True Costs of Misinformation| Conspiracy Theories Harm Democracy

This article examines the harms of conspiracy theories to deliberative democracy. We begin by mapping the debate on the harms and potential contributions of conspiracy theories in the public sphere. We then extend this debate by grounding our argument in empirical research on the production and reception of conspiracy theories in the Philippines—the so-called “patient zero” in the global disinformation epidemic. We argue that conspiracy theories harm deliberative democracy in two ways. First, they corrupt deliberative norms by instrumentalizing their performance to secure commercial gains. More than simply mobilizing emotions, we find conspiracy theories to simulate deliberative norms of appealing to evidence and encouraging viewers to practice informed judgment. Second, we argue that conspiracy theories serve particular functions in the public sphere, including as placeholder explanations for issues people do not wish to discuss. We argue that besides worrying about the poor epistemic quality of conspiracy theories, of greater concern is their discursive power to evade difficult conversations and pursue plausible political projects on which people can pin their hopes.