Doing Conspiracy Theory: Reconstructing the Social Production of a Specific Form of ‘Social Critique’

Abstract

Despite growing scientific interest in conspiracy theories, what has not been researched and theorized is their production as a collaborative social process. This article delineates this gap and proposes to address it by shifting focus from belief to doing conspiracy theory, to be analysed on five levels: (A) the socio-structural level, (B) conspiracy theory producing milieus, (C) conspiracy theory scenes, (D) conspiracy theory knowledge production in interactions, and (E) psychodynamics. This perspective has the potential to better our understanding of the current conjuncture of conspiracy theorising, and to prove insightful for understanding the production of contentious political knowledge in general.