Conspiracy Theories and White Supremacy on YouTube: Exploring Affiliation and Legitimation Strategies in YouTube Comments

Abstract

Misinformation and hate speech are prevalent issues in social media research, as well as the rise of far-right extremists, white supremacists, and conspiracy theorists. In response to these concerns about unethical behavior on social media, this article explores how underlying social bonds proposed by conspiracists are discursively negotiated in YouTube comments. Through close qualitative analysis of a corpus of comments about the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, a target of xenophobic and conspiratorial claims, the study identifies the range of recurrent textual personae who respond to the conspiracy theories in the videos. The analytical focus is on the values these personae express and the discursive legitimation strategies used to strengthen their claims. This article is methodologically grounded in a social semiotic approach. Seven textual personae are identified in the dataset that each realizes a particular patterning of social bonds and legitimation strategies, for example, “Educators” legitimated the authority of experts and explained why content was false, while “White Supremacists” and “Inciters” sanctioned technology and negatively evaluated particular social groups. The method employed identifies the attitudinal positions and legitimation strategies that are at the heart of the various ideologies underlying conspiracy theories. It is a step toward developing approaches for combating misinformation and hate speech that are targeted at the key values of specific communities, and avoid overgeneralizing the motivations to produce and consume conspiratorial discourse. This approach is important since arguing logical points alone, without considering the key bonds people share, is unlikely to help in combating conspiratorial discourses.