Viewers of the modern political landscape struggle to reconcile traditional political positions with the conspiracy-laden far-right movements that have recently dominated headlines. Such rapid radicalization is often attributed to the advent of new media sources with Youtube or Reddit which become echo chambers for political opinion and encourage the spread of fake news and viral deception. It has become vital to understand how fake news, defined by Kathleen Hall Jamieson as separate from “viral deception,” is being constructed to lure moderate conservatives into ever more radical stances on key issues. This paper examines one such video titled “Gun Owners ALERT!” using a combination of cognitive psychological techniques and close reading in order to understand how this video and others like it present as moderate while nudging viewers to ever more radical positions.
About the presenterMeaghan Murphy
I’m a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. I work comparatively with classical literature and new media. My dissertation examines conspiracy theory as a point of tension between literature and history in Tacitus, Joseph McElroy, and 9/11 conspiracy theory films.