Behind the Headlines: Conspiracy Theories & What the News Gets Wrong

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Today's podcast is all about conspiracy theories because, you know, You know, we've read and we've heard a lot about conspiracy theories in the news, especially these past 2 years or so. And one of the things we like to do is obviously look at the news coverage itself, go behind the scenes and see how the news is covering an issue, maybe what they're missing, what they're getting right, and what they're getting wrong. So I'm very happy to say our guest today is Joseph Uscinski. He's a professor of poli sci at the University of Miami, and he actually specializes in conspiracy theories. So, Joe, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Um, let's start at the beginning. And by the beginning, I mean, really the beginning, which is usually little boys want to grow up to be ballplayers or firemen. How does someone grow up to study conspiracy theories?

Uh, I wish I had a more romantic story for you. I actually started out studying media and journalism and why journalists report the stories that they report. And then around 15 years ago, a co-author came to me and said, hey, let's do this thing. conspiracy theories? And my response was, no. I said, no one cares about this. This is on the fringe of society. This isn't a big deal. And that was the right answer at the time because it really was fringe and the study of it was fringe. No one was paying attention. But that's really changed in the last few years. And I would like to take credit for it and say that I could foretell the future and know that this topic was going to blow up the way that it has. But Um, purely random chance, and a lot of it having to do with Brexit and Trump's entrance into politics, but random chance that I happened to publish the right book at the right time, and it just sort of, uh, blew up, and I've stuck with it. So this is my, this is my career now.

Okay, so the book is— you are co-author of American Conspiracy Theories, but then you were also editor of Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them. And, and that's something I want to get into here as well. But tell me, though, over the past decade, I mean, it seems like you are in demand now for media interviews. So if you can compare for me, I mean, in the beginning, were you doing much media? Did media ring your phone?

No, no one called and no one cared. I think I maybe got a few calls about, oh, it's the anniversary of 9/11, or it's November again. So let's talk about Kennedy conspiracy theories. And that That was really the extent of it for the first few years. And then things really changed for me. So it became 100, then 200, then almost 300 interviews that I did with journalists in 2020, all on this topic. And just to put that in perspective, I mean, many major news organizations now have desks dedicated to misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, online information environments where they have entire teams just dedicated to it. So that's— it's getting a ton of coverage. So to put numbers on that, I started a Google alert in, I think, 2010 on the term conspiracy theory, and I would get back 4 or 5 articles a day, and none on the weekends, with the term conspiracy theory in it. Starting in 2015, it became 50 to 100 articles a day. I was in a lot of them.

Okay.

And it's maintained That since then. So on any given day, there are lots and lots of stories come— coming out on this or very similar topics.

Okay. Now, now you mentioned 2020 as being kind of a hot year for you. Was that due to the pandemic and so many conspiracy theories surrounding that?

There were 2 major things I was getting interviewed about, and one was the pandemic conspiracy theories. And the other was QAnon.

Okay.

And I'm not exactly sure why QAnon blew up so much. I think everyone sort of— they had to hunker down, social distancing. Everyone was online more. And I guess maybe in some ways people were— maybe they were coming into contact with QAnon more. Maybe journalists were just coming into contact with QAnon more. But it became a big thing for journalists and They were paying a lot of attention to it. Now, unfortunately, a lot of the headlines were getting things very, very wrong.

Okay.

And in what seemed like a huge growing movement of QAnon, really wasn't. It was just, yeah, QAnon's online. And to many journalists, it seems crazy and wacky. And you can find a lot of Facebook pages with it, but that doesn't necessarily translate into Everyone's becoming a QAnon believer now.

Okay. All right.

So the polling during this time told a very different story than a lot of the QAnon coverage was providing. And same thing with the COVID coverage is that it was saying this is spreading everywhere, right? Everyone's going to become a COVID conspiracy theorist. But that didn't happen. Yes, there were believers and yes, the conspiracy theories are out there, but Having repeatedly polled on these ideas over and over and over again throughout the pandemic, from the very beginning, even to recently, we're just finding very little growth.

Okay, so let's break this down a little bit for folks. So do we have a working definition of what makes a conspiracy theory a conspiracy theory?

Yeah, so I just want to preface this by saying that words don't have intrinsic meanings, they have usages. And this is one of those terms You know, sort of like the term middle class on the campaign trail for any politician. They're all fighting for the middle class. You say, well, who's that? And they're like, there is no definition. Everyone's middle class.

Okay.

So conspiracy theory is sort of like that, right? I have my definition, which I try to apply to what I do and be very even-handed with it. But most people, the term means anything I don't agree with that the other guy believes that I think is wacky. And that's a conspiracy theory, right? So, so for everybody, what counts and what doesn't is often just a reflection of what they believe about the world and what groups they happen to belong to.

Okay.

So for me, I'll give you my definition, and that is that you have, um, essentially an accusatory perception in which a small group of usually powerful people are operating in secret for their own benefit against the common good, and in a way that undermines our bedrock ground rules against the widespread use of force and fraud.

Okay.

And further, this idea has not been adopted by the relevant experts in the relevant areas with open data and evidence for anyone to challenge should they want to do so. So if you take something like Watergate, It has all the elements except we operate as if it's true because it has convinced the relevant experts like the FBI. Congress has done reports. People made admissions in open court. We have a pretty good idea of what happened.

Right.

But if you think that the CIA killed Kennedy, you're dealing in conspiracy because there aren't majorities of experts with open data and evidence who have sort of converged on that answer. It doesn't mean it's false. It could be true, but it just hasn't met a particular bar of convincing the experts. And that's where I set my bar. Other people may have a different one to demarcate conspiracy from conspiracy theory, but that's where I set it. And again, I don't want to tell anyone that their cherished theory is necessarily false just because I consider it a conspiracy theory. It just means hasn't convinced the people that I would listen to.

Okay. So I guess the big question that comes to mind first is, why do people believe what they believe?

So that's the best question that I've ever been asked, because usually the question is, why do people believe conspiracy theories?

Okay.

Right. And the answer that I, that I tend to give is, well, for lots of reasons. And for the same reasons that people believe anything else.

Okay.

It's not like people are walking through the day and different ideas shine differently or have different colors or something, or are immediately discernible from other types of ideas, right? It's not like, oh, I saw this and it looks false, so I'll believe it.

Right.

Or this looks stupid, so I'll adopt it as a belief system. That's not what people are doing. People are doing the best they can with what they have to work with, right? So So it's, it's the same forces that drive belief in any other sort of idea that drive belief in conspiracy theories. And, and for me, um, just to give the basic rundown, it would be people tend to be attracted to ideas that comport with how they already view the world.

Okay.

So if you see— if you think that the world operates as the outcome of a bunch of conspiracies pulled off by people who you probably already don't like, Then any new theory coming in that matches that is going to ring true to you to some extent.

Okay.

Beyond that, people tend to think that their groups are good and virtuous and the competing groups are bad and potentially conspiring against us. So we tend to point fingers. It's the other guy that's conspiring, not my team. It's the other team that's doing it. They're the bad ones. And as part of that, we often take cues from our political leaders. So if a leader that we trust says so-and-so is conspiring against us, then we'll believe that too, right?

Mm-hmm.

And then the final thing that I would say is our personality traits sort of drive the ideas that we adopt. And this becomes very important with conspiracy theories because People with antisocial traits, sort of dark personality traits like narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, people with conflictual personalities.

Okay.

They tend to gravitate towards antisocial ideas, right? So it's not the case that anyone who believes any conspiracy theory has dark or bad traits or are conflictual people. That's not the case. But for certain conspiracy theories. That seems to be the case. So lots of people believe that the CIA killed Kennedy or something like that. Completely fine and normal. And it's a widespread belief.

Right.

But people who think that no one died at Sandy Hook or that the Holocaust was faked, those sorts of beliefs tend to be held by people with darker personality traits. And that makes perfect sense because those ideas themselves are sort of outside polite, normal discourse. So who's going to adopt them? Not just anybody who slips on a banana peel and becomes a Holocaust denier. It's someone who's got a personality that's going to adopt beliefs and hold on to them despite condemnation.

Okay. And are some of these belief systems carried out through, I guess, the people you hang out with or the groups that you gravitate toward?

So it could be going in both directions, right? So if there's people I trust, then I'm going to take cues from them, particularly if I trust them in a particular area and they tell me something in a particular area. So you can imagine if you have someone who knows a lot about elections and they're a good friend of yours and you trust them, they say, hey, the election's rigged, you might believe them.

Okay.

Right. But the interesting thing too, and this has only been exacerbated by social media, is that we tend to pick our friends, right?

Yeah.

And how do we do that? We often pick people who have ideas and worldviews that are somewhat similar to our own. So there isn't always a ton of opportunity for sharing. And, you know, what we find in online environments is that if someone says something you don't like, you're like, block, defriend. You know, and it's funny for even for our family members, like there are a lot of people who I'm related to who are either blocked, muted, or defriended in my networks because they're saying things that I just don't want to deal with.

It's usually an uncle, right? It's always an uncle.

Yeah, it's always an uncle, a second cousin, somebody who's right and they want to make sure you know it. And, um, and, and, but we're all like that to some extent. So we're creating these networks around ourselves that will tolerate to some extent different viewpoints. But, but it's only going to go so far.

Okay. So is it— is there kind of a generalized breakdown of, you know, what percentage of Americans are the most adamant about believing in conspiracy theories versus maybe middle of the road versus it's hard to get me to believe in anything?

You know, So I don't think I would put a percentage on it, but I'll start by saying this, is that everyone believes one or a few conspiracy theories.

Okay.

In that regard, there's no us and them.

All right.

Right. So when we do polls, what I find is that the more conspiracy theories I put on any given poll, the fewer and fewer people there are that don't believe any.

Really?

And given that there's an infinite number of conspiracy theories out there, You can imagine I could put 500 or 600 conspiracy theories on a poll. Everyone's going to believe a handful, right? So if, if the term conspiracy theorist means believing in any conspiracy theory, then we're all in that category, right?

Okay.

Um, but what if there's a distinction to be made? It's this, is that some people believe a lot and a lot and a lot. And it's not so much the beliefs that are at issue, it's that they have the underlying worldview in which they're looking out at the world and their lenses see everything as a conspiracy.

Okay.

So, you know, the best way I can put it is the 33% of Americans that are most conspiratorial are the most— are the third that's the most conspiratorial, right? Because this is really a continuum. It's not like, oh, at this point then you're Right. Conspiracy theorist, or at this point you're not. It's there are people who are very high in that, so it makes it very easy for them to adopt all sorts of conspiracy theories. And then there's other things that seem to come along with that too, and that oftentimes we're finding a set of ornery personality characteristics, dogmatism, dark personality traits, conflictual personalities. Um, sometimes the people that are way up there, it's inclinations towards, or at least support for political violence.

Oh, okay.

For, you know, at least as expressed in a survey environment, right? Doesn't mean all these people are out committing violence, but at least they're in favor of it in our surveys. So it's important to sort of think of it, it's not like us and them, is that there's a continuum. And it's not so much about the beliefs themselves, it's about this underlying worldview that sort of makes the beliefs attractive to people.

Okay. Now, on that end of the spectrum, then, is there any correlation between I believe in more conspiracy theories than the average person and I have some sort of mental illness? Is there any correlation between that?

So I don't want to— I want to be very careful in my language here and just say Yes, for some people, sometimes those things go together.

Okay.

Is one thing causing the other? It's not entirely clear, right? Because everyone's believing conspiracy theories. They're not all mentally ill, right?

Right.

I mean, I used to say this. I go, you know, there's a lot of people who think, you know, it could be schizophrenia or something like this that's driving people to these beliefs. But, you know, if 80% of people believe a particular conspiracy theory, are they all crazy? And I guess maybe sometimes I look out at the world and say, yeah, maybe they are, the way things are going. But no, I mean, it could be the case that those things are related, but they're probably not necessarily. And oftentimes where we do see a relation between them, like in an anecdotal case, Yeah. like the guy who killed his kids with a sword because he thought they were lizard people or things like that, often There is mental illness there, and that's probably the driving factor rather than the conspiracy theories themselves.

