Monique's Research Program

My research seeks to examine skeptics groups in the United States that invoke conspiracy theory to form social organization and counter dominant forms of knowledge. While conspiracy theories are nothing new, the United States has seen an explosion of them in the last decade in relation to the rise of technological innovations such as the smart phone that allow ideas to reach individuals almost instantaneously. While the internet and social media have accelerated skeptical discourses and the spread of conspiracy theories, face to face groups are frequently formed in order to mobilize agendas and/or create awareness of alternative knowledges that counter public truths. While studies of conspiracy theory have often been considered through the lens of paranoia and/or illusion among fringe groups that aim to tell something larger about power and society, this traditional knowledge/power relationship should be reconsidered in the wake of technological advancement in order to understand the impact of these beliefs in peoples’ everyday lives. From climate change deniers, to anti-vaxxers; to those who believe that crisis actors are involved in the staging of mass shootings, terrorist attacks and economic disasters; to racist extremists perpetuating theories of white genocide, and those groups whom assert that the earth is flat or that the government controls the weather; the common basis of these ideologies is a distrust of the epistemic order. The move toward emotions, affect, and populism in the midst of a crisis over facts, data, and opinion requires further ethnographic attention to counter-hegemonic formations in the United States and their broader impact on society.