Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Removing editorial gatekeepers opened the way for conspiracy entrepreneurs

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, recurring, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@muirhead_lot_2019, loc. 103

3 min read

Removing editorial gatekeepers opened the way for conspiracy entrepreneurs

Evidence

So if there is a pattern to the many, many conspiracies Wolf has floated in recent years, it is simply this: they were about subjects that were dominating the news and generating heat at the time. Of course none of us who offers analysis on current events as part of our profession is immune to the hot-take hustle. But from Assange to Ebola to ISIS, what Wolf did went well beyond that: by claiming to possess some secret piece of knowledge that she alone had uncovered, and by claiming she was being terribly persecuted by daring to share it, she was able to insert herself in the middle of countless trending cultural conversations. Where there was heat, there was her. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 338 (#expands, via linked claim)

The motives of the birthers cannot be determined in every case. Some, such as Taitz and Berg, are clearly true believers, as evidenced by the extraordinary labor they have expended in the face of highly uncertain outcomes. Others, however, appear to be a mixed group of opportunists and attention seekers who have found in this issue a device for mobilizing followers and advancing their own agendas. These two groups—the true believers and the opportunists—exist in a symbiotic relationship with each other. The true believers create enough esoteric legal argument to provide a veneer of plausibility so that the opportunists do not appear entirely bereft of a rationale, and the opportunists stimulate enough public attention so that the true believers are not completely isolated. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 905 (#expands, via linked claim)

It’s possible that the Seth Rich story would have stayed permanently in the distant, verdant jungles of the wildest conspiracy sites. To go truly viral, conspiracies need a famous name or a big media outlet as an accelerant, the connective tissue that connects the fringe with the power players, the obscure with the mainstream. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 444 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
  • XREF: connects to: Media attacks destroyed the right’s immunity to false information — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 262; Conspiracy entrepreneurs manufacture charges for money, celebrity, and influence. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 134; Conspiracy entrepreneurs track trending news to exploit cultural heat — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 338 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

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