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      Antisemitic conspiracy fantasy in the age of digital media: Three ‘conspiracy theorists’ and their YouTube audiences

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          Abstract

          Conspiracy fantasy or – to use the more common but less accurately descriptive term – ‘conspiracy theory’ is an enduring genre of discourse historically associated with authoritarian political movements. This article presents a literature review of research on conspiracy fantasy as well as two empirical studies of YouTube videos by three leading conspiracy fantasists. Two of these fantasists have been linked to the far right, while one maintains connections to figures on the far right and the far left. The first study employs content analysis of the 10 most popular videos uploaded by each of the three, and the second employs corpus analysis of keywords in comments posted on all videos uploaded by the three fantasists. Jewish-related entities such as Israel, Zionists and the Rothschild family are found to be among the entities most frequently accused of conspiracy in the videos. Conspiracy accusations against other Western nations (especially the United States and the United Kingdom), as well as their leaders and their media, were also common. Jewish-related lexical items such as ‘Zionist’, ‘Zionists’, ‘Rothschild’ and ‘Jews’ are found to be mentioned with disproportionate frequency in user comments. These findings would appear to reflect the conspiracy fantasy genre’s continuing proximity to its roots in the European antisemitic tradition and add weight to existing findings suggesting that the active YouTube audience responds to latently antisemitic content with more explicitly antisemitic comments.

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            The new statistics: why and how.

            We need to make substantial changes to how we conduct research. First, in response to heightened concern that our published research literature is incomplete and untrustworthy, we need new requirements to ensure research integrity. These include prespecification of studies whenever possible, avoidance of selection and other inappropriate data-analytic practices, complete reporting, and encouragement of replication. Second, in response to renewed recognition of the severe flaws of null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST), we need to shift from reliance on NHST to estimation and other preferred techniques. The new statistics refers to recommended practices, including estimation based on effect sizes, confidence intervals, and meta-analysis. The techniques are not new, but adopting them widely would be new for many researchers, as well as highly beneficial. This article explains why the new statistics are important and offers guidance for their use. It describes an eight-step new-statistics strategy for research with integrity, which starts with formulation of research questions in estimation terms, has no place for NHST, and is aimed at building a cumulative quantitative discipline.
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              Is Open Access

              The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination Intentions

              The current studies investigated the potential impact of anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs, and exposure to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, on vaccination intentions. In Study 1, British parents completed a questionnaire measuring beliefs in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and the likelihood that they would have a fictitious child vaccinated. Results revealed a significant negative relationship between anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intentions. This effect was mediated by the perceived dangers of vaccines, and feelings of powerlessness, disillusionment and mistrust in authorities. In Study 2, participants were exposed to information that either supported or refuted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, or a control condition. Results revealed that participants who had been exposed to material supporting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories showed less intention to vaccinate than those in the anti-conspiracy condition or controls. This effect was mediated by the same variables as in Study 1. These findings point to the potentially detrimental consequences of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and highlight their potential role in shaping health-related behaviors.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (View ORCID Profile)
                (View ORCID Profile)
                Journal
                Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics
                Language and Literature
                SAGE Publications
                0963-9470
                1461-7293
                February 2021
                December 27 2020
                February 2021
                : 30
                : 1
                : 78-102
                Affiliations
                [1 ]King's College London, UK
                [2 ]University of Manchester, UK
                [3 ]University of Oxford, UK
                Article
                10.1177/0963947020971997
                06c96b27-1197-40b3-802b-78afb2a5e688
                © 2021

                http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license

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