Conspiracy theorists are more focused on discrediting official accounts than proposing their own

We tend to think of conspiracy theorists as being fixated on far-fetched explanations. In fact they are not so much concerned with providing alternative accounts of historical events, rather they are driven by a mistrust of authority to discredit official narratives. That's according to a new analysis of conspiracist and conventionalist online comments about the 9/11 terror attacks published on US and UK news websites around the time of the tenth anniversary of the atrocity. Excluding contributions that were pure insults or just links to other sites, Michael Wood and Karen Douglas identified 2,174 relevant comments posted to ABC news, CNN, the Independent and the Daily Mail between July 1 and December 31 2011. The comments were made by 1,156 different authors; 1,459 were coded as conspiracist, written mainly by people who follow the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement, and 715 as conventionalist. Conventionalist comments more often (56 per cent) contained information that supported their own position as compared with conspiracist comments (31 per cent). By contrast, conspiracist comments were more likely (64 per cent) to contain derogation of opposing explanations, as compared with conventionalist comments (44 per cent). Moreover, conspiracist comments more often signalled mistrust (10.6 per cent vs. 1.4 per cent). On the other hand, conventionalist comments were significantly more hostile in tone. Finally, neither side appeared happy applying the term "conspiracy theory" or deri...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs