Countering conspiracy theories: A cultural sociological analysis of counter-conspiracy discourse in the case of Slovakia

The study of conspiracy theories is a rapidly expanding field. Much less research, however, addresses how and why conspiracy theories have been publicly identified as one of the key social problems of the 20th and 21st centuries, one which requires collective effort and institutional solutions. Taking a cultural sociological lens informed by the Strong Program school and the study of collective memory, this paper investigates counter-conspiracy discourse by emphasising the role of civility and post-authoritarian memory politics. I show that the emphasis on conspiracy theories in public discourse has emerged to make sense of ongoing political and social changes in the 21st century, especially the increasing success of far-right and national conservative populism as well as democratisation of the media landscape which brought previously stigmatised forms of knowledge (such as anti-Semitism) into the public view. The paper focuses on the case of Slovakia, examining the development of its counter-conspiracy discourse between 2009 and 2019.