Session 4 - Socio-structural predictors

30228 - Sociology of conspiracy theories - summer-term 2023

Philipp Wunderlich

Institute of sociology, Freie Universität Berlin

2023-05-11

Session outline

  1. Recap
  2. Today’s reading
  3. Application
  4. Summary

Recap

  • Epistemological motives?

  • Existential motives?

  • Social motives?

  • Are motives fulfilled?

  • What are strategies against conspiracy beliefs?

Today’s reading

  1. Recap
  2. Today’s reading
  3. Application
  4. Summary

Key questions

  • How can we measure belief in conspiracy theories?

  • Which demographic factors predict belief in conspiracy theories?

Concepts

  • Conspiracy theory

  • Conspiracy belief

  • Conspiracy thinking

  • Conspiracy theorist

Conspiracy thinking vs. conspiracy beliefs

“Conspiracy thinking leads to specific conspiracy beliefs, but conspiracy thinking and conspiracy beliefs will be correlated with different demographics” (Smallpage et al., 2020, p. 265)

Demographic predictors

  • Education

  • Income

  • Partisanship and ideology

  • Gender, race, age?

Cross-country comparisons

Ideology and partisanship

Application

  1. Recap
  2. Today’s reading
  3. Application
  4. Summary

Established predictors

  • How do you expect the established predictors to affect COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs?

Additional predictors

  • Thinking back to the last sessions (Hofstadter, psychological motives): Which other factors may predict COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs?

Group-task

Imagine we would like to measure the effect of income and education on COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs.

Task: Create a measurement scale for COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs

Group results:

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Example: Austrian Corona Panel Project

To which degree do you think the following claims are true or false, when thinking of the coronavirus? (1 very likely false - 5 very likely true)

  • The vaccine against coronavirus was already developed but is held back by large pharmaceutical corporations.
  • The vaccine against coronavirus was already developed but is held back by the government.
  • The vaccine against coronavirus is in development and there are test-vaccines that cannot be used before being thoroughly tested.
  • The coronavirus is a bioweapon that was intentionally devised to hurt humans.
  • The coronavirus is a natural infectious disease that has spread across the world and caused a pandemic.
  • The coronavirus was spread by accident in the context of a secret U.S.-military experiment.
  • The coronavirus can be spread through products that were produced in China.
  • Bill Gates wants to forcibly vaccinate the population in order to earn a lot of money.
  • The new 5G cell-phone transmitters are responsible for the spread of the coronavirus.

Summary

  1. Recap
  2. Today’s reading
  3. Application
  4. Summary

What have we learnt?

  • Key take-aways from today’s session?