Course Catalog: Decoding — and Fighting — Conspiracy Theories

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In this episode

Conspiracy theories have played a role in American culture and politics for decades. In the course “Conspiracy Rhetoric: Power, Politics, and Pop Culture” at Bates College, students closely examine what propels those theories. Stephanie Kelley-Romano, a professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies, says many students begin her course with a basic understanding of conspiratorial thinking. Often, she said, those students seek to understand how some people — sometimes people they love — can fall under its thrall. While students learn what to say to a true-believing friend or relative, the course also teaches them how to recognize narrative framing, conduct their own research, and identify trends in language, media, and storytelling that fuel conspiracy theories.

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Guest

Stephanie Kelley-Romano, professor of rhetoric, film and screen studies at Bates College

Transcript

This transcript was produced using a speech recognition software. It was reviewed by production staff, but may contain errors. Please email us at collegematters@chronicle.com if you have any questions.

Jack Stripling: Hey everyone, Jack Stripling here. This summer we’ll be shifting our focus a bit to talk about some of the most intriguing and popular courses on the nation’s college campuses. Over the next few weeks, we’ll introduce you to a handful of professors whose courses inspire students to think deeply about the world around them.

At a time when so much of what colleges have to offer can feel like job preparation. We’re pausing to look at how higher education pushes students to wrestle with big ideas. Producer Fernanda Zamudio Suarez will take it from here.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: This is College Matters from The Chronicle Stephanie Kelley-Romano, a professor of rhetoric, film and screen studies at Bates College says the persistent allure of conspiracy theories. Tell us something important about the world around us. In her course conspiracy, rhetoric, power, politics, and pop culture, students are encouraged to think about how conspiratorial ideas emerge, why they’re attractive, and how they’re increasingly shaping our politics and everyday lives.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano, welcome to College Matters.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Thank you, Fernanda. Thanks for having me.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Let’s start really simply. What is a conspiracy theory?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Broadly speaking, a conspiracy theory is a story I’d say about the way things work. It’s a story that gives some sort of attribution for power distribution. And oftentimes conspiracy theories are apocalyptic, and so they really are the stories of like good versus evil.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: You’ve given us a good working definition of conspiracy theories, but can you ground us a little bit more? What are some examples of particularly popular ones from history or today?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: There have been so many conspiracy theories, and obviously there are conspiracies that are real, right? And so my class deals with conspiracy rhetoric, and we primarily deal with conspiracy theories that are not believed or have as of yet, not been proven. But some of the ones in terms of this course that we talk about is we talk about the idea that 5G technology, uh, caused COVID or could transmit COVID. Historically, the JFK, the lone gunman is of course a huge conspiracy theory about which so much has been written. The idea that the moon landing was a hoax and it happened in a Hollywood studio. Uh, I think one of my favorites is that birds aren’t real.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Oh, that, that’s a good one.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Yeah. It’s it’s kind of a funky one though, right? Because like it was deliberately created to make fun of people who believe in conspiracies. But now there are actually people who I think may believe that birds aren’t real, and that birds are actually just governmental surveillance devices that sit on the wires in order to recharge. I mean, it’s just so perfect. Yeah. Princess Diana was killed by the Crown is another one. Hillary Clinton was replaced by, or is a reptilian alien.

Pizzagate the one that, you know, there wasa sex trafficking ring in the basement of Comet Ping Pong. Yeah. That, you know, John Podesta went ordering a cheese pizza cp. It meant child pornography. And so there was all kinds of, there’s always deep code and meaning.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: And where does conspiracy rhetoric fit into this?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: So conspiracy rhetoric. My class has been something that I’ve been interested in my whole career and in recent years, conspiracy theories have really moved from the fringe right into the center, and so I wanted to make it a full-time class.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: What are some of the elements that your students will be studying in the conspiracy rhetoric course.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: So in the course we start with a 30,000 foot view, where we look at like, what is a conspiracy theory, what are the elements of conspiracy theories? And so we think about the conspiracy theories. We know often on television or in film or in the real world, and we talk about like what makes a conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory. And so from there, then we really drill down into the rhetoric of it and we think about what are the specific strategies that people use and what’s happening that we can predict or hopefully prevent in terms of conspiracy belief.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: What do you think your students want to get out of this course?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: That’s a really good question. I should probably ask my students that question. No, I have asked my students that question. Come with a very commonplace understanding of what conspiracy theories are and the way that, you know, they all know that, uh, the election being stolen -- hashtag stop the steal, hashtag save the children. They know some of these things just from their everyday lives. And they want to understand, I think what we all do, right? Like how can someone believe this regardless of which side they’re on? Or how do I talk to my grandmother at Thanksgiving? What do I say?

