Citizens 133
it gained traction so quickly and spread so widely demonstrated some
important differences between the role of conspiracy theories in 2002
and those in 2012–2016.
Stempel, Harvey, and Stempel have argued that it was those most
likely to be suffering some degree of social disaffection who were more
likely to believe in conspiracy theories; yet, Clarke and Cohnitz have
suggested that the hypercritical nature of conspiracy sites leads to scepticism on the part of seekers. More likely, Stempel et al. and Clarke
and Cohnitz are discussing separate (if interrelated) groups of readers
likely to read conspiracy theorists: those who actively seek out such information, and those who discover it serendipitously via social media.
It is probable that, prior to 2008, there was a substantive difference
in those who were more likely to read conspiracy theories in that the
relative effort required to find out information on such theories would
filter out the more easily gullible. A consistent stereotype for the conspiracy theorist during the latter part of the twentieth century had been
of the young, lone male, typically living in his parents’ bedroom and
consuming non-mainstream media to feed a hunger for outrageous alternative facts. It is also telling that Cohnitz explicitly excludes social
media sites such as Facebook from the preferred sources for true seekers,
in that these echo chambers are too easy to access. And yet, this precisely is what happened from 2008 onwards: as social media sites such
as Facebook and YouTube flourished, material that for years had lain
entirely outside the sphere of mainstream media became instantly accessible to readers who were not sceptical at all of videos and posts shared
with them by friends and family. When it had been restricted to Austin,
Texas, The Alex Jones Show was necessarily limited in its audience: by
contrast, in 2018, the Alex Jones channel on YouTube had nearly 2.5
million subscribers with more than 35,000 videos that had been shared
a staggering 1.6 billion times. Facebook and YouTube in particular had
made Jones a star, and he regularly took credit for having been one of
those figures who had woken American audiences to vote for Donald
Trump.
And yet, as Jones was about to discover, with great power comes
great responsibility – a responsibility that he did everything he could
to evade. In April and May 2018, some of the families of children at
Sandy Hook filed a defamation lawsuit against him in Connecticut and
Texas, in which they stated: “Jones is the chief amplifier for a group
that has worked in concert to create and propagate loathsome, false narratives about the Sandy Hook shooting and its victims, and promote
their harassment and abuse.”
28
In response in late July, Jones’s lawyer responded with the assertion that no reasonable person would assume that
he was speaking factually on his show, but instead provided entertainment. Writing in The New York Times on July 31, Elizabeth Williamson
observed that he faced a “legal crossroads”,
29
while Megan Garber, in
it gained traction so quickly and spread so widely demonstrated some
important differences between the role of conspiracy theories in 2002
and those in 2012–2016.
Stempel, Harvey, and Stempel have argued that it was those most
likely to be suffering some degree of social disaffection who were more
likely to believe in conspiracy theories; yet, Clarke and Cohnitz have
suggested that the hypercritical nature of conspiracy sites leads to scepticism on the part of seekers. More likely, Stempel et al. and Clarke
and Cohnitz are discussing separate (if interrelated) groups of readers
likely to read conspiracy theorists: those who actively seek out such information, and those who discover it serendipitously via social media.
It is probable that, prior to 2008, there was a substantive difference
in those who were more likely to read conspiracy theories in that the
relative effort required to find out information on such theories would
filter out the more easily gullible. A consistent stereotype for the conspiracy theorist during the latter part of the twentieth century had been
of the young, lone male, typically living in his parents’ bedroom and
consuming non-mainstream media to feed a hunger for outrageous alternative facts. It is also telling that Cohnitz explicitly excludes social
media sites such as Facebook from the preferred sources for true seekers,
in that these echo chambers are too easy to access. And yet, this precisely is what happened from 2008 onwards: as social media sites such
as Facebook and YouTube flourished, material that for years had lain
entirely outside the sphere of mainstream media became instantly accessible to readers who were not sceptical at all of videos and posts shared
with them by friends and family. When it had been restricted to Austin,
Texas, The Alex Jones Show was necessarily limited in its audience: by
contrast, in 2018, the Alex Jones channel on YouTube had nearly 2.5
million subscribers with more than 35,000 videos that had been shared
a staggering 1.6 billion times. Facebook and YouTube in particular had
made Jones a star, and he regularly took credit for having been one of
those figures who had woken American audiences to vote for Donald
Trump.
And yet, as Jones was about to discover, with great power comes
great responsibility – a responsibility that he did everything he could
to evade. In April and May 2018, some of the families of children at
Sandy Hook filed a defamation lawsuit against him in Connecticut and
Texas, in which they stated: “Jones is the chief amplifier for a group
that has worked in concert to create and propagate loathsome, false narratives about the Sandy Hook shooting and its victims, and promote
their harassment and abuse.”
28
In response in late July, Jones’s lawyer responded with the assertion that no reasonable person would assume that
he was speaking factually on his show, but instead provided entertainment. Writing in The New York Times on July 31, Elizabeth Williamson
observed that he faced a “legal crossroads”,
29
while Megan Garber, in