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How do conspiratorial explanations differ from non‐conspiratorial explanations? A content analysis of real‐world online articles
Author(s) -
Meuer Marcel,
Oeberst Aileen,
Imhoff Roland
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2903
Subject(s) - argumentation theory , relevance (law) , situational ethics , content (measure theory) , psychology , computer science , epistemology , data science , social psychology , political science , philosophy , mathematics , law , mathematical analysis
The present research aims to identify unique characteristics of written conspiracy theories. In two pre‐registered quantitative human‐coded content analyses, we compared 36 pairs of conspiratorial and non‐conspiratorial online articles about various events. As predicted, conspiratorial articles—compared to non‐conspiratorial articles—contained less factual, more emotional and more threat‐related information. Also, we predicted and found that conspiratorial articles presented more argumentation against the opposing standpoint and that they provided explanations that were more dispositional and less falsifiable. Contrary to our predictions, we did not consistently observe that conspiratorial articles presented less argumentation for their own standpoint. Also, we did not find consistent support that conspiratorial articles provided less information about the specific process or more information about the underlying goals of the respective events, or that conspiratorial explanations attributed the events to a lesser extent to situational factors. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the understanding of conspiracy theories.