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: How do you discuss conspiracy theories in a class where some students may come from a background where they are more inclined to believe or actually do believe some of these theories?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: This is a really good question. And first of all, we have an explicit conversation about what are gonna be kind of the classroom parameters. Like, how are we gonna have respectful discourse where we potentially disagree? And I think that over the course of the semester, and at first what I find is that students are reticent to say anything, which is almost what I don’t want. Right. I’d rather they be talking than not. I think taking a rhetorical perspective is very helpful with that, because basically what that means is we look at the specific rhetoric. So what is Tucker Carlson doing to gain credibility when we think about theories of authority? Or [Richard] Hofsteder writes about this, the paranoid spokesperson as a person who can disseminate conspiracies, and so we can use the theories to find specific examples. And I think that when they have the theory as kind of a touchpoint, I. They feel more confident in identifying. So at first we start just by identifying what are these different fallacies? Where do we see them? What’s the different types of logic? How does this serve as an example of narrative framing?

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: You talked about election denialism and Tucker Carlson. Is bringing up that kind of thing in a class controversial or contentious with any of your students, particularly those who may be politically conservative?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Sure. Sometimes it’s hard, and the thing that I do is I keep it really close to the theory at first, or I keep it really close to the thing that we’re trying to observe, right? And so if you want to deny the 2020 election, have at it, convince me. And that’s what I tell my students all the time. And I evaluate their papers based on the strength of their argument, not on their position. And so I think that when we start with, well, what’s the evidence? And then we evaluate the evidence, and then we get to the point of, like, why might this be popular? Or why might this be being pushed by a particular news organization or group? You know, what do they have to gain when we kind of start unraveling a little bit more, you know, I call them rhetorical detectives. When we start unraveling it a little bit more, they start to see, oh, oh, oh. And unfortunately, if people are going to really stand firm with whatever it is that we’re investigating, if they’re going to fall back to a position of, well, it’s fake news and fake media. That’s not a debatable position. So, hopefully we get them to start getting into the evidence.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: So leaning on the rhetoric and really the academic sense of it all is kind of key here.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Sure. Because what I don’t want to do is contribute to mudslinging, name-calling, repetition of accusations. I don’t want an accusation. I want an argument. So, you know, go do your research and bring it.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Right. Speaking of what students are seeing online, it seems like every time I go on TikTok, there’s a new conspiracy theory or medical misinformation in my feed. How do you keep up with this? How do you keep the course fresh when it feels like there’s seemingly a new conspiracy every minute.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: I do — and this is true for a bunch of different classes I teach — the students definitely know more than I do, particularly if they’re on TikTok, because, for example, I’m not. And a lot of the pop culture stuff that is of their age is not stuff that I’m following. And so they definitely know more than I do. I do know that. I know more theory. Then they know. Right?

And so I can give them that scaffolding or kind of the framework for them to look at different conspiracies. And so I will say to them, okay, this week we’re gonna talk about narrative framing, and I want you to think about how news, for example, is framed.

And so I have students look at those and say, what is the story being told here? Right? And so I give them an old timey, which is now an old timey example, but I. But something that they can grab onto the idea about framing and then they can say, oh, I saw this when they were talking about Taylor Swift, and Travis Kelsey and the Chiefs, you know, and so they can see it in other places. And that’s really what I’m trying to get them to do, is to be able to think about. How do we create reality? How do we decide what’s real and who gets to tell us what is real and then how do we have a shared reality where we can all exist?

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: You mentioned that your students are bringing contemporary examples into the class, which helps keep it vibrant. But can you talk about how you may have updated the course to meet the moment we’re in now?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Yeah, I think the way that the course has shifted again is that just the major shift that we’ve seen in conspiracy theories generally, which is that they’ve gone from fringe things that we ask the president about: You know, did. UFO crash at Roswell? Does the government have secret information? Two things that the president is actually saying, right? So now we have a president, arguably Trump is really the first president who regularly invokes conspiracy theories.

