Abstract:
Conspiracy theories are increasingly understood as a significant feature of world politics. They can fuel radicalization, polarise political discourse, and deepen mistrust in democratic institutions. Yet International Relations scholars have largely overlooked their visual dimension, despite the centrality of images to the way conspiracy theories are provoked, evidenced, and shared. Mobilising an innovative suite of creative and participatory methods, and drawing on interdisciplinary literatures, this project asks: what role do images play in conspiracy theories about world politics? In doing so, it promises insights not just for research on conspiracy theory underway across the academy, where the visual and the global are rarely connected, but also for the ‘visual turn’ in the study of world politics, which has long explored the intersection between popular culture and visuality. That intersection is now loaded with viral images that fire suspicion and drive narratives, a dynamic accelerated by deep fakes and other AI content generation.
Bio:
Dr Tim Aistrope is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations. His research explores the relationship between political culture and world politics, including its aesthetic and embodied dimensions, and the role of imagination. These themes are drawn together in Conspiracy Theory and American Foreign Policy (MUP 2016, 2020), which analyses the relationship between secrecy, power and interpretation after 9/11. His research has also been published in leading journals, including International Studies Quarterly, International Affairs, European Journal of International Relations, and Security Dialogue.
How to join remotely?
Meeting ID: 334 765 145 992 6
Passcode: RS6rb6nn