Okay. Now, you had mentioned the media in the beginning, and one of the things I want to talk to you about is— because I have seen mentioned a few times in the news media that we seem to be living in the golden age of conspiracy theories.

Yeah, so I see this headline a lot. Um, the problem is It's not really clear what it means, and it's not really necessarily true by any evidence that I've been gathering. And then by even worse than that, like, I've gone back through headlines for the last 60 years and journalists have said this all the time.

Oh, okay.

So they were saying in the '60s, the '70s, I've got a whole bunch of these quotes through the '90s and through the last few decades. So it's not like, you know, people are saying it only now.

Mm-hmm.

Right? They say it all the time, probably because headlines like that seem to sell. And there's always a new conspiracy theory, and it seems like it always makes sense, but there's never any underlying evidence brought to bear on it. So one thing that I've been doing for the last year is just re-polling on every conspiracy theory that's been polled in the last 60 years.

Okay.

Trying to see if they've gone up or down or stayed the same. So, so far I've polled on about 50-some-odd conspiracy theories that were previously polled, which is a very good sample and they cover all sorts of topics. And only a handful have gone up and the increases are not very large. The majority stayed exactly the same even over the course of decades. And then more went down than went up. With the decreases being bigger than any increases that we found. So it's just not the case that beliefs are just going up, up, up, up, up. And just to give 2 critical cases here. I mean, in March of 2020, I put a few COVID conspiracy theories on a national poll that we did and then re-poll them in June, October, and then all through 2021.

Okay.

Stable or went down. No increases, right? And, and we did the same thing with QAnon. I've been polling on QAnon since 2018.

Mm-hmm.

No increases. Small and stable, and it— we never found evidence of it going up, right? So the only time where you find people talking about increases is when they're— they, they have some fantastic poll result. Like, hey, look at this. And usually when a poll result is fantastic, it's because it's not that good of a poll. You know, so when something is so far— what makes a fantastic story is something that's different than everything else. And if that one poll number is different than every other poll number, could be right, but it could very well be wrong too, and it's different for a reason.

Okay, but you bring up a good concept there because, you know, we will read or watch or hear about conspiracy theories in the news. But offhand, I can't think of any story that told me, oh, look, fewer people believe this now.

Because people stop paying attention once it sinks into the background, right? So the headlines that I almost always see are, it's big and getting bigger, right? And I'll give you, I'll give you an example. So I think it was Brian Stetler from CNN. I hope I got his name right. He did it. He, I think it was him. He did a piece in early 2020. QAnon is growing and it's dangerous and big and getting bigger. And we're talking about it all wrong. And no real good evidence for that. And then CNN ran a piece, um, about a full year later that had another poll that actually had a poll in it, and it said it was about 10%, which I think was still an overestimation. But here it was like the 3rd or 4th string reporter writing this.

Okay.

Um, I don't remember who it was, but it didn't get a lot of fanfare and said this is truly a fringe movement. So it's like when the headline is big and flashy, it's the, you know, you've got your top, you know, your top people doing it. And it gets the big headline and everyone, oh my God, because it attracts concern. And if it were true, it should attract concern. But oftentimes when it's, this isn't, this isn't that big of a thing, here's a corrective. It's often ignored. So I've been able to get pieces published.

Yeah.

With these sort of correctives in it, like, no, it's not the golden age of conspiracy theory. No, QAnon isn't big and getting bigger. And it's tough to— it's tough to do. But I can place my stuff, but it's, it's, it's not as easy to do as if it were, watch out, the world's about to end.

Right. Okay. So let me ask you though, so if a journalist calls you with the notion that there's this conspiracy out there, and it's huge, and everyone's believing it. Do you try to, you know, suspend that belief for them to present evidence that it's not as big as they're imagining it to be?

If that's, if that's the case, then yeah.

Right.

So, I mean, there's, there's, I won't name names, but there's one reporter who calls me a lot from one particular outlet. And it's always the fringiest, weirdest thing. Like, there's a conspiracy to do forced COVID anal swabs. swabs and this is going to take over the country now, or we're all going to be forced to eat bugs. You know, it's always something—

Okay.

