Conspiracy Narratives and Violence Legitimation

: (Alternative Format Thesis)

Abstract

Conspiracy narratives can spur to violence and have been associated with hate and aggression towards minorities, as well as terrorist attacks. With conspiracy narratives becoming increasingly mainstream, there is thus a need to examine the link between conspiracy narratives and violent acts. However, not all conspiracy narratives are associated with violence, and experimental and correlational evidence of conspiracy belief and violent intention remains weak. In this thesis I argue that conspiracy belief does not inherently predispose to violence, contextualising conspiracy narratives as multifaceted narratives that can activate and engage social-psychological processes of violence legitimation, thus lowering thresholds to engage both in affective and targeted violence. This approach contributes to a multidisciplinary understanding of risk factors for engaging in violence, examining pathways of psychological needs (Chapter 2), emotion (Chapter 3), and group norms (Chapter 4) that can spur to action in a variety of contexts, from individual level violence to violent collective action and violent extremist radicalisation pathways.
Chapter 2 examines how conspiracy-oriented videos on YouTube engage psychological needs of existential threat, cognitive closure, and social needs. In this chapter, I highlight how influencers engage psychological needs to sustain audience engagement, connect conspiracy narratives, and encourage viewers to move to alternative, unmoderated platforms. This chapter is the first to validate a model of conspiracy belief in ecologically valid data and highlights how conspiracy narratives (and those who spread them) captivate audiences with promises of belonging, cognitive closure, and validation of adverse life experiences.
Chapter 3 compares how Parler posts discussing conspiracy narratives with varying associations to offline violence express emotions of anger, contempt, and disgust. This chapter is novel in its comparative approach between conspiracy narratives, revealing that narratives associated with violence express significantly higher levels of anger, contempt, and disgust more than narratives associated with little or no offline violence.
Chapter 4 comprises a case study of Tommy Robinson’s Telegram channel during the 2024 riots in the UK following the Southport attack on a children’s dance class. I examine how rhetorical construction of ingroup and outgroup characteristics, as well as the use of conspiracy narratives legitimises and necessitates the use of violence during the riots.
Methodologically, the empirical chapters in this thesis are some of the first research studies to examine psychological drivers of conspiracy belief and violence legitimation in an online context. All three chapters utilise online data from mainstream (Chapter 2) and alternative online platforms (Chapter 3, Chapter 4) and consider platform affordances and dynamics of online communities thus highlighting the prevalence of risk factors across mainstream and fringe platforms.
Overall, this thesis contributes to the literature on violence and conspiracy narratives through establishing conspiracy narratives as rhetorical enablers of mechanisms associated with violence legitimation, as well as by employing ecologically valid digital trace methodologies across mainstream and alternative platforms. Therefore, this thesis contributes novel theoretical insights with direct implications for preventing and countering violence and extremism in increasingly complex and connected online ecosystems.

Date of Award	25 Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Brittany Davidson (Supervisor) & Lukasz Piwek (Supervisor)