Is the Internet driving a new age of conspiracy theory?

As I argue in my book American Conspiracy Theories—co-written with Joseph M. Parent—it is not clear that beliefs in conspiracy theories are increasing. While one conspiracy theory is not representative of the whole, consider for example belief in Kennedy assassination theories. Immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy, polls showed that belief in a conspiracy to kill the president was a majority belief; in the decades that followed as many as 80 percent of Americans believed there was a conspiracy rather than a lone gunman. None of this required the internet.

If the internet increases conspiratorial thinking, we would have expected the internet age to bring with it an uptick in people believing JFK assassination conspiracy theories or at least to have maintained belief around 80 percent. But since the roll-out of the internet in the 1990s, belief in JFK assassination conspiracy theories has declined about 20 points. Yes, the assassination has become more distant in our collective past, but there continues to be no shortage of talk about Kennedy conspiracy theories on the internet or in more traditional media to keep it alive. Belief is down regardless.

Kennedy assassination theories are just one small slice of the conspiracy theory pie, but conspiracy beliefs writ large don’t show much evidence of having gone up as the internet made its way into everyone’s home.