Patriot cause through speeches, pamphlets and newspapers presented a well-developed hyperbolic rhetoric focused on the conspiracy of Parliament to deny Americans the rights of Englishmen.

In 1783, after the war ended, unpaid officers met with General George Washington and asked him to force Congress to satisfy their demands. Washington squelched the threat, which historians have called the Newburgh Conspiracy. According to a reviewer of A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution, (2019) by David Head, the book:

casts doubt on the existence of any conspiracy, at least in the sense of an organized challenge to Washington’s command of the army. Head believes the appearance of conspiracy was the product of gossip and private conversations among officers and members of Congress intent on using the officers’ demands to promote a stronger national government. If Head discounts the conspiracy of legend, he makes clear that the disputes over officers’ pay and pensions threatened the legitimacy of the Confederation Congress and the balance of state and federal power, and that Washington sought to protect both. "

20th century

21st century

Citizen journalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Wikimania 2007 Citizen Journalism Unconference

Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism". Jay Rosen offers a simpler definition: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another." The underlying principle of citizen journalism is that ordinary people, not professional journalists, can be the main creators and distributors of news. Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists; collaborative journalism, which is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together; and social journalism, which denotes a digital publication with a hybrid of professional and non-professional journalism.

Citizen journalism is a specific form of both citizen media and user-generated content (UGC). By juxtaposing the term "citizen", with its attendant qualities of civic-mindedness and social responsibility, with that of "journalism", which refers to a particular profession, Courtney C. Radsch argues that this term best describes this particular form of online and digital journalism conducted by amateurs because it underscores the link between the practice of journalism and its relation to the political and public sphere.

Citizen journalism was made more feasible by the development of various online internet platforms. New media technology, such as social networking and media-sharing websites, in addition to the increasing prevalence of cellular telephones, have made citizen journalism more accessible to people worldwide. Recent advances in new media have started to have a profound political impact. Due to the availability of technology, citizens often can report breaking news more quickly than traditional media reporters. Notable examples of citizen journalism reporting from major world events are, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2013 protests in Turkey, the Euromaidan events in Ukraine, and Syrian Civil War, the 2014 Ferguson unrest and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Being that citizen journalism is yet to develop a conceptual framework and guiding principles, it can be heavily opinionated and subjective, making it more supplemental than primary in terms of forming public opinion. Critics of the phenomenon, including professional journalists and news organizations, claim that citizen journalism is unregulated, amateur, and haphazard in quality and coverage. Furthermore, citizen journalists, due to their lack of professional affiliation, are thought to lack resources as well as focus on how best to serve the public.

Theory

Citizen journalism, as a form of alternative media, presents a "radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media".

According to Flew, there have been three elements critical to the rise of citizen journalism: open publishing, collaborative editing, and distributed content. Mark Glaser said in 2006:

…people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.

In What is Participatory Journalism? (2003), J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types:

  1. Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photographs or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community)
  2. Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report)
  3. Full-fledged participatory news sites (one:convo, NowPublic, OhmyNews, DigitalJournal.com, GroundReport, 'Fair Observer')
  4. Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Newsvine)
  5. Other kinds of "thin media" (mailing lists, email newsletters)
  6. Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as KenRadio)
  7. Open source news platforms (Mobile apps such as Veiwapp)

The literature of citizen, alternative, and participatory journalism is most often situated in a democratic context and theorized as a response to corporate news media dominated by an economic logic. Some scholars have sought to extend the study of citizen journalism beyond the developed Western world, including Sylvia Moretzsohn, Courtney C. Radsch, and Clemencia Rodríguez. Radsch, for example, wrote that "Throughout the Arab world, citizen journalists have emerged as the vanguard of new social movements dedicated to promoting human rights and democratic values."

Theories of citizenship

According to Vincent Campbell, theories of citizenship can be categorized into two core groups: those that consider journalism for citizenship, and those that consider journalism as citizenship. The classical model of citizenship is the base of the two theories of citizenship. The classical model is rooted in the ideology of informed citizens and places emphasis on the role of journalists rather than on citizens.

