[Air-L] CfP: The future of conspiracy scholarship: New epistemologies and imaginaries

[Zelly Claire Eliane Martin Geurink]

Hello, AoIR community!

Please see below our Call for Papers<https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/journal-information-technology-politics-conspiracy/?utm_source=TFO&utm_medium=cms&utm_campaign=JPG15743> in the Journal of Information Technology & Politics (with apologies for cross-posting). Drs. Trauthig, Marwick, Woolley, and I are excited to guest edit this issue of JITP alongside editors Laura Copeland, Jason Gainous, and Terri Towner. Please submit full manuscripts directly to the JITP submission portal (select our special issue: "The future of conspiracy" where prompted) by December 31, 2023 for consideration. Please write to me at zelly at utexas.edu with questions.


Dear Colleagues,

We invite full paper submissions for a special issue of Journal of Information Technology & Politics (JITP) on new epistemologies and imaginaries in conspiracy theory scholarship. This special issue aims to push the boundaries of conspiracy studies beyond extant work, which primarily focuses on the alt-right, health, and Western understandings of conspiracy (Halafoff et al., 2022; Mahl et al., 2022, 2022; Marwick et al., 2022). We answer calls to expand understandings of conspiracy beyond Western epistemology (Mahl et al., 2022) to contribute to a fuller conceptualization of “conspiracy-believing” (Parmigiani, 2021). We examine the troubling content and implications of conspiracies in a manifold manner while acknowledging their potentially harmful impact. We invite those interested in conspiracy as it applies to epistemology, knowledge production, technological artifacts, gender/race/class, and reception, inter alia. Importantly, papers must engage with technology and political communication scholarship in some form.

Special Issue Editors: Zelly C. Martin, Inga K. Trauthig, Alice E. Marwick, Samuel C. Woolley

Scope:

Conspiracy theories are increasingly present in mainstream American political discourse, from those around Covid-19 to the idea that political forces conspired to “steal” the election from former President Trump. While researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds (psychology, communication, history, political science and so forth) have taken up conspiracy theories as an object of study, many contemporary scholars have focused on right-wing conspiracies, such as Stop the Steal (DeCook & Forestal, 2022), QAnon (Bloom & Moskalenko, 2021), and the Great Replacement Theory (Ekman, 2022). Most recently, researchers have interrogated the blurry boundaries between left- and right-leaning conspiracy adherents on topics like anti-vaccination and spirituality (Chia et al., 2021; Griera et al., 2022). A key element of current scholarship on conspiracies is the extent to which social media facilitates their spread (Enders et al., 2021; Theocharis et al., 2021) and/or allows conspiratorial knowledge-production to thrive (Marwick & Partin, 2022).

Although the stereotype of “the conspiracy theorist” is a “white, working-class, middle-aged man” (Drochon, 2018, p. 344) people from all identity groups believe and produce conspiracies (Bost, 2018). For American communities of color, though, conspiracy theories may be a natural reaction to the invalidation of their embodied experiences (Bogart et al., 2021; Dozono, 2021). The same could be said of other marginalized groups in America, such as queer folks and women (Ngai, 2001). In what ways is “conspiracy-believing” a response to feeling displaced in the public sphere, and perhaps even an attempt to reconfigure a sense of community and recognition (Parmigiani, 2021)? What might researchers learn by rethinking conspiracism? What particular threats do conspiracy theories pose when they are crafted and/or believed by those from marginalized communities? How has the internet contributed to the fringe becoming mainstream? How does this impact and/or relate to contemporary political developments?

We invite papers that engage with the following questions:

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     *   What avenues of conspiracy are understudied when we prioritize the “loudest” conspiracy theories?
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     *   What can we learn from interdisciplinary research on conspiracy?
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     *   How do conspiracy theory beliefs stem from embodied experience?
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     *   What are the boundaries of knowledge-production that we encounter when we demarcate conspiracy from disinformation and from embodied experience?
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     *   Which democratic dangers stem from conspiracies?

 Papers may focus on topics such as, but not limited to:

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     *   Conspiracy theories and their relation to emerging social media and technology, e.g., TikTok, generative AI, etc., particularly as they relate to political and electoral implications,
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     *   Conspiracy theory content as it is imbricated with geopolitical phenomena, particularly in the Majority World (Global South),
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     *   Conspiracy theories as related to the ongoing war in Ukraine,
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     *   Conspiracy theories as alternative forms of knowledge production and creation, for instance as rooted in cultural or embodied truths.



Zelly Martin | PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant

Center for Media Engagement | Moody College of Communication | The University of Texas at Austin

mediaengagement.org/propaganda/<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmediaengagement.org%2Fpropaganda%2F&data=05%7C01%7C%7C902c266d1ca346f0bbf108da758b7af0%7C31d7e2a5bdd8414e9e97bea998ebdfe1%7C0%7C0%7C637951539186087039%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=PFDp64b6bsl3PSx9nTmFKqW9FQnUfYOFGksh%2F8%2FmZsM%3D&reserved=0>| @zellycmartin


Latest publication: Inga K Trauthig, Zelly C Martin, and Samuel C Woolley. Messaging Apps: A Rising Tool for Informational Autocrats. Political Research Quarterly. 19 July 2023. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10659129231190932