ABSTRACT

In this paper we bring together media logics, affordances and affect theory to ask how conspiracy theory moves through WhatsApp groups and moves people through their encounters with these contents towards ‘conspiracy thinking’. Firstly, we draw upon media logic theory to examine the extent to which WhatsApp’s architecture, design and technical functions ‘steer’ users’ towards particular communication and behaviours. Second, we use affordance theory to examine how communities incorporate platform affordances into their tactics to resist, subvert or circumvent institutional power. Finally, we use theories of affect to understand whether the shared emotions and intensities that arise through encounters between digital environments and bodies of users drive experiences that bypass human cognition and representation to create ‘affective atmospheres’. We apply this integrated framework to ask whether WhatsApp’s closed infrastructure, end-to-end encryption and social features such as ‘Groups’ and the ‘forward’ button – with the embodied practices of users – shape affective environments which normalize conspiracy thinking.

摘要

在本文中，我们将媒体逻辑、可供性和影响理论结合起来，探讨阴谋论如何在 WhatsApp 群体中传播，并促使人们通过与这些内容的接触走向“阴谋思维”。首先，我们利用媒体逻辑理论来检验 WhatsApp 的架构、设计和技术功能在多大程度上“引导”用户进行特定的交流和行为。其次，我们使用可供性理论来研究社区如何将平台可供性纳入其抵制、颠覆或规避制度权力的策略。最后，我们使用情感理论来了解通过数字环境和用户身体之间的相遇而产生的共享情绪和强度是否会驱动绕过人类认知和表征的体验来创造“情感氛围”。