Public beliefs are hard to change
How social media powers conspiracy
In marketing parlance, it’s known as “the consistency principle” — the psychological impulse we all feel to act (or at least present ourselves) in a way that aligns with our previous statements. Salesmen appeal to it when upselling a customer on a car — “Would you describe yourself as someone who appreciates superior craftsmanship?” — much as environmentalists seeking donations from passersby on a sidewalk will begin by asking them whether they’re concerned about the health of our planet.
the idea, in all cases, is that once you commit yourself on the opener, it becomes harder to say no to everything that follows. for better or worse, you’ve staked out your position, whether it relates to Corinthian leather seats, saving mother earth or — and here’s what i’m driving toward — conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in the United States.
ten years ago, when i published a book about conspiracy theories, “among the truthers,” i dedicated much of it to the power of viral, web-circulated conspiracist videos such as “loose Change.” But web video is a passive medium, much like television. and in recent years, conspiracists increasingly have flocked to participatory social media such as twitter, facebook and Reddit (which were still in a state of relative infancy when i was doing my research in the mid-to-late 2000s). on these platforms, any random hothead can win a following without writing a book or making a movie. and even a casual conspiracy theorist can get his daily adrenaline rush by starting arguments and smacking people down in the name of his preferred cause.
and this is where the consistency principle comes into play. in a recent poll conducted by data for Progress, it was found that a majority of Republican-supporting respondents agreed with the statement, “allegations of voter fraud have made me question the results of the election and Joe Biden’s victory.”
But it’s interesting to wonder how many of these people really do sincerely question the election results, and how many are simply falling in reflexively with the original donald Trump propaganda that they publicly endorsed on their social media pages two months ago, and now can’t bring themselves to renounce.
Anecdotal experience from within my own social media circles suggests that people simply hate admitting they’re wrong once they’ve announced their position — even when the facts show their position to be untenable. Having spent weeks doubling down on social media comment-thread battles over the issue of the 2020 election results, many conservatives I know simply couldn’t bring themselves to admit defeat in front of the friends, family and coworkers who comprised their audience.
When people talk about the radicalizing effects of social media, they typically are referring to its use as a medium for hate speech and propaganda, and the manner by which it allows people to self-organize into ideological silos. But what’s often missed, I believe, is the fact that most of us are proud and stubborn. And so the very act of making a public statement about anything lessens the likelihood that we’ll revisit its truth in good faith. Twenty years ago, you could change your mind a dozen times and no one would know. These days, that’s much harder to do.
In fact, social media has made the very idea of conspiracism harder to define. When I wrote my book, I felt comfortable drawing a bright line between ordinary people and those who believe that, say, 9/11 was an inside job, or that the moon landing was a hoax. And there are still some hardcore conspiracists of this clearly defined type out there — such as Qanon supporters, who believe Washington is controlled by Satan-worshipping cannibals and pedophiles. But the majority of people I meet who push protrump conspiracy theories are simply repeating vague social media memes about how democrats “stole” the election. In many of these cases, the conspiracism seems more like a posture, a tribal signifier or even a marker of faith.
Of course, conspiracy theories existed long before the rise of the twitterverse. But our social media addiction turbocharges the process by encouraging us to take up dubious positions on little evidence, defend those positions publicly in front of everyone we know as a form of verbal bloodsport and then revert to increasingly far-fetched justifications when the facts get in the way. It’s something to think about the next time you feel like broadcasting your latest angry hot-take before you know the whole story: the path to conspiracism is shorter, and more slippery, than many people think.
MAKING A PUBLIC DECLARATION LESSENS THE LIKELIHOOD WE’LL REVISIT IT IN GOOD FAITH.