Tell China’s Conspiracy Well: Networks and Narratives of Anti-CCP YouTube Conspiracists

Regarding political conspiracy theories as a combination of factually problematic information and populist morality, we draw on Habermas’s theory of communicative action to analytically distinguish the factual and moral components of conspiracy theories. We combine social network analysis and discourse analysis to illustrate the networks and narratives of anti-CCP conspiracy theorists on YouTube. Inhabiting a peculiar information ecology and targeting an opaque government, these YouTubers constitute a critical case for understanding the networked dissemination of conspiracy theories and the discursive blend of truth and normative rightness claims in such theories. We first mapped out and compared the anti-CCP conspiratorial networks formed through YouTubers’ mutual endorsement and emerged naturally from users’ viewing behaviors. Three major segments of anti-CCP conspiracists were identified, namely a strategically coordinated Falun Gong group, a tightly knitted “Whistleblower Movement” block, and a loosely connected residual of political dissidents. Then, we conducted a discourse analysis on seven central channels in the network, illustrating how anti-CCP conspiracists legitimize their extraordinary claims by (1) leaping from basic facts to morally embellished informative fictions and (2) making reassuring doomsday predictions that dissipate revolutionary potential.