From Pizzagate to Fiendish Pharma and the Deep State: Conspiracy Theories as Tribal Genre

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell Lecture in Communication Studies
Event Date & Time
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Event Location
Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Cowles Auditorium

301 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson (University of Pennsylvania) presented the inaugural lecture for the Karlyn Kohrs Campbell Speaker Series, hosted by the Department of Communication Studies.

The talk argued that conspiracy theories are bound together as a genre not only by a constellation of forms that recur in each but also by distinctive ways in which their adherents invest the theory with confirmatory evidence, protect it from falsification, and deploy it as a means of tribal identification. Drawing on the rhetoric of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jamieson explored the ways in which the conspiratorial genre shifts presumption and weaves post hoc ergo propter hoc inferences into evocative, unfalsifiable narratives that add purpose to the lives of those who embrace it.
 

Featured Speaker

 

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell Speaker Series

This inaugural public lecture is sponsored by the Karlyn Kohrs Campbell Speaker Series of the Department of Communication Studies. The speaker series is made possible by a generous gift from Dr. Campbell, Emeriti Professor of Communication Studies, and expresses her lifetime commitment to social justice, rigorous scholarship, and robust intellectual exchange.

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