Connecting the Dots: Reconstructing the Social Production of Suspicious Knowledge

• Applicants: Dr. Nils Christian Kumkar; Professorin Dr. Sarah Speck
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Sociological Theory
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522282012

In the last decade, conspiracy theories, especially their socially structured perception and political influence have gained attention in public debates and social research alike. What has thus far not been systematically researched and theorized is their production as a collaborative social process. The research project addresses this gap by reconstructing the production of conspiracy theory knowledge – doing conspiracy theory – which it conceptualizes as a peculiar form of social critique. Using a mixed-methods approach with a reconstructive focus, it examines this production process at different levels: (A) At the socio-structural level, a quantitative survey addresses the prevalence and socio-structural specificity of distinct conspiracy theories in the German, Austrian and Swiss populations, respectively. (B) At the level of conspiracy theory producing milieus, the project examines in what ways socially specific, shared experiences are metaphorically condensed and processed in these theories, mainly by interpreting group discussions. (C) At the level of conspiracy theory scenes, it interprets mainly ethnographic observations to investigate the ways in which conspiracy theories are integrated into diagnostic and motivational framing in the context of organizations and movements and thus flow into a critique in the sense of a political agenda. (D) At the level of conspiracy theory knowledge production in the context of interactions, it interprets group discussions and ethnographic observations to analyze the communicative problems processed by doing conspiracy theory. (E) With regards to the psychological dimension, it inquires the role of conspiracy theories in the processing of socially produced psychological conflicts and biographical ruptures as well as the affective function of conspiracy phantasms within groups and collectives by interpreting group discussions and narrative interviews. Our research design includes data from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, whose conspiracy-theoretical scenes represent a 'German-speaking conspiracy-theoretical space', but at the same time can be related as three cases to be compared on the different levels. Thus, the project takes a look at homologous structures across cases, but also at different national variants as well as transnational social entanglements of conspiracy theorizing. By collecting and analyzing different kinds of data (quantitative survey, biographical narrative interviews, group discussions, and ethnographic material) the project seeks 1) to reconstruct the polycontextural functions of conspiracy theory knowledge, to understand the production of conspiracy theory knowledge as a specific form of processing problems, and 2) to reconstruct the content(s) of conspiracy theory knowledge as social critique.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF); Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Markus Brunner; Professor Dr. Oliver Nachtwey