The Paranoid States of America: Conspiracy Theories on Campus and in the Ballot Box

Conspiracy theories in political and popular discourse are nothing new, but recently it feels like they’ve been on the rise, and with changes in how we consume social media they are becoming more and more prevalent. The presidential election this year only promises that we will see a flood of misinformation, disinformation, and outright conspiracy theories-many of them targeted at college students around the country. Colin Dickey has spent the past several years researching conspiracy theories-not only where they come from and why they’re false, but even more importantly, how they’re structured and why people are susceptible to them. Drawing on research from his recent book, Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy (Viking, 2023) and related work on disinformation in higher education and paranoia in American culture and politics, he will present a taxonomy of how conspiracy theories are structured and built, how to spot and identify these structures, and how to combat them. This talk will specifically focus on the upcoming presidential election, and conspiracy theories related to higher education that are currently being weaponized across the United States.
Colin Dickey is a professor at National University and the author five books, including Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (2016) The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and our obsession with the Unexplained (2020), and most recently, Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy (Viking, 2023). His work also appears in The New Republic, Lapham’s Quarterly, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, and LitHub as well as many other venues. A keen observer of history, culture, and human behavior, Dr. Dickey’s work explores our attraction to oddities and irrational thinking, demystifying complex (and sometime troubling) proclivities with generosity and circumspection.
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