Conspiracy Theories: Public Arguments as Coded Social Critiques: a Rhetorical Analysis of the Twa Flight 800 Conspiracy Theories

Abstract

If we wish to more folly account for how conspiracy theories function in twenty-first century America, then we must be able to move beyond treating conspiracy theories solely as flawed arguments. This essay will argue that conspiracies fulfill two roles—the argumentative role traditionally studied that asserts that some powerful entity is engaged in a grand scheme to control or deceive the masses, and what I shall call the coded social critique role-an underlying message that critiques various social, political, or economic institutions and actors. In other words, the point of dispute in the competing theories and government accounts is equally over the different institutions' ethos and legitimacy as it is over the facts of the crash itself.