By Another Way of Deception: The Use of Conspiracy Theories as a Foreign Policy Tool in the Arsenal of the Hybrid Warfare

Avramov, Kiril

doi:10.11610/isij.3913

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, there is evidence that the Russian government recently contributed to the spread of various political conspiracy theories in the West. 22,23 Conspiracy theories may be deployed as a rhetorical tool to escape inconvenient conclusions. The rhetoric of climate denial is filled with incoherence, such as the simultaneous claims that temperature cannot be measured accurately but global temperatures have declined.…”

Section: Tactical Conspiracy Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insidious Vectors of Disease: Legacies of Conspiracy, Misinformation, Distrust in the Propagation of Infectious Disease. An Examination of Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19

Carpenter¹

2021

HPHR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Conspiracies surrounding pandemics have existed for centuries, if not millennia.17 Some of the most dramatic and sensationalized pandemics—namely Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and Covid-19—have taken the world by storm. And the conspiracies and mis-information campaigns surrounding these pandemics have persisted in a similar vein. Notably, while there are distinct differences between the terms conspiracy, misinformation, and disinformation, this article does not seek to disentangle these terms and their separate effects. Instead, it treats them all as informational distortions—or infodemics—that all have profound consequences on the propagation of infectious diseases. Thus, the three aforementioned pandemics are worth examining as they are illustrative of the following: the entrenched nature of conspiracy within the human mind and societies; how infectious diseases are perpetuated and exacerbated beyond their inherent infectivity and transmission modalities with spreading infodemics; and why the realm of public health must develop a sophisticated arsenal to cope with these bête noires.

show abstract

Section: Tactical Conspiracy Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insidious Vectors of Disease: Legacies of Conspiracy, Misinformation, Distrust in the Propagation of Infectious Disease. An Examination of Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19

Carpenter¹

2021

HPHR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This debate centers around whether the increasing consumption of news through social media, the rise of "alternative" news sources, and the proliferation of misleading or false news stories threaten democracy by increasing polarization and undermining public trust (Allen et al 2020;Persily 2017;Tucker et al 2017). Disinformation -false or misleading narratives that intend to deceive and harm a target (Zhou & Zafarani 2018)has evoked particularly strong concerns amongst scholars and policymakers due to its use as a "weaponized" tool of foreign policy (Avramov 2018;Pomerantsev & Weiss 2014).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Unintended Consequences? Russian Disinformation and Public Opinion

Hlatky

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A free, open media is requisite for well-functioning democracy. Whether the modern media environment fulfills this function is, however, debatable. Disinformation -- the deliberate provision of false or misleading narratives with harmful intent -- is a particular concern. This concern is particularly acute in Central Europe, where disinformation intends to undermine support for Euro-Atlanticism by stoking identity-related grievances amongst socioculturally conservative individuals. Yet, we lack causal evidence concerning whether and to what extent this disinformation impacts attitudes. Using the critical case of Slovakia, this article identifies predictors of disinformation readership and trust, as well as disinformation's effects on anti-European Union, prejudiced, and xenophobic attitudes. Disinformation exposure leads to a backlash effect: false news headlines shift opinion in a pro-Europe, less prejudiced direction. Heterogeneous effects amongst ideological subgroups underscore how directionally motivated information processing conditions individual reactions. This analysis shows that the impact of disinformation depends on the ideological convictions of the target audience.

show abstract

Trump’s framing of Covid-19 as a war and conspiracy theories

Мусолфф

2023

Remedies Against the Pandemic

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The use of war-related metaphors by Western political leaders to frame the COVID19 pandemic has drawn strong criticism, both in the media and among critical discourse analysts. A particular reference point in such criticisms has been the long-standing critique of the illness-as war metaphor because it frames patients’ bodies as battlegrounds and favours ‘radical cure’ solutions that prioritize elimination of the illness as an enemy. This paper investigates the links between the pandemic as war metaphor scenario and Covid-19-related conspiracy theories in the sense of flawed, i.e. empirically and/or logically unwarranted theories (UCTs), with special reference to the anti-Chinese Covid-19-UCT that was used by the former US President Trump and other conspiracists who pretended to be in a situation of self-defense that entitled them to commit acts of resistance against a perceived war enemy. It is, however, important to distinguish routine uses of the war-metaphor from narratively elaborated, ideologically invested metaphor scenarios such as Trump’s appeal to fight the “China virus”. It is the latter that can best be exploited in conspiracy theories for their implications, e.g. the identification of supposed ‘culprits’ and ‘traitors’ and the legitimacy of ‘fighting back’ against them. For this reason, “reframing” efforts, which have been proposed for Covid-19 in terms of the pandemic as war metaphor, should not target whole source domains but concentrate specifically on critiquing those scenarios that lead to the stigmatization of social/national groups.

show abstract

By Another Way of Deception: The Use of Conspiracy Theories as a Foreign Policy Tool in the Arsenal of the Hybrid Warfare

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

Insidious Vectors of Disease: Legacies of Conspiracy, Misinformation, Distrust in the Propagation of Infectious Disease. An Examination of Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19

Insidious Vectors of Disease: Legacies of Conspiracy, Misinformation, Distrust in the Propagation of Infectious Disease. An Examination of Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19

Unintended Consequences? Russian Disinformation and Public Opinion

Trump’s framing of Covid-19 as a war and conspiracy theories

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About