The classical model has four main characteristics:

  • journalists' role of informing citizens
  • citizens are assumed to be informed if they regularly attend to the news they are supplied with
  • more informed citizens are more likely to participate
  • the more informed citizens participate, the more democratic a state is more likely to be.

The first characteristic upholds the theory that journalism is for citizens. One of the main issues with this is that there is a normative judgement surrounding the amount and nature of information that citizens should have as well as what the relationship between the two should be. One branch of journalism for citizens is the "monitorial citizen" (coined by Michael Schudson). The "monitorial citizen" suggests that citizens appropriately and strategically select what news and information they consume. The "monitorial citizen" along with other forms of this ideology conceive individuals as those who do things with information to enact change and citizenship. However, this production of information does not equal to an act of citizenship, but instead an act of journalism. Therefore, citizens and journalists are portrayed as distinctive roles whereas journalism is used by citizens for citizenship and conversely, journalists serve citizens.

The second theory considers journalism as citizenship. This theory focuses on the different aspects of citizen identity and activity and understands citizen journalism as directly constituting citizenship. The term "liquid citizenship" (coined by Zizi Papacharissi) depicts how the lifestyles that individuals engage in allow them to interact with other individuals and organizations, which thus remaps the conceptual periphery of civic, political, and social. This "liquid citizenship" allows the interactions and experiences that individuals face to become citizen journalism where they create their own forms of journalism. An alternative approach of journalism as citizenship rests between the distinction between "dutiful" citizens and "actualizing" citizens. "Dutiful" citizens engage in traditional citizenship practices, while "actualizing" citizens engage in non-traditional citizenship practices. This alternative approach suggests that "actualizing" citizens are less likely to use traditional media and more likely to use online and social media as sources of information, discussion, and participation. Thus, journalism in the form of online and social media practices become a form of citizenship for actualizing citizens.

Criticisms have been made against citizen journalism, especially from among professionals in the field. Citizen journalists are often portrayed as unreliable, biased and untrained – as opposed to professionals who have "recognition, paid work, unionized labour and behaviour that is often politically neutral and unaffiliated, at least in the claim if not in the actuality".

History

Citizen journalist at English Defense League demonstration in London
Citizen journalist at English Defense League demonstration in London, 2011

The idea that every citizen can engage in acts of journalism has a long history in the United States. The contemporary citizen journalist movement emerged after journalists began to question the predictability of their coverage of events such as the 1988 U.S. presidential election. Those journalists became part of the public, or civic, journalism movement, which sought to counter the erosion of trust in the news media and the widespread disillusionment with politics and civic affairs.

Initially, discussions of public journalism focused on promoting journalism that was "for the people" by changing the way professional reporters did their work. According to Leonard Witt, however, early public journalism efforts were "often part of 'special projects' that were expensive, time-consuming, and episodic. Too often these projects dealt with an issue and moved on. Professional journalists were driving the discussion. They would have the goal of doing a story on welfare-to-work (or the environment, or traffic problems, or the economy), and then they would recruit a cross-section of citizens and chronicle their points of view. Since not all reporters and editors bought into this form of public journalism, and some outright opposed it, reaching out to the people from the newsroom was never an easy task." By 2003, in fact, the movement seemed to be petering out, with the Pew Center for Civic Journalism closing its doors.

Traditionally, the term "citizen journalism" has had a history of struggle with deliberating on a concise and mutually agreed upon definition. Even today, the term lacks a clear form of conceptualization. Although the term lacks conceptualization, alternative names of the term are unable to comprehensively capture the phenomenon. For example, one of the interchangeable names with "citizen journalism" is "user-generated content" (UGC). However, the issue with this alternative term is that it eliminates the potential civic virtues of citizen journalism and considers it to be stunted and proprietorial.