And so I think one of the primary ways that the course has changed is that it’s gone from really a place where we could oftentimes laugh somewhat about. These conspiracies to something where they’re quite clearly much more threatening and much more vital to our shared community now. And so what are we gonna do to help people become more informed and become less apt to believe conspiracy theories.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Yeah. I’m thinking back to when people would hold up Q signs at Trump’s speeches. And at first maybe the questions around that were a little bit like, what’s going on here? And then it was really engaged with in a serious way. There have been so many media organizations that have written stories, done audio journalism, documentaries, et cetera, because it entered really the forefront of American culture.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: It did. And it’s really interesting because with QAnon, I think first of all, there is this almost cachet about it because parts of it seem so outlandish that I think it makes people feel better. Because we don’t know in this current moment, we don’t know what we can believe and what we should believe, but we know we’re not believing that. So there’s a security in the information that we do have.

And then I also think with QAnon, it has been so big and so pervasive. I mean, with Pizzagate, with arguably January 6th, with all of these different events, QAnon has been able to kind of string together a bunch of different conspiracy events to make a reality and a community for people who believe it. We use QAnon a lot in my class, and I think it really exhibits, well, all the different characteristics in terms of why people might believe it and how it really spreads out and is sticky. It sticks to everything,

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: I’m assuming a key element of a conspiracy theory is that it is the explainer for so many things that seemingly are unexplained.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Sure, Apophena is this rhetorical strategy that talks about things that don’t necessarily go together. And there’s all this, I was actually thinking about this last night. I was watching and don’t judge me, an episode of Naked and Alone.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: I love reality TV. Don’t worry.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: I am obsessed.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: And I think the show is called Naked and Afraid, actually.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: But they do this thing with their editing, where what they do is they show someone entering a stream, right? And then they show an alligator on the side of a bank of a stream. Now, arguably, those might not even be in the same country, but because of the fact that they’re put close together, we have this kind of associative logic where we assume, he or she is about to be bit, you know? The same thing goes on with conspiracy theories.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Stick around. We’ll be back in a minute.

So Stephanie, we’ve been talking about how you teach students at Bates to identify elements of conspiracy, but one of the things we know about conspiracy theories is that talking about them perpetuates them. As a professor, you’re talking about this stuff all the time. Have you ever had any issues with students starting to believe the outlandish ideas you’re discussing in class?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Yeah, and I taught it as a first year seminar several years ago and I mistakenly had them for their first assignment, convince me of a conspiracy theory. And unfortunately some of them carried that belief through. Now, they were things about Princess Diana or the Denver airport or the moon landing being faked, and didn’t necessarily impact the more political and much more kind of potentially harmful conspiracies that we talked about later in the class. But sure, you know, we have to kind of approach this stuff really carefully because you know, a lot of the research used to say that disconfirming evidence actually reinforces belief in conspiracy [ theories. So it doesn’t matter if you give me an expert, I’m doubling down on what I believe. The good news is that recently, um. People have started to look at AI and how interacting with AI chatbots that are kind of anti conspiracy chatbots can actually decrease people’s belief in conspiracy, as can asking people to reflect on the strength and reason for their belief. Like simply having people self-reflect can also lower people’s belief in conspiracy or decrease it.

So it’s an inch-by-inch kind of process that we’re talking about here, not a flip-the-page; we’re going line by line.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: I appreciate you sharing the realization that you had about perhaps this assignment was not appropriately timed in the semester, and learning from that and changing the course. And I think that so many good lessons that we hear about here on College Matters come from perhaps mistakes or realizations when doing the course in real time when teaching it. And so I’m curious if you have any other reflections on what you have learned, whether it’s about the scholarship of conspiracy rhetoric or just about teaching this material from teaching the course.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: For their final project, they do a podcast. So over the course of the semester, they do a presentation where again, they’re starting with the information. What is the story that this conspiracy is telling? This conspiracy theory is telling what is the perceived evil that is present in the conspiracy theory? What’s the thing we’re supposed to fight against, and kind of what does that mean for us culturally? So they give these presentations, but then based on that I have let them for their podcast really take off in any direction that tripped them. And I think that what this class specifically, just the last iteration of it, taught me was that I can trust them. I have thought of some more parameters for the actual podcast assignment, but for the most part, the students took it in directions and places that I never would have and that I didn’t even know about going. I mean, they are very invested in, for example, the Q influencers and influencers generally, and how they exploit conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories on TikTok and the use of memes and how memes are culled differently and so they’re not censored in the same ways. And so how can memes spread conspiracy theories more virally than a written article? And so they did a lot of cool stuff going in directions that I was like, huh, OK.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: That’s really powerful what you said. I can trust them. I mean, they’re college students. People are still stumbling and learning, but also to just en masse say, OK, you guys have got this. You don’t often hear anybody say that to anyone. You know, like, I trust you, right? It’s a very deep notion.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Sure. And I think that especially considering I study conspiracy theories, right? Like we have got to come to a place of shared trust. One of the very first things that the ways that conspiracy theories function is to undermine public trust in institutions, in sites of knowledge, in each other, right? And so trust as a theoretical concept, but also as an embodied reality.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: You had also mentioned that the students become really invested by the final project. You know, they probably read more than you have assigned them. Or, you know, they turn out, I’m going to assume, pretty nice final projects. How do you get them there? There’s plenty of reporting on student disengagement, especially among Gen Z and the latest generation. But I’m curious about how you get them enthusiastic about this when they could be online shopping.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Well, first of all, if I do see them online shopping in class, I try not to take it personally because I do think they also multitask and their brains work a little bit differently. Whereas I need the room quiet. But I think first of all, I am passionate and I put a lot of work into what I do. They know that because I’m constantly bringing them examples that are happening now or interesting examples of ancient aliens or you know, whatever it is that we’re talking about. And so I think that kind of prompts them because then they start, [saying] Did you see? Did you see? And so I think it’s getting them excited and, like I said, allowing them to do whatever they’re interested in.