Fringe. And, and, and I always remind the reporter, I say, listen, you know, you are purposely going out, you are finding these fringe places online. Yes, there's a handful of people talking about it, but out of the 330 million people in the country, How many do you think are really talking about this or engaging with it? Or, you know, I'm sure I could put any of these ideas on a survey and there'll be some amount that say, oh, that sounds real to me. But they, they probably never heard of it prior to my putting it on the survey.

Yeah.

So I do try to remind people of that. But it's, it's tough, right? Particularly in 2020, it was very tough for me to say there isn't any good evidence that all of these Beliefs are increasing across the board, and oftentimes journalists would just leave out that part of my quote, or they would just spend two paragraphs after trying to caveat what I said and say, you know, but you know blah blah blah blah blah. So there was there's one journalist, and this is funny. It's like I said there's no evidence. I said conspiracy theory beliefs could be increasing, but there's just no evidence of it right now. You got to have evidence for it.

Yeah.

So in her article, she put, you know, there is no evidence that these beliefs are increasing across the board, but it sure feels like they are. And that's, that sort of encapsulates what's, what's kind of going on, is that there's a lot of feelings driving how people are interpreting the world. But, um, some of these claims deserve to have evidence before they're made.

Fair enough. Okay, so tell me though, I mean, um, As you mentioned, if we look throughout history, some conspiracy theories kind of stay at the same strength level with the public, some diminish. Um, what are the popular ones that just sort of remain as part of our culture?

Um, so, uh, Kennedy has been here for a long, long time now. Um, it's— belief in it isn't flat. So it started out around 50%, 5-0%, in December of 1963, shortly after the assassination. It increased to 80% and stayed there for a few decades. And then in the last 25 years or so, it's come down to now where I poll on it, it's between 45% and 55%. So it's sort of floating around where it started.

Okay.

That's going to be with us forever. I mean, every year, the anniversary of the assassination. It's a thing. We talk more about the conspiracy theories than I think we do the Kennedy presidency. We, you know, there's always new quote-unquote evidence coming out. There was, of course, the Oliver Stone movie. Now he's got a new documentary that he's been pushing. And there's always TV shows on it. So that's sort of, of our lifetimes, that's the quintessential American conspiracy theory. And Part of the reason why the numbers are so high is it's not just part of our culture. It's not just that it's socially acceptable to engage with it. It's that anyone can take it in like a Mad Lib. They can do anything they want with it.

Okay.

You know, people down here, Castro did it. No, it was the Soviets, you know, or other people. It was the CIA. It was Johnson. It was this one. It was that one. So people can go with it where they want to go. So it's 50% of the country believe it, but they all sort of believe something a little bit different than everyone else.

Okay. Now we talked a little bit about mainstream media, but, um, I think one of the things that keeps popping up here is we should really be blaming social media for this idea of how many conspiracy theories we have. So is Mark Zuckerberg doing this to us, or is there any truth to the reality— to to the perception that, you know, social media is playing a role in broadening or making conspiracy theories more popular?

So the people who are blaming social media are sort of— I, I, my view is that they're responding to a lot of tech phobia and sometimes hatred for these, you know, big tech companies or something like that. But blaming them for conspiracy theories is sort of like a cause in search of an outcome.

Okay.

Like, I, I haven't found any evidence that these beliefs have increased across the board, certainly not in a way that all the hubbub about social media would, would suggest, right? So over the course of decades, many of these beliefs are stable, and even the things that We're sad. These are increasing because of social media, COVID conspiracy theories, and QAnon. We just don't find it. These things are incredibly stable because it's people's worldviews and personalities, which are generally stable over time, that drive them to accept certain propositions as true. They drive them to adopt beliefs.

Mm-hmm.

So we would expect the, the people buying into these things to be fairly stable.

Right.

So we just— we're just not finding this. And it's sort of funny to me, like people say, now is the time of conspiracy theories. It's the golden age. And these theories are worse than ever. I say, worse than the Red Scare? Worse than when we were drowning and crushing people for supposedly conspiring with Satan? Worse than that? It's really worse than that. And they start to realize that, no, maybe we are overblowing this. And just the fact that something's online doesn't mean anyone's looking at it. It doesn't mean anyone's being convinced by it, and it doesn't mean anyone's going to act on it, right? There's all sorts of stuff online that people are ignoring right now.

