SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 GQ.COM.AU 197our viewers and listeners to know
that we regret any negative impact
our commentaries may have had.”
It’s one of just two retractions
listed on the InfoWars website.
The other relates to an accusation
that yoghurt brand, Chobani, was
employing “migrant rapists”
who deliberately spread
tuberculosis throughout the
company’s manufacturing base of
Twin Falls, Idaho. This turned
out to be incorrect.
Conspiracy theories have been
around for decades. From the
assassination of President John F
Kennedy, to those who doubt the
1969 Apollo 11 moon landing ever
took place, there have long been
people who question the accepted
version of events.
Today, these range from
relatively fringe ideas like
‘Pizzagate’ or rumours about
Hillary Clinton’s health during
last year’s presidential campaign,
to those who query the veracity of
climate change science, or the
effectiveness of medical vaccines.
Donald Trump, for instance, has
said vaccines cause autism and
once tweeted that “Global
warming is a total, and very
expensive, hoax”.
Within three days of ‘David
Goldberg’ tweeting about the
‘Pizzagate’ scandal, it had caught
the attention of a website called
Your News Wire, which regularly
publishes conspiracy theories
relating to climate change, aliens
and the murder of Princess
Diana at the hands of the
British government.
Other fringe outlets then began
to embellish the story, adding
details that police had raided and
seized Hillary Clinton’s property.
A right-wing website called Tr u e
Pundit reported that police had
discovered evidence in the
Clinton camp of everything from
money laundering to sex crimes.
This story was then tweeted by
the David Goldberg account as
confirmation of the original
FROM TOP:
PRESIDENT OBAMA
AND JOE BIDEN,
FOLLOWING THE
SANDY HOOK
MASSACRE; THE
ENTRANCE TO
COMET PING PONG;
INFOWARS H O S T,
ALEX JONES.tweet. And while all of these
reports were based off
information in a single tweet,
casual observers may have assumed
it had an air of credibility.
Professor Stephan
Lewandowsky is an Australian
psychologist now based at the
UK’s University of Bristol. He’s
spent years researching
misinformation and conspiracy
theories, and says there’s little
doubt the internet has helped
them spread quickly.
“Things can go viral in no time
at all,” he says. “One tragic
example was the Sandy Hook
massacre in the US – within a day
or two, these conspiracy theories
popped up, suggesting it was
staged and all these children are
still alive. Without the internet,
I could not think of a way in which
that kind of bizarre conspiracy
theory could have spread very far.”
In June, Florida woman Lucy
Richards was charged with
sending threats to Leonard
Pozner, the father of a six-year-
old boy killed in the Sandy Hook
attack. Richards, who believed
the event was a hoax designed to
build support for gun regulations,
admitted sending Pozner a series
of death threats over email and
voicemail. “This is reality,” the
judge said during sentencing.
“There are no alternative facts.”
Richards was sentenced to five
months in jail.
Certain people, especially those
disillusioned with their own lives,
are often more prone to accepting
conspiracy theories than others.
For them, conspiracy theories can
provide a sense of security;
a reason why their lives have not
turned out how they would have
liked. “It’s more comforting to
believe people are conspiring
against you than it is to just be
randomly left out of life. People
don’t like randomness,” says Prof
Lewandowsky, adding that those
who believe one conspiracy
theory tend to have a “broad
propensity” to accept analternative explanation of the
world, which makes them more
likely to embrace others.
“What the internet does is
provide pretty much anyone with
the illusion that there is a lot of
support for their own opinion,”
he says. “And one of the things
that is concerning about that is we
know a person’s opinion becomes
more strongly established and
harder to change, the more that
person thinks their opinion is
widely shared.”
Some claim that social media
has exacerbated this issue, sincesome outlets’ algorithms tailor
content to a user’s previous
browsing habits. This can create
so-called ‘filter bubbles’, where
the users develop a kind of tunnel
vision for content that reinforces
their worldview, at the expense of
anything that does not.
“On the one hand, this is
extremely helpful,” says Prof
Lewandowsky of algorithms that
modify everything from your
social media feed to online
shopping habits. “But on the
other hand, they emphasise this
idea that each one of us is living in