There’s also like a little piece that I do, which is public accountability. So they had to play their podcasts for their classmates. It was just a draft, and they got to revise them following it. But when you know you’re going to have to show your peers and you’re giving oral presentations -- and their presentations were 20 minutes; they were not insignificant presentations. They were in a group. But when you have to do things publicly like that, you’re going to tuck in a little bit more.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: I don’t want to corner us into a political discussion, but some people believe that the Trump administration believes and/or spreads conspiracy theories. Is this something you’ll discuss in the course about whether the messenger matters when a conspiracy theory is emerging or trending?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Yeah, absolutely. We talk a lot about authority and credibility and just volume, right? And so, and accountability, because what’s really interesting with Trump, for example, and this is primarily with Twitter, but I would imagine also with X, although I have not followed X as closely -- when there were conspiracy theories that he would retweet, he would then be able to say, well, I don’t really know about that, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t really, that was just a retweet. Right? And so there are different strategies that people can deploy in order to be able to assume some sort of distance. And so students can definitely look at the current administration and say what types of evidence are they using? What types of sources?

I mean, obviously when we get into any type of CDC, WHO, anything about public health and RFK, I mean, Make America Healthy Again is just through and through with conspiracy theories. And so to be able to call them out, I think is important, regardless of political affiliation.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: How do you get students in this specific political space to distinguish between misinformation and conspiracy theory? That’s where I feel like some of the lines get hazier.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: They absolutely get hazier, and I think that one thing we do is we try to teach students how to research a claim, right? So when RFK says that vaccines cause autism and everybody’s saying vaccines cause autism, and Jenny McCarthy is writing a book about how certain types of food cured her son of autism, when we have all these things going around, which are potentially very dangerous, to have students go back to the original study, for example, which was refuted a million times over, and to compare that quantitatively with the hundreds of other studies that have demonstrated no causal link. So I think having students learn how to do that research is really eye-opening for them, because then they’re like, whoa.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Got it. So with that example that you cited thatRFK Jr. has leaned into the idea that certain vaccines are linked to childhood Autism, is that misinformation or conspiracy based on the analysis?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: So now we’re getting into a much more persuasive argument. Because, if someone were to post on Facebook, for example, a quote unquote study that says vaccines cause autism, that right there, that’s just misinformation. That’s just somebody who’s probably well-intentioned -- probably scared of it, right? I mean, we could talk about fear, and how central that is to conspiracy theories as well. But, you know, they’re just trying to help other people. When that piece of misinformation then gets strategically deployed, we’re getting into disinformation. This is deliberately used. And when we add this motive of evil world power domination, then we’re really getting into conspiracy theory. And so I think that for students to see those things, and to see all stories that we tell in public spheres on a continuum of truth or of knowledge, I think is important, so we can know how much credibility to give individual pieces of information.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: In this course, students can really engage with conspiracy theories and the language, media, or stories that fuel them. It’s deep analytical thought. What are some practical applications?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Practically, what it does is it helps them understand that there’s very little in the world that is objective, right? And that everything has a perspective and everything is created through individual elements, right? You can’t have a house without a whole bunch of bricks. And so what are the bricks that are making up your worldview? What are the bricks that create the ideologies and beliefs that you have? And how solid are they? And many times we talk a lot about authoritative evidence, because many times students will believe things because of who says it. And so they’ll say, Oh, well, it was on my favorite influencer and she said this, and, and I’m like, does she have any health background? Does she have any reason? And we have all these tests of evidence, right? Like, is this person in a position to know?