With today's technology the citizen journalist movement has found new life as the average person can capture news and distribute it globally. As Yochai Benkler has noted, "the capacity to make meaning – to encode and decode humanly meaningful statements – and the capacity to communicate one's meaning around the world, are held by, or readily available to, at least many hundreds of millions of users around the globe." Professor Mary-Rose Papandrea, a constitutional law professor at Boston College, notes in her article, Citizen Journalism and the Reporter's Privilege, that:

[i]n many ways, the definition of "journalist" has now come full circle. When the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was adopted, "freedom of the press" referred quite literally to the freedom to publish using a printing press, rather than the freedom of organized entities engaged in the publishing business. … It was not until the late nineteenth century that the concept of the "press" metamorphized into a description of individuals and companies engaged in an often-competitive commercial media enterprise.

A recent trend in citizen journalism has been the emergence of what blogger Jeff Jarvis terms hyperlocal journalism, as online news sites invite contributions from local residents of their subscription areas, who often report on topics that conventional newspapers tend to ignore. "We are the traditional journalism model turned upside down," explains Mary Lou Fulton, the publisher of the Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, California. "Instead of being the gatekeeper, telling people that what's important to them 'isn't news', we're just opening up the gates and letting people come on in. We are a better community newspaper for having thousands of readers who serve as the eyes and ears for the Voice, rather than having everything filtered through the views of a small group of reporters and editors."

Citizen journalists

According to Jay Rosen, citizen journalists are "the people formerly known as the audience," who "were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all. ... The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable."

Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy with a home-movie camera, is sometimes presented as an ancestor to citizen journalists. Egyptian citizen Wael Abbas was awarded several international reporting prizes for his blog Misr Digital (Digital Egypt) and a video he publicized of two policemen beating a bus driver helped lead to their conviction.

During 9/11 many eyewitness accounts of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center came from citizen journalists. Images and stories from citizen journalists close to the World Trade Center offered content that played a major role in the story.

2004 tsunami picture taken by a bystander and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons

In 2004, when the 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake caused a huge tsunami in Banda Aceh Indonesia and across the Indian Ocean, a weblog-based virtual network of previously unrelated bloggers emerged that covered the news in real-time, and became a vital source for the traditional media for the first week after the tsunami. A large amount of news footage from many people who experienced the tsunami was widely broadcast, as well as a good deal of "on the scene" citizen reporting and blogger analysis that was subsequently picked up by the major media outlets worldwide.

Subsequent to the citizen journalism coverage of the disaster and aftermath, researchers have suggested that citizen journalists may, in fact, play a critical role in the disaster warning system itself, potentially with higher reliability than the networks of tsunami warning equipment based on technology alone which then require interpretation by disinterested third parties.

The microblog Twitter played an important role during the 2009 Iranian election protests, after foreign journalists had effectively been "barred from reporting". Twitter delayed scheduled maintenance during the protests that would have shut down coverage in Iran due to the role it played in public communication.

Social media platforms such as blogs, YouTube, and Twitter encourage and facilitate engagement with other citizens who participate in creating content through commenting, liking, linking, and sharing. The majority of the content produced by these amateur news bloggers was not original content, but curated information monitored and edited by these various bloggers. There has been a decline in the amateur news blogger due to social media platforms that are much easier to run and maintain, allowing individuals to easily share and create and content.

Wikimedia Foundation hosts a participatory journalism web site, Wikinews.

The 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Special Citations and Awards was awarded to Darnella Frazier, who recorded the murder of George Floyd on her phone.

Citizen journalism in a worldwide context

India

I don’t believe in citizen journalists. I say give me citizen doctors and citizen lawyers and I'll give you citizen journalists.

Shekhar Gupta

India has a broad media landscape expanding at "double-digit growth rates" in comparison to the West. Issues surrounding human rights violations, violence against women and everyday witness accounts. Most notably, images shared on Twitter during the 2008 Mumbai attacks is an example of citizen journalism in India.

Iraq

In 2004 Daylight Magazine sent a box of disposable cameras to be distributed to civilians living in Baghdad and Fallujah. These were published in May 2004 along with the work of seminal documentarians such as Susan Meiselas, Roger Hutchings, etc. In June 2004 Fred Ritchen and Pixel Press teamed up with Daylight to create a touring exhibition of the images and captions which went to various institutions around the United States including: The Council on Foreign Relations, The Center for Photography Woodstock, New York University, Union College, Michigan University, and Central Michigan University before being donated to the Archive of Documentary Art at Duke University.

