Conspiracy in the making: The role of journalistic strategies in the formation of new conspiracy beliefs

Summary

Rohrbach and Valli examine how routine journalistic strategies — the framing, narrative choices, and reporting conventions used in mainstream news coverage — may inadvertently contribute to the formation of new conspiracy beliefs in audiences, rather than merely amplifying pre-existing ones. Published in Journalism Studies, the paper shifts the analytical lens from conspiracy diffusion to conspiracy genesis, arguing that the press itself is implicated in the epistemic conditions that make conspiratorial thinking plausible to readers.

Key Contributions

• Reframes journalism’s role in the conspiracy ecosystem from passive vector of spread to active site of belief formation.
• Bridges journalism studies and the psychology/sociology of conspiracy theories, two literatures that have largely developed separately.
• Identifies specific reporting practices as potential inadvertent drivers of conspiratorial uptake among audiences.

Methods

Methodological specifics are not available from the abstract. The work is positioned as empirical research within journalism studies, examining the link between identifiable journalistic strategies and audience belief outcomes.

Findings

• Detailed findings are not recoverable from the available abstract.
• The central thrust is that certain journalistic strategies are associated with the emergence of new conspiracy beliefs, suggesting that well-intentioned coverage can backfire.

Connections

This paper speaks directly to work on how mainstream media coverage shapes mis- and disinformation environments, including Cazzamatta2026-lo and Hameleers2026-mc on journalistic responses to falsehoods, and Mahl2026-hc on conspiracy theory dynamics. It also complements the strategic-amplification literature represented by Marwick2025-ov and Donovan2025-ws, which examines how attention from legitimate outlets can launder fringe narratives into wider publics.