IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v11y2023i2p64-75.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accessing to a “Truer Truth”: Conspiracy and Figurative Reasoning From Covid-19 to the Russia–Ukraine War

Author

Listed:
  • Bianca Terracciano

    (Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)

Abstract

This research hypothesizes that all conspiracy theories have dominating isotopies and images-symbols regardless of ideology or context. As a result, I hypothesized that the common denominator might be discovered in figurative reasoning, which means using the same representations to explain current events, in order to detect an ideal center of the semantic universe of conspiracy where the diverse conspiracist fringes converge. Social media invariant topicalizations of the Covid-19 epidemic and the Russia–Ukraine war are the ideal field to validate this hypothesis. The corpus on which the study was conducted consists of thousands of online items published between February 15, 2020, and October 15, 2022. Within the corpus were chosen posts by QAnon supporters designated as disinformation “superspreaders.”

Suggested Citation

  • Bianca Terracciano, 2023. "Accessing to a “Truer Truth”: Conspiracy and Figurative Reasoning From Covid-19 to the Russia–Ukraine War," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(2), pages 64-75.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v11:y:2023:i:2:p:64-75
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v11i2.6396
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/6396
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v11i2.6396?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v11:y:2023:i:2:p:64-75. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.