Okay.

So, so your median conspiracy theory that's on the internet will get on social media tonight and it'll be gone by tomorrow.

Okay.

It's only a small number that will take off in any meaningful way. So by only focusing on the ones that are somewhat big, um, we're getting a jaundiced view of the rest of them, which are most of them come and go and they're not convincing the world. And I, I have to remind journalists of this because they'll call me and say, oh my God, there's this crazy conspiracy theory on Twitter. And I say, so what? And they say, well, everyone's gonna see it and everyone's gonna believe it. And I say, So did you see it? And they say, yeah. I said, so you must believe it then. And they say, no. I say, what makes you so special? How come you can resist this tantalizing conspiracy theory, but the rest of us are a bunch of dupes, apparently?

Yeah.

What makes you so smart and the rest of us so dumb? And they start to realize that not everybody is searching this stuff. Not everybody believes— people just don't believe every single thing they see, right? People believe things that match how they already view the world. So oftentimes when we see conspiracy theories getting traction online, it's the same people, you know, just expressing what's already inside of them with just a new particular belief, because it's the worldview that's at play, not the particular theory.

Got it. So from your perspective then, now that we have the internet, not necessarily worse off in the world than we were before?

No, and I think there's good and bad news that we need to concentrate on. The good news is things aren't getting worse.

Okay.

Right? The bad news is things were probably always worse than we thought. Right? So since we've been polling on these ideas now, we're starting to find that they're fairly widespread. People believe all sorts of, you know, things. So if I was to take people through my You know, decade of survey data, they might be horrified with the amount of people believing certain ideas.

Yeah.

Like, oh my God, you know, 12% of the country thinks that spraying themselves with Lysol is a good idea for COVID, or things like that. And there's all sorts of things. And, um, so that's there, but that's the human condition, and it seems like it's always been that way. It's not the product of Twitter or Facebook. It hasn't been done to us by some tech mogul. This is who we are. And it's easy to blame some nefarious actor, just like conspiracy theorists do. It's easy to blame some exogenous force, some outside actor who we don't like for doing this to us. But this is us. You know, we fall victim to conspiracy theories and because of, because of our personalities and who we are. It's humanity. And there is no point in history where everyone only believed true stuff. That doesn't exist.

Okay, so let's look at the flip side of the equation, though, which is, if we have people that believe some of the things that are really outlandish, is there any way to get them to come, you know, further towards the center, which is, okay, maybe that's a little too far out there?

So the problem isn't the belief.

Okay.

The problem is what is sometimes accompanying those beliefs. Because if somebody's like, oh, I heard this idea, this conspiracy theory, and I think it might be true, if it's just something they heard and they don't care about that much, you can probably reason with them. But if the belief is an expression of something that's underneath that's really important to them, then you're not arguing with a particular belief. You're arguing with an entire belief system, with their entire personality, with all sorts of things that they hold to be true about the world. And that's really tough. That's really tough to do. And that's exacerbated by the fact that some conspiracy theories are held by people who also have traits which make them tough to negotiate with.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if people have higher levels of narcissism or conflictual personalities or they're dogmatic, It's— you're not going to convince them that their conspiracy theory is wrong, just like you're not going to convince them any other idea they have is wrong. Right. And I think one, one thing I want to point out here is that oftentimes we put this to conspiracy theorists like, oh, you can't argue with them. But we're all like that with certain things, right?

Yeah.

Am I going to talk you into joining a political party by sending you a fact check or a link? Am I going to get you to change your religion, you know, um, with a conversation?

No.

I mean, we have things that we hold dear to us, and they're not up for negotiation. So we're all like this with certain things.

Okay, so we actually need to wrap up. So I want to ask you one last question, and that's this: is there anything we should have touched on that we didn't that you think is important for the public to know when it comes to this topic?

Um, you know, don't always believe the headlines. Dig a little bit deeper than that. And, uh, sometimes it's easy to think that everyone's losing their minds, but, um, no, it's just some people, and it's always been that way. So don't worry that much about it.

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