Red
Well-Known Member
When you say the links aren’t of any interest, you realize you are pretending to speak for everyone? Why do you believe you can safely speak for everyone? Quite the ego ya got there. BTW, “Most people” does not include social scientists.
And I’ve only just started. One reason I’m posting these, in addition to catching up with@The Thriller, is to demonstrate just how out of whack you are in dismissing the study of QAnon as irrelevant. So foolish to go through the effort of actually counting the times to prove nothing whatsoever, to have no point to make at all.
Anyway, here are my mentions # 36-41. I’ll be in first place before you can say “look, a meteorite!!”
QAnon and the Emergence of the Unreal
Ethan Zuckerman delves into how the conspiracist community surrounding QAnon represents a hazardous new form of participatory civics and digital storytelling.
jods.mitpress.mit.edu
Abstract
What is truth in politics? Movements such as the anti-establishment, internet-born conspiracy theory QAnon are offered as dramatic cases of just how “irrational” people have become in a “post-truth” political world. However, with a growing number of everyday Americans believing in such theories, labeling adherents “irrational” ignores the internally rationalizing logic of conspiracy theories, so we ask the question: how do QAnon followers think through, argue, and rationalize their political truths? This paper establishes a discursive framework that demonstrates how QAnon adherents translate the theory’s paradigmatic political epistemology into personal ideologies. I identify the narrative structures that guide belief, examining how QAnon followers develop a general political plot, set the parameters for conflict, embrace their role in the story, determine what is in the political canon, and relate to the narrative that has been constructed. This analysis highlights the contradictions within the QAnon conspiracy theory—not to pathologize adherents’ irrationality but to demonstrate how people must wrestle with contradiction, paradox, and confusion when developing political ideologies. When framed as the as victims of a brainwashing cult, QAnons routinely respond, “no cult tells you to think for yourself”; instead, their narratives allow them to interpret QAnon in service of developing personalized political truths. Thus, this paper takes their words at face value to see the world as they interpret it. I argue that ideologies are a function of broader political epistemologies such as QAnon; they are embodied, narrativized ways of being in the world that make life livable—despite any inner contradictions—and guide political participation.
QAnon: A Conspiracy Cult or Quasi-Religion of Modern Times? - ECPS
DOWNLOAD PDF
www.populismstudies.org
As with ISIL, QAnon’s ideology proliferates through easily-shareable digital content espousing grievances and injustices by “evil oppressors.” To perhaps a greater degree than any comparable movement, QAnon is a product of the social media era which created a perfect storm for it to spread. It was QAnon’s spread onto the mainstream social media platforms—and from there onto the streets—that made this phenomenon into a global concern. Social media platforms, again, aided and abetted QAnon growth by driving vulnerable audiences to their content.
No One is Immune: The Spread of Q-anon Through Social Media and the Pandemic | Strategic Technologies Blog | CSIS
Conspiracy theories are on the rise, with groups like Q-anon taking advantage of pandemic related anxieties to convert unsuspecting social media users.
Last edited:
