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How Memes and Network Models Can Help Us Understand Conspiracy Theories | Technology Networks

The world is ruled by shape-shifting lizards, landing on the moon was fake, and a UFO crashed in Roswell. Where do conspiracy theories originate from? Prof. Włodzisław Duch from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics of the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) has decided to examine the process of their development in the brain. An article dealing with this issue has just been published in a prestigious journal “Patterns” (Cell Press).

The multitude of conspiracy theories people believe in all over the world is astonishing. They actually accompany each significant event: a catastrophe, assassination, death of a famous person or, currently, the Covid-19 pandemic. Because the formation of a distorted image of reality is so widespread this topic has been dealt with by numerous scientists. Various studies, articles and books using psychological, sociological, political science, or anthropological approaches have been published. However, the presumed conspiracy theories mechanism is still a matter of speculations because the problem is scarcely researched by specialists in natural science.

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Source: How Memes and Network Models Can Help Us Understand Conspiracy Theories | Technology Networks