The Conspiracy Singularity: The merging of communities of suspicion, Anna Merlan, Sr. Staff Writer at Vice News

Description

Conspiracy theories have a renewed social prominence in American life. There's a strong emphasis on understanding their harms and their effects on how we make decisions. What's less well-understood, though, is how conspiracy communities influence each other, and how different forms of suspicion have begun to merge together, due to impacts as disparate as social media and the COVID-19 pandemic. We'll discuss how conspiracy communities find and influence each other, and how they create new forms of meaning and suspicion that can shape public discourse. 

Anna Merlan is a journalist and author. She's currently a senior staff writer at Vice News. Her 2019 book is Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power.

Open to the Yale Community only. Boxed lunches will be available at the end of the event.

Sponsoring Organization(s)

ISP