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Michael Gentile: Spatial perspectives on disinformation and conspiracy belief

Előadó: Michael Gentile, Professor of human geography, Department of sociology and human geography, University of Oslo

After having spent decades in the academic penumbra, and as a result of a series of political shocks in the mid-2010s (Brexit and Trump), over the past few years conspiracy theories have come to the center of attention within the social sciences. Sensing that my own discipline of human geography could have something to contribute, in the first part of the lecture I will develop a novel conceptual framework for the analysis of conspiracy theories and conspiracy belief from a spatial or geographical perspective. This will serve as a point of departure for the subsequent empirical exploration of conspiracy belief based on a case study conducted in Mariupol, Ukraine, in 2020.