Conspiracy theory visibility spikes during times of social upheaval

Evidence

The problem isn’t that conspiracy theories are worse today than in the past, since they have more or less always been with us, waxing and waning in visibility through the decades. For their book, for instance, Uscinski and Parent analyzed a randomly selected 104,803 letters sent by readers to the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune between 1890 and 2010. They found evidence that conspiracy theories fluctuated in response to times of enormous social upheaval—the first spike was right around the year 1900, during a great acceleration of immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 107

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to vault claims that intergroup threat and demographic change (immigration acceleration) drive prejudice and scapegoating — same mechanism the conspiracy spike tracks. — connects to: AIDS conspiracy claims persisted word-for-word across two decades in focus groups. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 182; Moral-panic conspiracy outbreaks surge at moments of social change and perceived fracture — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 280; Conspiracy theories flourish during rapid social change and identity reevaluation. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 53 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: The 1890-2010 Times/Tribune data showing a 1900 spike begs whether threat-driven conspiracism runs on the same identity-threat psychology as the authoritarianism claims in the vault.

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy surges track rigid class structure and felt disenfranchisement #corroborates (0.80) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 33
• Conspiracy theories satisfy epistemic, existential, and social needs #expands (0.75) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 179