This essay will discuss about the research question are conspiracy theories for real? This research question is kind of confusing and requires a lot of research . So what exactly is a conspiracy theory? A conspiracy theory can be defined as a research by someone or a group of people on an incident happening or may have happened long time ago. It is not always formed out of interest but there may be an evil mind behind creation of one.  Some actual conspiracies are much grander. However right it may seem it has some so called “grudges” related to it, For example there are a lot of things that need to be enquired about as to why that happened and what is the history behind it, this is where a conspiracy comes into play as there may be an organization or a specific individual who might be sp interested in that specific thing that he may be focus on that and only that thing. People are like books so whatever you feed them with they would believe it to be true and believe in that truth or lie unconditionally. It is true to say that it is very difficult to change somebody’s view on a thing that they know of. For example, there has been a lot of conspiracies related to the NASA’S APOLLO 11 mission. There was a conspiracy that the shuttle did not land on the moon but instead circled around it and came back to earth. Thus the way the conspiracy was presented to support that the mission was a hoax created a lot of confusion but what was more surprising that the portion of people against the mission was more than people who supported the mission. It is only and only conspiracies that make people have different perceptions or thoughts on specific incidents. All this discussion takes me to my research question “are conspiracy theories actually beneficial for a nation?”. Though some might support this statement and some might not but it is debatable and a very interesting question as conspiracies may have a different affect on the nation depending on the nature and the type of the incident. Some people don’t really get why conspiracies do take place in the first place. It is natural that there is always a flip side to a story which brings to light different views which we might not have even imagined of while reading the story and this is how people fall in the traps of these theories by actually believing in them without actually realizing that is actually not a flip side but actually someone’s well researched view on the same topic which we know of. By this I don’t mean that all these theories are a hoax but not every theory is true. The sources mentioned ahead would give a better understanding of my research question as well as of my topic.

So far, many psychological studies on conspiracy theories have confined themselves to a simple—yet often misleading: The assumption that a clear distinction between an official truth and delusive idiosyncratic explanations can be made, and that supporters of conspiracy theories must hence be considered as individuals who have lost touch with reality and are in need for clear-cut explanations. Through this article the author seems to want to bring out the real truth about the conspiracies or what is the methodology behind these theories. The author seems to prove his point quite well by using appropriate example of the 9/11 incident and the Nasa’s moon landing mission. Not only does he prove his point on these theories but also states his own specific point or views which shows that the author is quite confident of his statement. The author conducts a questionnaire and conducts various studies to find out the views and the feelings of other people and records them to find out the real answer and thus states that conspiracy theories share some kind of cognitive or emotional disposition. The author makes use of heavy statistical data to prove his point, he conducts various tests, samples, questionnaires to find out how people feel about these theories. He studies the behavior and the actions of the people on these theories and then states the result and then compiles the data to make it result which clearly the effect of these theories. Both options would be discomforting. However, we must not neglect the fact of the harmful potential these theories bear. Considering them as an omnipresent and—in principle—benign psychological phenomenon helps us to explore why some people fall for extreme conspiratorial constructs of ideas which might lead to xenophobic or even racist arguments.

A government arms the nation's most prominent skyscrapers with explosives and directs passenger planes right into these buildings: taken at face value, such an evil scenario seems completely off-wall. This challenge has multiple theoretical as well as methodological aspects: how and why does the presence of quite extreme information influences the processes of opinion formation? Well the author does have the answer to all the questions that may arise in an ongoing conspiracy that is the opinion formation. This challenge has multiple theoretical as well as methodological aspects: how and why does the presence of quite extreme information influences the processes of opinion formation? The analysis of documents like websites and books is appealing, but still has also clear limitations, as we cannot take for granted that these published theories are representative for the stories the majority of people would adopt. Millions of people around the globe create, compile, process, discuss, and reproduce conspiracy theories not only on internet platforms, private websites or blogs, but also in personal communication, which is hard to assess in research. We assume these people to be active information seekers who construct views on important events that match their beliefs and values; and whose beliefs are in turn influenced by information. Here, we suggest the method of narrative construction as a new means to explore the multi-facet phenomenon of conspiracy theories. It allows an individual to construct a story for a given event (e.g., the terrorist attacks of 9/11) by selecting and compiling pieces of information related to this event from different content categories. By doing so, we can assess how much conspiracy an individual assumes to be at work concerning the event; without compelling the researcher to define what a “true” story looks like. In this article the author conducts tests on people to find out the results of the conspiracies on the people. According to the author people construct a plausible explanation for an important event by integrating all pieces of information available, even if this information implies a huge conspiracy. According to the article the author examines the effect of conspiracies by conducting experiments on people to complete his research. So it can therefore be said that the information used and presented is credible as this source is not that old and the sources as well as the concepts used by the author assures the reader about the credibility of the author as well as his article. 

Conspiracy theories (CTs) can take many forms and vary widely in popularity, the intensity with which they are believed and their effects on individual and collective behavior. An integrated account of CTs thus needs to explain how they come to appeal to potential believers, how they spread from one person to the next via communication, and how they motivate collective action.  CTs are quasi-religious representations in that their contents, forms and functions parallel those found in beliefs of institutionalized religions. However, CTs are quasi-religious in that CTs and the communities that support them, lack many of the institutional features of organized religions. The use of use social representations theory to explain how CTs spread as devices for making sense of sudden events that threaten existing worldviews.  An “ideal type” of a CT may possess all of the quasi-religious qualities to a significant degree of complexity and depth, whilst specific instances diverge in different ways. Through this article the author seems to portray other instances that are related to the effects of the conspiracy theories which leaves the reader amused as the way he describes and the kind of examples he uses to portray the effects are just perfect. Though the point can be understood just by reading the headline it can also be learnt through the example used by the author. This article was published in 2013 which proves that the article’s not old enough and could further be used for research purposes as well which shows that there are many other ways which influence the people to write these conspiracies and people believing in them. Thus, it can be learnt that quasi- religiousness also can be uses to investigate the effect of conspiracies on the public.

