Call for submission | Popular Culture and Conspiracism

2026-10-16

Kinephanos

Call for submission | Popular Culture and Conspiracism

Editors : Megan Bédard, Roxanne Chartrand and Louis-Paul Willis

 

At a time when conspiracy theories seem to be infiltrating every sphere of social discourse, this issue of Kinephanos sets out to explore the overlaps between popular culture and conspiracism. While “conspiracy theories” is more commonly used, we prefer the term “conspiracism” to refer to the larger concept of conspiracy theorizing as a way to look at and interpret historical and cultural events. The term is derived from the French concept of “conspirationnisme” which connotes the active process of interpretation rather than the end result (i.e. the conspiracy theory itself). Massively popular works such as The Da Vinci Code (Brown, 2003; Howard, 2006) or The X-Files (Carter, 1993–2002) draw on the logic of conspiracy to construct their narratives. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories draw their metaphors from works of popular culture to convey their messages, such as the red pill taken from The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999). Furthermore, participatory popular culture has seen its share of conspiracy-minded episodes in recent years, often when headcanons and significations produced by a fandom are put to the test of reality: consider, for example, the theories about Taylor Swift’s sexual orientation or the JohnLock phenomenon (Christensen and Jensen, 2018). These phenomena stem from the rich interpretive practices of fans who rethink, extend, and transform popular fictional universes through the (over)interpretation of clues both within and outside the work. Thus, headcanons and fanfictions can give rise to harassment campaigns, as in the case of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom (Drouin, 2021). Conversely, some conspiracy practices such as the QAnon movement have given rise to the concept of “dark participation” (Quandt and Klapproth, 2023), in reference to the concept of “participatory culture” proposed by Henry Jenkins (1992). These considerations compel us to examine the boundaries between legitimate popular practices (or those legitimized by academic research) and practices deemed extreme, conspiratorial, or pathological.

More specifically, this issue proposes to consider conspiracy theorizing as a form of popular culture as defined by John Fiske (1989a, 1989b)—that is, a process of creating and circulating meanings that brings pleasure and a sense of empowerment. For Fiske, popular culture must above all be relevant to people's immediate daily lives. This relevance, however, is contingent upon a system of power within which the people “struggle”; the pleasure of resistance arises only because it opposes a dominant ideology (1989a: 29). “There can be no popular dominant culture, for popular culture is formed always in reaction to, and never as part of, the forces of domination” (1989a: 35). Like conspiracy theories—that is, the construction of overarching narratives that assert that the course of history is orchestrated by the secret actions of a group of individuals rather than the result of uncertain human actions (Taïeb, n.d.)—the practices of popular culture are always situated in a position of resistance and marginality.

The intersections between popular culture and conspiracism manifest themselves in several ways.

1. The Aspects of Participatory Culture

The term “dark participation” highlights the parallels between popular culture and conspiracy theories, particularly the importance of its social dimension, although the concept has been heavily criticized for its tendency to rank “good” and “bad” participatory practices (Quandt and Klapproth, 2023). Analogies between fan practices and conspiracy theorizing abound. First, there is a tendency to pathologize individuals involved in conspiracy movements, which echoes Jenkins’s critique of the pathologization of fans in the 1980s (1992; Bédard, 2023). Furthermore, conspiracy groups also organize themselves socially and economically, particularly during conventions or other gatherings. As with fans, social practices are intrinsically linked to modes of interpretation specific to a community. The tools developed by cultural studies—particularly fan studies—thus become relevant for analyzing and better understanding what motivates people to join conspiracy movements.

 

2. The influence of the web’s affordances and the interplay between fiction and reality

This participatory culture is amplified by the affordances of social media, the use of which facilitates social organization and the viral spread of content (whether popular or conspiracy-based). The transmedia consumption of popular culture further encourages this participatory culture through the creation of augmented reality games (ARGs) that extend the experience of the work beyond the boundaries of its original medium. Other popular phenomena, such as creepypasta or urban legends (like “backrooms” or the legend of Polybius), playfully blur the line between fiction and reality; their narratives become increasingly complex through interpretations, creative experiments, and in-depth online investigations. The anonymity provided by certain online platforms (Reddit, 4chan, Tumblr, and many others) also facilitates LARP (live-action role-playing), a practice which has given rise to conspiracy theories such as PizzaGate and QAnon. These games, which straddle the line between fiction and reality, have been at the heart of popular culture itself since the dawn of industrialized culture: consider the embedded narratives in literature (Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Shelley, 1818), or reality TV productions that present, in documentary or dramatized form, “true stories ” (Dragnet, In Search Of… or Unsolved Mysteries) and the mockumentary genre in film and television. Finally, alternate-history and science-fiction narratives construct counterfactual versions of our history by looking back in time (The Man in the High Castle, Dick, 1962) or projecting into the near future. What pleasures and feelings of empowerment do these fictional rewritings of reality produce?

 

3. The Dynamics of Cultural Recycling

As the quintessential form of contemporary popular culture, cultural recycling relies on the mobilization of a shared body of works that is reused and reinterpreted for profit by cultural industries. Recent conspiracy theories follow a similar logic when they draw on the tropes and themes of popular culture (good vs. evil, heroic narratives, etc.). When popular images and narrative styles shape how we perceive the world and influence the construction of reality, they facilitate the spread of conspiracy theories. When the construction of a conspiracy narrative draws on popular images and narrative styles, the spread of such discourse is facilitated by prior exposure to works that provide shared cultural references and contribute to the formation of the subject’s identity. These conspiracy theories incorporate elements of popular fiction into their construction of reality, such as the metaphor of the blue and red pills borrowed from the world of The Matrix. A distinctive feature of the QAnon movement is that it incorporates into its construction of reality virtually all the conspiracy theories that preceded it, drawing on this past imagery to encourage user participation—a strategy that mirrors the widespread trend of contemporary cultural recycling (Jenkins, 2006).

 

4. The Political Dimension of Semiotic Practices of Resistance

Finally, both popular culture and conspiracy theories rely on interpretive practices that do not conform to academic norms (Jenkins, 1992) and that are necessarily resistant to the dominant power structure (Fiske, 1989a). However, not all resistance is necessarily progressive. There exists a reactionary popular culture that draws on the inherently populist dimension of its position on the spectrum of political engagement. Conspiracy theories follow a similar logic that is intensifying and intertwining with other elements of contemporary culture at a time when all cultural content is inevitably embedded within an ideological war (from “woke” to MAGA). What forms does popular resistance now take within this political polarization? Conversely, political movements themselves tend to adopt the practices of participatory culture—through the sale of merchandise, the organization of social events, and the creation of narratives to justify a politician’s actions.

 

List of potential topics:

  • Case studies of fandoms that veer into conspiracy theories

  • What conspiracy movements borrow from fandoms and participatory culture

  • Participatory culture surrounding political movements

  • Depictions of conspiracy theories in works of popular culture

  • The appropriation of popular culture works in conspiracy theories

  • Multimedia works or ARGs

  • Urban legends and creepypasta

 

Deadline for submitting proposals: January 15, 2027

Please submit an abstract of no more than 400 words for your proposed article via the Kinephanos journal’s OJS platform: https://ojs.kinephanos.ca/index.php/revue/en/submission