What if conspiracy theories were taken to their logical endpoint and put into practice as a form of governance? @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and I explore this question in our new article on the conspiracist theory of power in @cogitatiopag.bsky.social.

www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...

My article on the stakes around mis/disinformation controversies is finally out at @poppublicsphere.bsky.social.
It is the product of my work at @eui-schuman.bsky.social with support from @stephofmann.bsky.social and inspiration from @cip.uw.edu.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My new article with @skarceski.bsky.social and Yuan Hsiao. Can a politician claim disinformation to escape media accountability? We sought to find out.

And here is my favorite figure (which might make more sense in context):

But does it matter who is claiming disinfo, and who is supposedly spreading it? And how does that interact with prior beliefs? We conducted survey experiments in the US and Taiwan, randomly varying the identities of the actors alleging disinformation and those supposedly spreading disinformation.

I have a new article out in Information, Communication, and Society, co-authored with Yuan Hsiao.

People are exposed to various claims about disinformation online, and maybe they believe those claims.
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www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Nominees are all hacks/loyalists or ideologues. Which is worse? I think ideologues, because they will damage an agency beyond what they're ordered to do. McMahon (DOE) is a loyalist. Bondi, like Gaetz--mostly loyalists. Gabbard (DNI) is both--she can (and would probably like to) do real harm.

Americans who take these things for granted will get a taste for what life is like in much of the world, where the state is mostly to be avoided and citizens are left to their own devices.

Most analyses are about the harm to US democracy. All true. But these appointments are also intended to damage the state --the postwar institutions that help protect public health and provide a decent standard of living, and have survived several hostile Republican administrations.