United Kingdom

Citizen Journalism provides a platform for individuals to be considered and acknowledged on a global scale. The circulation of information and news does not fully divulge the accurate perceptions of what is going on in the world. For instance, On Our Radar contains reporting mechanisms and trained residents that reveal their voices while questioning the reluctance journalism has when considering what voices are heard and are not, based in London. On Our Radar has undertaken in making the voices in Sierra Leone heard in regards to Ebola, revealing that it contained easy access to vital sources of  information and opened more opportunities for questions and reports.

Depending on the country one resides in, as societies evolve, grow, and depend more on online media outlets there is an increase of informed individuals, especially with topics regarding politics and government news. Through such evolution, citizen journalism has the capability to reach an audience that has not had the privilege of receiving higher education and still remain informed about what is surrounding them and their respective country. As demonstrated in light of demanding and distorted information given to the mass public and cleared by strong demonstrations of the capabilities of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is a platform that provides a solution to the mistrust the public has towards the government as discrepancies arise from governmental statements and actions.

In 2020, a network of local Citizen Journalist publications, the Bylines Network, was founded, and has since spread to include 7 regional branches.

China

Citizen journalism has created much change and influence within Chinese media and society in which its online activity is very much controlled. The interconnection built from citizen journalism and mainstream journalism in China has allotted politically and socially charged information to be distributed to promote progressive changes and serves as national sentiments. In doing so, the mass public of China has the opportunities to move around the controlled and monitored online presence and the information it contains.

Citizen journalists face many repercussions when unpackaging the truth and reach domestic and global audiences. Most if not all of these repercussions result from government officials and law enforcement from the journalists respective countries. Citizen journalists are needed and depended on by the mass public but are viewed as an imminent threat to their governments. The public has had the resources to pursue this level of journalism from their surroundings and based on real life perspectives that lack censorship and influence from a higher entity. The various forms citizen journalism is formed has outdated many news and media sources as result of the authentic approach citizen journalists carry out.

During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, fraudulent pictures encouraging people to pose as reporters and abuse freedom of press regulations to obstruct the police were widely circulated on social media with the aim to discredit citizen journalists.

In the context of China and the national pandemic rooted from the coronavirus, many voices were censored and limited when it came to citizen journalists. This occurred in the process of visually and vocally documenting the social climate of China in regards to the coronavirus. For instance, a Chinese citizen journalist posted videos of Wuhan, China as the outbreak had been spreading globally. As a result the journalist was stopped and detained by the police and was not released for two months. In sharing their experience being detained after being released the tone it was expressed in was marketed. This citizen journalist experience is one amongst more of who were similarly detained and censored.

Criticisms

Objectivity

Citizen journalists also may be activists within the communities they write about. This has drawn some criticism from traditional media institutions such as The New York Times, which have accused proponents of public journalism of abandoning the traditional goal of objectivity. Many traditional journalists view citizen journalism with some skepticism, believing that only trained journalists can understand the exactitude and ethics involved in reporting news. See, e.g., Nicholas Lemann, Vincent Maher, and Tom Grubisich.

An academic paper by Vincent Maher, the head of the New Media Lab at Rhodes University, outlined several weaknesses in the claims made by citizen journalists, in terms of the "three deadly E's", referring to ethics, economics, and epistemology.

An analysis by language and linguistics professor, Patricia Bou-Franch, found that some citizen journalists resorted to abuse-sustaining discourses naturalizing violence against women. She found that these discourses were then challenged by others who questioned the gendered ideologies of male violence against women.

Quality

An article in 2005 by Tom Grubisich reviewed ten new citizen journalism sites and found many of them lacking in quality and content. Grubisich followed up a year later with, "Potemkin Village Redux." He found that the best sites had improved editorially and were even nearing profitability, but only by not expensing editorial costs. Also according to the article, the sites with the weakest editorial content were able to expand aggressively because they had stronger financial resources.

