Conspiracy theories, online participation and deliberative democratic theory: Beyond the ‘paranoid style’ to new epistemic challenges

The significance of conspiracy theories to the functioning of contemporary democracy is widely acknowledged but little understood. Despite the prominence of the language of conspiracy in both contemporary public discourse and commentary on democratic participation, democratic theory is only beginning to respond. Indeed, with some notable exceptions (see Moore, 2016) there has been little development of these issues since Richard Hofstadter’s seminal 1964 essay ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’. Recent developments in this area are closely related to the changing nature of online participation. Indeed, phenomena such as the transition of conspiracy theories from online forums to offline political action, the use of conspiracy tropes to drive misinformation online and the growing importance of conspiracy theories in identify-formation amongst extremist groups, have thrown this omission into sharp relief. For theorists of deliberative democracy, such developments provide a number of distinct challenges. Epistemic questions exist over the ability of deliberative democracy to function properly in an environment characterised by conspiracy beliefs. By the same token, aspirations over the civility in online deliberative forums are also cast into doubt. Finally, broader concerns over the trajectory of online participation need to be considered, and the conception and design of online deliberative forums needs to be reconsidered in the light of these developments. This paper addresses this by exploring the importance of conspiracy theories in mobilising citizens, agenda-setting and framing discourse in contemporary democracies, focusing in particular on online participation. It highlights the particular challenges the proliferation of conspiracy theories presents to online deliberation, drawing on two case studies to suggest that these ask questions of online forums that are poorly understood theoretically and hard to ‘design out’ of online deliberation.