All societies have to deal with misfortunes, such as illness and disease. The development of science has facilitated a rational approach to misfortunes by identifying the ‘real’ causes of illness and diseases, and providing effective technologies for controlling them. During the COVID-19 pandemic, rational science explanations were challenged by conspiracy theories, narratives in which such events are the result of malevolent actions of powerful secret groups.
Within weeks of COVID-19 being detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the global scientific community had rapidly and effectively mobilised and responded to the threat. By 12 January 2020, the genetic sequence of the coronavirus was posted online and two weeks later, scientists had used this sequence to develop tests for the new virus and started work on vaccines. By the start of 2021, these vaccines were being approved and offered to vulnerable populations and key workers in most high-income countries.
The rapid scientific response to COVID-19 was accompanied by a strong push-back from conspiracy theorists who attacked scientific knowledge and scientists, and presented alternative narratives in which COVID was a fraud or a weapon. Conspiracy theories were evident in the Global South and North. In Pakistan, an Ipsos survey indicated that a third of respondents believed in COVID conspiracy theories. A June Pew Research Centre survey in the US found that over 70 per cent of Americans had heard of a COVID-19 conspiracy theory, 20 per cent felt there was some truth in such theories and five per cent felt they were definitely true.
These theories were often linked to populist movements. Both left- and right-wing populists share a distrust of established political institutions and of science and research and were receptive to conspiracy theories. Such conspiracy theories have important consequences. They undermine public health measures, for example they are linked to vaccine hesitancy. Experts became targets for conspiracy theorists and were often subject to vitriolic attacks on social media, even threats or actual physical violence.
Given the key role that scientific knowledge plays in contemporary societies, it is puzzling that so many people should question it. There are several factors undermining trust in scientific knowledge:
As Bourdieu, the French anthropologist observes in pre-modern societies, knowledge about causes of illness such as witchcraft and divine retribution are both shared and taken for granted. In contrast, scientific knowledge is fragmented into specialist disciplines and such knowledge is often not understood or shared by lay people who have their own understanding and practical knowledge. In the UK, Home Secretary Suella Braverman attacked experts, juxtaposing the knowledge that emanates from ivory towers with the shared understanding and common sense of ordinary people.
As sociologists such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens argue, in modern societies, individuals are both more vulnerable to and more reliant on science and technology to identify and manage threats such as COVID-19. Such reliance creates ambivalence and even a fear of science and technology. The increasing number of experts means that there is no single authority whose pronouncements can be trusted.
Trust involves a leap of faith in which the unknowable is disregarded or discounted. Social factors influence individuals’ willingness to make such a leap of faith particularly the ways in which individuals identify with social groups. The impact of such factors can be seen in the receptiveness of different groups to official messaging. During the pandemic, ministers supported by experts used televised press conferences to communicate their knowledge about the risks of the new virus and the measures people should take to protect themselves and others. These experts were mainly older white males. Individuals’ receptiveness to such messages was influenced by the extent to which they could identify with such experts. There was clear COVID-vaccine hesitancy among some ethnic minority groups and a contributing factor to such hesitancy was their trust in messages emanating from within their own community rather than official sources.
In several countries, the COVID pandemic coincided with populist social movements. While right-wing movements attracted most attention, such as Trump’s Make America Great Again movement in the USA or Brexit in the UK, there were also left-wing populist movements such as Momentum in the UK and Podemos in Spain. The ideologies underpinning these groups draw on a basic conspiracy theory that society is divided into two distinctive groups, the people on the one hand, and on the other the elite who conspire to deprive the people of their fair share of economic and social benefits. Movements such as QAnon existed before the pandemic. The movement started with assertions that Hillary Clinton was leading an elite cabal of paedophiles and Donald Trump was their saviour. With the onset of the COVID pandemic, populist movements exploited the opportunity to promote anti-establishment conspiracy theories and interest in them grew rapidly. By the end of 2021, QAnon supporters were campaigning against public health measures such as vaccination and mask-wearing, and claiming the pandemic was over and these measures were totalitarian control mechanisms.
While conspiracy theorists often mimic scientific researchers by citing articles published in scientific journals to support their views, in reality their beliefs are not grounded in and are resistant to evidence. Among the many predictions that QAnon made was that there would be a car bomb in London on 18 February 2018. When such predictions fail, they create a cognitive dissonance, a conflict between reality and belief. Such dissonances do not necessarily undermine the movement. Just as in religious cults, many followers give precedence to participation in the movement over other considerations.
Social media played an important role in the spread of such theories by facilitating the development of echo chambers in which conspiracy theorists talked to each other and reinforced their mutual beliefs. Social media has been blamed for the rise of conspiracy theories. The algorithms embedded in media platforms provide links to sites that promote conspiracy theories. But such algorithms do not create preferences; they are responding to them.
The internet provides the medium in which conspiracy theories can develop relatively uncontested. During the COVID pandemic, individuals were often cut off from their normal social networks and sources of reality, and as many experienced increased anxiety and uncertainty, pursuing conspiracies provided a pastime and a way of understanding and managing the danger. Conspiracy theorists adopted the rhetoric of science, claiming to use research to search for the truth – but given the ways in which social media creates communities of like-minded individuals who reinforce each other’s beliefs, such claims were not subject to rigorous scrutiny.
Andy Alaszewski is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent. He is a social scientist who has specialised in the study of health risk and society, and is the Founding Editor of the international journal ‘Health, Risk and Society’.
Managing Risk during the COVID-19 Pandemic by Andy Alaszewski is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £85.99. (£42.99 in our summer sale.)
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