Government secrecy and conspiracy theories

Olmsted, Kathryn S.

doi:10.1108/s0196-1152(2011)0000019009

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Contemporary media represent a particularly fertile ground for conspiracy theories (Craft et al, 2017). While in the past it was difficult to disseminate alternative views of important events (Olmsted, 2011), advances in technology have made it relatively easy for people to disseminate a variety of narratives and points of view, thus fueling the proliferation of conspiracy theories, along with the public's belief in such theories (cf. Einstein & Glick, 2015; Jolley & Douglas, 2014a, 2014b; Mulligan & Habel, 2013; Swami et al, 2016).…”

Section: Conspiratorial Narratives and Social Media Platformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspiratorial Narratives on Facebook and Their Historical Contextual Associations: A Case Study from Cyprus

Kouros

Papa

Ιωάννου

et al. 2022

Journal of Communication Inquiry

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Conspiracy theories and their effects have greatly proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. As in various countries, so in Cyprus, a mobilization of anti-vaxxers organized mainly through Facebook, violently attacked the largest media group of the island, “Sigma”. Taking into consideration local peculiarities and historical contexts, a qualitative research was conducted on comments posted on Sigma Live's Facebook page, spanning between August 2020 and June 2021.The article illustrates how cultural, political, and historical peculiarities are instrumental in the formation of anti-vax movements, and how conspiracy theorizing in general is inextricably bound to such peculiarities. We demonstrate how new publics in social media platforms may dispute media outlets’ representations through using the official channels of these outlets, highlighting an understudied facet of participatory media. The paper advocates for more context-bound theoretical analyses of conspiracy theorizing, which delve deeper into the meaning-making, interpretative, and discursive practices of conspiracists against media outlets.

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Section: Conspiratorial Narratives and Social Media Platformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspiratorial Narratives on Facebook and Their Historical Contextual Associations: A Case Study from Cyprus

Kouros

Papa

Ιωάννου

et al. 2022

Journal of Communication Inquiry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…When Americans believe that their government is truthful, open, and accountable, they are more willing to trust it.' 37 Unfortunately for those of us who believe greater openness is a good in itself, the correlation between transparency and trust might not be so straightforward. US public trust in government was at an all-time high during the Second World War, and the decade and a half that followed, a period of rapidly expanding government secrecy with almost no formal accountability mechanisms for overseeing the intelligence community.…”

Section: Secrecymentioning

confidence: 99%

The cultural turn in intelligence studies

Willmetts¹

2019

Intelligence and National Security

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This article explores an emerging "cultural turn" in intelligence studies, which, if fully realized, could entail the expansion of the discipline to include new methodologies and theories, and a more integrative understanding of historical causality that locates intelligence agencies within the widersocio-cultural domain they inhabit. It has two parts. The firstexpands upon what I mean by a new 'integrative' understanding of historical causality. The second explores three areas of interest for intelligence scholars where the "cultural turn" has clear and important implications: the study of secrecy, publicity, and "mentalities". In recent years a new wave of scholarship, focusing upon the representation of secret intelligence services in various media, has added new vitality to the discipline of intelligence studies. 1 It is tempting, therefore, to identify this topical interest in the popular mediation of intelligence agencies as the titular 'cultural turn' of this article, and leave it at that. But topicality alone cannot constitute a disciplinary 'turn'. At stake in this expansion of the discipline to include a consideration of 'culture' is something much more fundamental than simply a question of what topics are permissible. In this article I will argue that two conditions are necessary for a fully fledged cultural turn in intelligence studies: the first is an openness to new methodologies and theoretical paradigms, often borrowed from other disciplines, and in particular from the fields of cultural studies, literary theory and the philosophy of history. The second is a new understanding of historical causality that is integrative, recognising that intelligence, as with the rest of the political domain, 'does not constitute itself independent of and external to societybut is a place of almost continuous sociopolitical interaction.' Intelligence scholars, to borrow Steven Pincus and William Novak's wording, 'should not assume that their chosen area of inquiry can be studied abstracted from other elements of historical experience.' 2 Nor, it should be added, are many of those other elements of historical experience entirely abstracted from the history of secret intelligence. This article is therefore not intended as a comprehensive literature review of recent cultural studies of intelligence, though it does identify what this author considers some of the more significant works that assume one or both of the conditions described above. Nor is it a purely descriptive account of a 'cultural turn' in intelligence studies that has already occurred. Rather, it seeks to extrapolate from an emerging tendency within the field, a nascent cultural turn if you will, still in the making, in order to outline some guiding principles for its future development, as well as explore some of its implications for the study of intelligence. There are two sections to this article. The first expands upon what I mean by a new 'integrative' understanding of historical causality, and contrasts it with traditional historical approaches to...

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Conspiracy Movements: A Definitional Introduction and Theoretical Exploration of Organized Challenges to Epistemic Authority

Halford

2022

The Sociological Quarterly

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Government secrecy and conspiracy theories

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Conspiratorial Narratives on Facebook and Their Historical Contextual Associations: A Case Study from Cyprus

Conspiratorial Narratives on Facebook and Their Historical Contextual Associations: A Case Study from Cyprus

The cultural turn in intelligence studies

Conspiracy Movements: A Definitional Introduction and Theoretical Exploration of Organized Challenges to Epistemic Authority

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