Gwenaëlle Bauvois: “Conspiracy talk in ordinary people’s everyday experiences”
Zgodovina na Špici / History on the Edge
You are kindly invited to the new event of the History on the Edge series, which will take place on Tuesday, 25 March 2025 at 13:00, at the INZ premises or at the ZOOM link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86949706378
The lecture will be given by Gwenaëlle Bauvois, and the title of the lecture is “Conspiracy talk in ordinary people’s everyday experiences”.
The lecture will be held in English.
Conspiracy talk in ordinary people’s everyday experiences
Conspiracy theories have become deeply embedded in our everyday life. Whether or not people ‘believe’ in conspiracy theories, they are exposed to them. This familiarity stems from history, pop culture and, more recently, mainstream media coverage of politicians using conspiratorial rhetoric.
Research on conspiracy theories has mostly focused on public opinion polls – showing that large portions of the population believe in conspiracies – or dedicated conspiracy groups. As a result, we now understand how conspiracy theorists think, argue, and are mobilized by politicians, off and online. However, studying conspiracy theorists or their supporters reveals little about how ordinary people, including those who might even avoid such content, experience conspiracies in their everyday life and how they relate to them.
This study takes a departure from previous research on conspiracies by examining if and how ordinary people engage in ‘conspiracy talk’ in a confidential setting where they are asked about politics, media use, health, work, and personal relationships, but never about conspiracy theories.
This lecture is based on research conducted as part of the ‘American Voices Project’, joint initiative between Stanford and Princeton Universities for which thousands of citizens were interviewed. This paper analyses conspiracy talk that takes place unprompted in these life course interviews for the purpose of addressing how conspiracy culture shapes ordinary people’s everyday experiences.
About the Lecturer
Gwenaëlle Bauvois holds a PhD in Sociology and works as a researcher at the University of Helsinki.
Her research has focused on topics such as conspiracy theories, social media and disinformation, post-truth politics, as well as anti-immigration and anti-gender movements. As part of the Horizon Arenas project (Analysis and Responses to Extremist Narratives), she investigates the spread of extremist narratives, particularly in Finland and France. She co-wrote the gender part of the report Historical roots of extremist narratives in Europe (2024).
Her work has been published internationally, including in Emotions and Society, Sociological Inquiry, and Discourse, Context & Media. She also teaches master’s courses on populist mobilization, media, and polarization at the University of Helsinki.