According to the article the author explains how bad the effects of a conspiracy can have on people as she takes the example of the 9/11 incident. She mentions that there is still a major portion of population that think that this incident was all planned by the government just because they read it somewhere on the web with a little amount of proof which that too is a lie. According to the author’s research the more the people who are involved in keeping a plot secret, the higher the odds it will be unmasked eventually. According to the author “Conspiracy theorists tend to be more pessimistic about the near future, fearful of government, less trusting of other people in their lives and more likely to engage in actions due to their fears, such as purchasing a gun”. Thus the suspicion of the government and conspiracy theories does not correspond with skepticism about everything. Based on the research done by the author and the reputation of the publisher it can be concluded that this article is credible and correct with all sorts of information. This article was published in 2016 which shows that this article is not old and can be used for further research purposes.

According to this article the author discusses about the conspiracy related to the spread of Ebola virus. He mentions that there was an article that was published which mentioned that Ebola virus was not a disease but instead a biological weapon that was designed to depopulate the planet. And the irony was that there were still a portion of population that believed this article to be true. The sad part is that people believe everything that they see with minor facts and believe it to be true, agreed that it is the human nature and nobody can change it and this is what happens when there’s not much information about a particular incident and that is when people start searching information regarding the same and then open their views about it to the whole world. It is not what people think that makes a difference but what people make of it that really does.

According to this article it pertains to the assassination of president John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. It’s been 64 years since the death and it still remains a conspiracy as to what exactly happened during that time. It is assumed that the killing was planned by a set of people long time ago and it is also said that the main lead Lee Harvey Oswald who fired the shots had been pinning on Kennedy for a long time and just waited for the correct time to just do it. Though the case involved a lot of leads it took 6 years to pin the killer down and until now it has been seen that no final decision has yet been made against the real conspiracy. Even a movie was made to portray the killing and the court arriving to a decision and lee Harvey Donald being sentenced to death. This conspiracy has been considered important in the American history as it shocked whole America when the president was killed. The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, though none of these has been proven. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed. However, later studies, including one by the National Academy of Sciences, have called into question the accuracy of the evidence used by the HSCA to support its finding of four shots. This article was published by THE TELEGRAPH which shows the credibility of this article and the source. This article was published in 2014 which shows that it could be used for future purposes.

This article portrays how nasa faked the moon landing mission. It has been a long time since this mission was first completed and the truth hasn’t come to light since then. The author discusses various situations that took place and astronauts sharing their experiences of the mission. The author even shows the photos taken by the astronauts and shows where it all went wrong. There have been a lot of conspiracies since then and people seem to be ignorant about the real truth and just want to believe what they think is right and express it which is not all wrong because they have the right to express their views after all, that is what we call a conspiracy. People  nowadays seem to be more interested in the conspiracies ignoring the truth behind the case. The author discusses both sides of the case evenly. He first discusses what the astronauts and the engineers experiences behind the mission and then discusses his views. But when taken a close look at people would realize that the author is actually right, that is the mission actually seems to be hoax. The author takes into reference various facts and figures that support his claim.  Now the whole question is who do we believe in? well, that is something to think about after all it is just a conspiracy. This article was published by PSYCHOLOGY TODAY which shows the credibility of the source as well as the article. The kind of sources used by the author and the scientific facts used by the author shows that the author researched thoroughly before he wrote this  article which shows that this article is all true.

According to this article it pertains to all the conspiracies related to the pop culture and various things related to it. In this article  it can be seen that various pop artists and singers who are alive or are not have conspiracies related to them. These days, pop-culture obsessives are quick to cook up conspiracies anytime a celebrity dies, changes her appearance, or even stands next to a triangle, and ideas can now be passed from the edges of sanity to your Facebook feed in a matter of minutes, converting more of the easily influenced into paranoid believers. Not to say that pop-culture conspiracies live only in the present — they are often most delicious when they reach back in time, even way back in time, to propose we consider, say, whether it was George Lucas who actually directed Return of the Jedi (which was, you have to admit, worse than Empire) or whether it was actually Emily Brontë’s brother who wrote Wuthering Heights. Not only this but the most shocking thing that can be seen in this article is that the amount of information and the sources used to make its claim. From BEATLES never existing to PAUL MCCARTNEY being dead, this article shows how deep a conspiracy can be and how people actually believe these conspiracies. All of this can be seen in this article. This article was published by the Vulture magazine which is quite famous for its stories with the Hollywood entertainment sector. This article was published in 2016 which shows that the conspiracies pertaining to the pop culture still play an important role in determining what is true and what is not.

This essay required a lot of attention and hard work as researching about this topic was really hard and it almost took a piece of my life but I am happy that I was able to complete this. Though this topic actually fascinates me as I really like researching about these topics. Each source has a deep meaning and is associated to the research question as well as to the topic. To conclude conspiracy theories are much more than what they really are.