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Right. So can you tell me about some of the feedback you’ve gotten from students about this course?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Students really like the class. I think that students are oftentimes, they’ll report that they had no idea. Many of them are incredibly sheltered from a lot of these more radical things. At least like in the case of something like January 6th. I think that a lot of people avoid it and avoid talking about it because it just seems too messy and too much, and they’re just like, it’s over. And so therefore, it’s in the past. And one of the things I think the class does is it shows us how history repeats. And so we had the Satanic panics. And then we have Pizzagate. We always have this ring of pedophiles who need to be found out and punished. And so kind of how do these things recur is something that the students remarked, likeI had no idea that this -- especially when we talked about the Satanic panic -- I had no idea that things like this went on before. And I think they like being able to break down an argument to see what it’s based on and to see if there’s anything really there..

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Right, the ability to break down an argument seems pretty key here.. Anytime anybody wants to persuade you of perhaps purchasing something or voting a certain way, et cetera.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Sure. And we talk a lot about emotional appeals and particularly appeals to fear. And I think that when you understand the appeal to fear, oftentimes that’s at the base of some of these conspiracy theories, then you can propose better and more creative solutions. So for example, if, like, with the great replacement theory conspiracy theory, this idea that white people are being replaced and all the jobs are going to be taken. But if you understand that, then you understand that the fear is one of scarcity, right? It’s underlying a narrative of scarcity and it’s a narrative of loss, right? And so, I’m going to be replaced.

And so I think that when students understand how those things function rhetorically, then they can see and they can create rhetorical campaigns that somehow explain to people and inform them that actually most of the research shows that when more people have more rights and more support, the entire society does better. And so I think countering the narratives, I mean, that’s what we’re trying to make in college, right? We’re trying to make people who will go out and better the world and tell stories that resonate for better change.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Yeah. I know this is a newer course or a course that gets taught in different iterations, but on that note, I’m curious, what makes you think that students want or need a course like this?

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Oh, I definitely think students need a course like this. I think that students need a course like this not only for the information that they’re going to learn, which I didn’t even talk about very much in terms of like argument theory, in terms of the different types of evidence, and what are the different tests of evidence, and how do we evaluate a webpage, and how do we evaluate authoritative sources, and what role should experiential truth play in our understanding for decision-making? Because certainly we want to have compassion, right? But then there’s the other piece that happens in the classroom and hopefully outside the classroom, which is they have to talk to each other about it. When we talk about subjects that are political or that are potentially divisive, people just get uncomfortable. One of two positions: I don’t want to say anything that might offend you, and therefore I don’t want to talk about that. We won’t talk about politics, we won’t talk about religion, and we won’t talk about sex. You know, we just table these things or these things become so much a part of a person’s identity that they can’t hear anything else and they won’t listen to anything else. And so over the course of the class,I tell them, I have beliefs that I hold very strongly that I doubt that I’m going to move much on, but we still have to find a way to listen and to investigate it on our own. Because although we might have a good way, there might be a better way.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Got it. Well, I’ll end a bit on a steal your syllabus question for listeners who are curious and can’t sign up for the course or are waitlisted. What is one piece of conspiracy theory pop culture that you think more people should know about? Something anyone can pick up or watch to better understand your scholarship and what you’re teaching students.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Sure. Um, I think about Snopes, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org. I think about those types of sources where you can go and kind of research issues a little bit more, like, did Hillary Clinton really harvest an adrenochrome from babies to live longer. You know, you can check these things out.

And then the other thing that I really like is a podcast, because I don’t only like to suggest reading, is QAnon Anonymous is a podcast that has a lot of episodes. They cover a bunch of different things and they often break down kind of what’s going on with various conspiracy theories.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: Well, thank you so much. You’ve given us so much to think about and learn about and really appreciate having you on the show.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano: Yeah, it was super fun. Thanks.

Jack Stripling: College Matters from The Chronicle is a production of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s leading independent newsroom covering colleges. If you like the show please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen and remember to subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast so that you never miss an episode.

You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes and much more at chronicle.com/college matters. We are produced today by Corinne Ruff, who provided audio editing and engineering. Our Chronicle producer is Fernanda Zamudio- Suarez. Our podcast artwork is by Catrell Thomas. Special thanks to our colleagues, Brock Reed, Sarah Brown, Carmen Mendoza, Ron Coddington, Joshua Hatch, and all of the people at The Chronicle who make this show possible.