Another article published on Pressthink examined Backfence, a citizen journalism site with three initial locations in the D.C. area, which reveals that the site has only attracted limited citizen contributions. The author concludes that, "in fact, clicking through Backfence's pages feels like frontier land -– remote, often lonely, zoned for people but not home to any. The site recently launched for Arlington, Virginia. However, without more settlers, Backfence may wind up creating more ghost towns."

David Simon, a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun and writer-producer of the television series The Wire criticized the concept of citizen journalism—claiming that unpaid bloggers who write as a hobby cannot replace trained, professional, seasoned journalists.

"I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes American institutions as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs pursuing the task without compensation, training or for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care to whom it is they are lying to."

An editorial published by The Digital Journalist web magazine expressed a similar position, advocating to abolish the term "citizen journalist", and replacing it with "citizen news gatherer".

"Professional journalists cover fires, floods, crime, the legislature, and the White House every day. There is either a fire line or police line, or security, or the Secret Service who allow them to pass upon displaying credentials vetted by the departments or agencies concerned. A citizen journalist, an amateur, will always be on the outside of those lines. Imagine the White House throwing open its gates to admit everybody with a camera phone to a presidential event."

While the fact that citizen journalists can report in real time and are not subject to oversight opens them to criticism about the accuracy of their reporting, news stories presented by mainstream media also misreport facts occasionally that are reported correctly by citizen journalists. As low as 32% of the American population have a fair amount of trust in the media.

Effects on traditional journalism

Journalism has been affected significantly due to citizen journalism. This is because citizen journalism allows people to post as much content as they want, whenever they want. In order to stay competitive, traditional news sources are forcing their journalist to compete. This means that journalist now have to write, edit and add pictures into their content and they must do so at a rapid pace, as it is perceived by news companies that it's essential for journalist to produce content at the same rate that citizens can post content on the internet. This is hard though, as many news companies are facing budget cuts and cannot afford to pay journalists the proper amount for the amount of work they do. Despite the uncertainties of a job in journalism and rising tuition costs there has been a 35% increase in journalism majors throughout the past few years according to Astra Taylor in her book The People's Platform.

Legal repercussions

Edward Greenberg, a New York City litigator, notes higher vulnerability of unprofessional journalists in court compared to the professional ones:

"So-called shield laws, which protect reporters from revealing sources, vary from state to state. On occasion, the protection is dependent on whether the person [who] asserted the claim is in fact a journalist. There are many cases at both the state and federal levels where judges determine just who is/is not a journalist. Cases involving libel often hinge on whether the actor was or was not a member of the "press"."

The view stated above does not mean that professional journalists are fully protected by shield laws. In the 1972 Branzburg v. Hayes case the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated the use of the First Amendment as a defense for reporters summoned to testify before a grand jury. In 2005, the reporter's privilege of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper was rejected by the appellate court.

Possible future

Person using a smartphone to take photographs

Citizen journalism increased during the last decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, associated with the creation of the internet which introduced new ways in communicating and engaging news. In 2004 Leonard Witt wrote in the National Civic Review, "the voices of a range of citizens are being heard loud and clear on the Internet, mostly through Weblogs." Due to this shift in technology, individuals were able to access more news than previously and at a much faster rate. This larger quantity also made it so there was a larger variety of sources which people were able to consume media and news.

Natalie Fenton discusses the role of citizen journalism within the digital age and has three characteristics associated with the topic: speed and space, multiplicity and poly-centrality, and interactivity and participation.

Proponents and facilitators

Dan Gillmor, the former technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, founded a nonprofit, the Center for Citizen Media, (2005–2009) to help promote it.

Professor Charles Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, chairs the Advisory Board for Jamaican citizen journalism startup On the Ground News Reports.

In March 2014, blogger and survivalist author James Wesley Rawles launched a web site that provides free press credentials for citizen journalists called the Constitution First Amendment Press Association (CFAPA). According to David Sheets of the Society for Professional Journalists, Rawles keeps no records on who gets these credentials.

Maurice Ali founded one of the first international citizen journalist associations, the International Association of Independent Journalists Inc. (IAIJ), in 2003. The association through its President (Maurice Ali) published studies and articles on citizen journalism, attended and spoken at UNESCO and United Nations events as advocates of citizen journalism worldwide.

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