Study Task 2 - Reading and understanding texts

What CONCEPTS is the author trying to communicate?

• Why do we believe conspiracies?
• Test in which studies show the effects of different environments, causing people to believe and come up with their own conspiracies.
• Conspiracies past and present.
• The difference between what conspiracies where, and what they are now.  
• Is everyone a conspiracist?

What are the KEY QUOTES - KEY POINTS?

• “Sometimes, it would seam, buying into a conspiracy is the cognitive equivalent of seeing meaning in randomness.” - [P. 14]

• “We do not live in an age of conspiracy theories and have not for some time.” - Uscinski and Parent , [P.21].

What EXAMPLES are used by the author?

• Joe Uscinski and Joseph Parent ~  Political scientists that did research into the peak time of conspiracies.
• The great fire of Rome.
• The illuminati

Can you find real world EXAMPLES that you feel follow this model of thought?

• Lizard people -  A vast majority of our society believe that shape shifting lizard people run the world.
• The assassination of JFK

How can this theory be related to animation or your theme?

The book is something I hope to base my essay around, I feel it will strongly help aide my investigation into how and why conspiracies are so widely believed. It will relate to animation through the plot’s of several animations that focus on mysteries and conspiracies such as Gravity Falls, Scooby Doo...etc. 

Summery :

To Summarize, there is a mass amount of people that believe in conspiracy, and yes some may have ‘evidence’ to back up their thesis, and I am not here to debunked those ideas. I merely wish to endeavour into the question of why these theories come about. Conspiracies have altered with time, as most things do, but how drastically have they changed? And how have they affected our society to date? These are questions I am excited to research into. If you were to ask most people if they felt they were a conspiracy theorist, their answers would most likely be no, but I disagree, everyone has an ounce of conspiracist in theme, everyone has an opinion.