Shapeshifters and starseeds: Populist knowledge production, generous epistemology, and disinformation on U.s. conspiracy TikTok

Summary

This paper offers an empirical, identity-focused account of “ConspiracyTok”—a TikTok genre devoted to conspiracy theorizing—based on a qualitative content analysis of 202 highly viewed videos from 153 creators. Marwick and colleagues argue that ConspiracyTok is dominated by young, non-White, and/or female creators, overturning the stereotype of the middle-aged White male conspiracy theorist. They theorize this phenomenon as populist knowledge production within a generous epistemology: creators mimic academic and journalistic evidentiary forms (curated visual collections, deep lore, close readings) while rejecting institutional epistemic authority and inviting viewers to “do their own research.” This stance is double-edged—simultaneously functioning as standpoint epistemology that voices legitimate critiques of state violence against marginalized groups, and as a vector for antisemitism, transphobia, and disinformation.

Key Contributions

• First empirical, identity-attentive mapping of conspiracy content on TikTok, documenting a demographic departure from the White-male-conspiracist stereotype.
• Introduces populist knowledge production and generous epistemology as conceptual tools for analyzing how creators legitimize alternative knowledge claims by aesthetically mimicking institutional forms.
• Bridges feminist standpoint epistemology and critical disinformation studies, showing how marginalized epistemologies can both critique injustice and propagate falsehoods.
• Catalogs the genre conventions of ConspiracyTok—curated evidence collection, greenscreen documentary aesthetics, “pillow-Tok” intimacy, deep lore—as memetic features sustaining the genre across ideological divides.
• Extends work on conspirituality by showing it operates as a boundary object linking otherwise dissimilar communities (e.g., Black creators and far-right believers) around shared elite distrust.

Methods

Qualitative content analysis of 202 TikTok videos from 153 unique creators, collected May–September 2022 via triangulated sampling: conspiracy hashtags (#conspiracytok, rabbithole, flatearth, greatawakening, etc.), tracking prolific creators, popular sounds, and two key “stitches.” Two coders applied a pilot-refined codebook capturing perceived identity markers (race, gender, age, politics, aesthetic, setting), types of evidence, and victim/villain framings, supplemented by connotative memos. Engagement metrics were computed for the 156 non-deplatformed videos (mean ~3.67M views). The analytic frame is explicitly critical and feminist, drawing on standpoint epistemology and the sociology of fringe communities.

Findings

• Of 153 creators: ~33% women, ~36% non-White, ~64% in their teens or twenties; overwhelmingly U.S.-based and English-language.
• Black creators frequently signaled Blackness through natural hairstyles, AAVE, and cultural references, suggesting audience-specific address; 25 creators displayed “conspiritual”/bohemian markers linking New Age spirituality to conspiracy.
• Dominant villains: “them/powers that be” (n=33), U.S. government (n=43), science/scientists (n=29), celebrities (n=29). Dominant victims: the “unsuspecting public” (n=63), Americans (n=22), children (n=17), Black artists.
• Evidence was overwhelmingly visual—photos (74), video clips (61), stock/b-roll (38), screenshots of search results (37), illustrations, news screenshots, symbols, maps—with ~53% of videos using a “curated evidence collection” style, often via greenscreen.
• Legitimation strategies included documentary-style aesthetics, deep lore from esoteric texts (Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Icke, Sitchin), close readings of fictional media (predictive programming, “occult splashback”), personal anecdote, and calls to do one’s own research.
• Some videos articulated factually grounded critiques of state violence (MOVE bombing, Operation Paperclip, CIA–crack cocaine), aligning with standpoint epistemology; others reinforced antisemitic, transphobic, or QAnon tropes—often within the same creator’s output.

Connections

This paper fits within a growing critical-disinformation literature that treats falsehood not as individual deficit but as situated, identity-inflected meaning-making—resonating with work on participatory rumoring and online belief communities such as Starbird2025-jj and Prochaska2025-ef, and with platform-genre analyses of misinformation aesthetics like Gardam2025-er. Its attention to who produces and consumes alternative knowledge complements audience- and demographics-focused studies including Budak2024-ef, Gonzalez-Bailon2024-rq, and Mosleh2024-op, while its critique of “do your own research” rhetoric speaks to debates about epistemic authority engaged by Donovan2025-ws and van-der-Linden2026-jt.