“Seems like the conspiracy theorists are at it again”: conspiracy attributions as a discursive tool in collective (vs. individual) sense-making

Introduction Conspiracy theories are often shared, and shaped, through social interaction. Little is known, however, about how these interactions influence and shape people's beliefs. The current research aimed to explore how people reason about the legitimacy of conspiracy theories both privately (individually, by themselves) and publicly (socially, in the presence of others) as a form of individual vs. collective sense-making. Methods In two experiments, participants were presented with information about both the publicly accepted account and a conspiracy account of the origins of COVID-19 (Study 1; N = 244) or vaccinations (Study 2; N = 374). They then deliberated about those accounts either individually by writing a short paragraph reflecting on their thoughts, or publicly by engaging in real-time, unmoderated online group chats with other participants. Results A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of participant writing (in the form of reflection paragraphs from private deliberations and chat logs from public deliberations) revealed that reasoning broadly centered on the key, structural elements of the theories themselves relating to: plausibility, trust, harm, uncertainty, and autonomy. However, during group deliberation, these themes were employed as discursive tools, influencing the emergent norms for deliberation and approaches to collective sense-making. We find support for the idea that the label “conspiracy theory” is generally negatively perceived and used in everyday social interaction to delegitimize alternative knowledge. Discussion We suggest that engaging in open, nuanced dialogues may mitigate backlash effects associated with pejorative use of the “conspiracy” label while empowering people to take an active role in their decision making.