Conspiracy theories are increasingly present in mainstream American political discourse, from those around Covid-19 to the idea that Democrats conspired to “steal” the election from President Trump. While researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds (psychology, folklore, history, and so forth) have taken up conspiracy theories as an object of study, many contemporary scholars have focused on right-wing conspiracies, such as Stop the Steal (DeCook & Forestal, 2022), QAnon (Bloom & Moskalenko, 2021), and the Great Replacement Theory (Ekman, 2022). Most recently, researchers have interrogated the blurry boundaries between left- and right-leaning conspiracy adherents on topics like anti-vaccination and spirituality (Chia et al., 2021; Griera et al., 2022). A key element of current scholarship on conspiracies is the extent to which social media facilitates their spread (Enders et al., 2021; Theocharis et al., 2021) and/or allows conspiratorial knowledge-production to thrive (Marwick & Partin, 2022).

Although the stereotype of the “conspiracy theorist” is a “white, working-class, middle-aged man” (Drochon, 2018, p. 344) people from all identity groups believe in conspiracies (Bost, 2018). For American communities of color, though, conspiracy theories may be a natural reaction to the invalidation of their embodied experiences (Bogart et al., 2021; Dozono, 2021). The same could be said of other marginalized groups in America, such as queer folks and women (Ngai, 2001). In what ways is “conspiracy-believing” a legitimate response to feeling displaced in the public sphere, and perhaps even an attempt to reconfigure a sense of community and recognition (Parmigiani, 2021)? What might we learn by destigmatizing and rethinking conspiracism? What can researchers learn by examining conspiracies taken up by members of different marginalized groups?

This preconference workshop is a natural, important succession to recent contributions at AoIR on the topic of conspiracy. We build on the 2021 AoIR panel from Allena Chia and others focused on networked conspirituality and the 2022 panel chaired by Alice Marwick on feminist disinformation, but push the boundaries of conspiracy studies beyond extant work, which primarily focuses on the alt-right, health, and Western understandings of conspiracy (Halafoff et al., 2022; Mahl et al., 2022, 2022; Marwick et al., 2022). We thus answer calls to expand understandings of conspiracy beyond Western epistemology (Mahl et al., 2022) to contribute to a fuller conceptualization of “conspiracy-believing” (Parmigiani, 2021).

This workshop, then, explores these questions: _What new avenues of conspiracy are understudied when we prioritize the loudest conspiracy theories? What can we learn from other disciplines studying conspiracy? How do conspiracy theory beliefs stem from embodied experience? What are the boundaries of knowledge-production that we encounter when we demarcate conspiracy from disinformation and from embodied experience?_

Panelists will approach the topic of conspiracy theories from disparate fields of study, including communication, information studies, political science, religion, and African and African American studies; different methodologies; and address such topics as:

• Identity and epistemology on conspiracy TikTok,
• Gaia.com, a streaming video platform that features yoga classes alongside conspiracy content,
• How geopolitical and racial histories undergird particular narrative themes in justifications of ethnonationalist and right-wing discourse in Asian communities, and
• The overlap between conspiracy theory knowledge-production and feminist knowledge-production.

This half-day preconference workshop will be facilitated by Dr. Alice Marwick, Zelly Martin, Dr. Inga Trauthig, and Dr. Samuel Woolley, with presentations by:

- Dr. Alice Marwick (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

- Zelly Martin (University of Texas at Austin)

- Dr. Yvonne Eadon (Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life)

- Dr. Stephen Finley (Louisiana State University)

- Dr. Brooklyne Gipson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

- Dr. Rachel Kuo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

We invite those interested in conspiracy as it applies to epistemology, knowledge production, technological artifacts, gender/race/class, and reception. This might include early career scholars who are delving into the study of conspiracy theories, established scholars interested in new avenues of research on conspiracy, and researchers at any stage interested in diverse approaches to the study of knowledge production. Attendees will be capped at 30 to allow everyone the option to participate in a robust discussion. The workshop will begin with a brief introduction by Dr. Inga Trauthig, followed by panelists’ presentations on working papers on the topic of conspiracy theories, which may include methodological approaches, topical differences, and interdisciplinary approaches (1 hour). The following hour will consist of questions, answers, and discussion between panelists and attendees. In the final hour, we will discuss our ideal output of the workshop—an edited volume about the future of conspiracy theory studies, with opportunities for attendees to be involved. We ask that interested attendees plan for a highly interactive event. We request active participation given the opportunity to be invited to submit to our planned volume on conspiracy theory futures.