Western Journal of Communication

Conspiracy Rhetoric Twenty-Five Years Later: Conspiring Minds Still Want to Know

In his response to the 2002 Western Journal of Communication Special Section on “Conspiracy Rhetoric,” Steven R. Goldzwig warned of a future in which “the hothouses spawning conspiracy rhetoric will continue to proliferate, if only because the experience and speed of change and social dislocation will be intensified and the explanations for the ensuing strain will be in great demand” (p. 500). Now, nearly three decades later, it is difficult to imagine a more prescient description of the present moment, mired as we are in hallucinatory public discourses that strain everyday conversations and infect public policy.

The 2002 Special Section evolved out of a panel at the 1998 National Communication Association, entitled “Conspiring Minds Want to Know: Lessons in Conspiracy Rhetoric for the Dawn of a New Century” (“Conspiracy Rhetoric,” p. 423). Our Special Issue similarly began as a scholarly conversation at NCA, and it picks up where the 2002 Special Section left off. With Goldzwig’s decades-old prophecy now come true, we are left to confront the wild successes of this rhetorical “disease” we cannot yet “cure” (p. 500). But is it ours to cure? Conspiring minds still want to know: What should be the role of Communication scholars in explaining, critiquing, or even redressing this conspiratorial era?

This issue will bring together contributions that consider what conspiracy theories do as/in discourse, for whom, and how they circulate. It invites scholars to consider topics including, but not limited to:

• How the tools of rhetorical theory help us understand conspiracy theories and conceptions of post-truth
• Contexts and consequences of conspiracy theories in our present moment
• Conspiracy theorizing as a mode of public discourse
• Exemplars of contemporary conspiracy theorizing across political, cultural, digital, and/or economic contexts

We are particularly interested in articles that engage with questions of race/ethnicity, gender, class, and other social identities; authority, expertise, institutions, and evidence; science, wellness, and conspirituality; play, gossip, celebrity, and media/popular culture; secrecy and surveillance; technology and digital media; political economy and economics; and the philosophy and psychology of communicating conspiracy theories.