Ahh this study is good but hits some of the common issues some of my colleagues hold. We focus way too much on "belief", but not as much about how belief actually forms outside a bit of confirmatory bias in creating our own conspiracy typologies that confirm our social views on how they work.
For example I disagree a tid bit with their specific framing of the halo effect here, but it does take place. Instead, what we have with all conspiracies - they all have a "nugget of truth", some event that actually occurred or thing that actually exists. The "conspiracy theory" comes in when we see gaps in information we cannot reason, that, we reason to ourselves to provide a logical conclusion we understand. These sequences are nearly always vulnerable to authority bias expressing since all it needs is an "expert" in that gap, and even basic opinions will be given higher gravity due to the whole-of-context with the situation. The "halo effect" is created through an ingroup dynamic I'll reference below w/r/t key leaders and key influencers, not "experts" ("expert" only goes as far as one holds the person as an expert, then sequentially other factors that impact agreeableness to considering that person an expert or their conclusions as expert conclusions).
External Quote:
The exploration of UFO-related discourse on the X platform unveiled nuanced dynamics in how information, authority, and belief intermingle, painting a multifaceted picture of the engagement with unidentified flying objects within digital spaces. Initially, an overarching preference for emotional persuasion (pathos) over logical argumentation (logos) emerged starkly from the data. The discourse frequently leveraged the authority of scientists or experts without grounding claims in concrete evidence or referencing specific scientific publications. This rhetorical strategy emphasizes emotional engagement over critical scrutiny, with mentions of "research" by cited scientists often lacking transparency or detail, reducing the invocation of "scientist" to a mere appeal to ethos devoid of substantial proof (Walton 2010; Toulmin 2003). Thus, it is clear that essential part of the UFO-related conspiracy theories are utilizing the experts' authority, scientific language, as well as emotional content and questionable evidences of aliens. It should be emphasized that also the strategy of "just asking questions", which often discredit scientific institutions, can be used to spread skepticism but also erodes public confidence in mainstream science. This strategy can bolster in-group cohesion and lead to confirmation bias by framing believers in UFO theories as part of a "truth-seeking" collective. Previous research has highlighted that learning about the strategies of spreading conspiracy theories and their features can result in campaigns and interventions improving the abilities of spotting untrue and unreliable online content (Basol et al. 2020).
This hits an actual dangerous area I see happen all the time with these studies. Simple existence of an actual technique being used,
does not mean the person is intentionally doing it. Influence strategies like that, when termed, are generally things that already exist being explicitly developed upon, not actual "new" creations. These also being things we organically do as humans. In most of these cases, people are not "applying a strategy", they're just discussing very loosely within ingroups that have been socially conditioned to even discuss from these sorts of frames (eg the BAASS leaks if true legitimately showcase them attempting to condition the public to not discuss evidence and instead promote emotive belief sharing).
When we frame this as a "strategy", we make it seem like most of the group we're talking about is applying it as a strategy. That is not true and that will be a misunderstanding that in itself develops its own conditioned beliefs that impact interactions. For example, most people we think are "just asking questions" - ARE LEGITIMATELY SKEPTICAL and have little baseline understanding to understand the topic(s) spoken of critically. Showcasing intent to leverage that manipulatively is an entire extra step beyond pure existence of asking a question.
IMO focusing on "expert" isn't helpful either. "Key Influencer" or "Key Leader" are the frames to use. That is what they are talking too and it's a frame derived from science integrated communication fields. Neither require one to be an expert (KLs tend to be but can not be sometimes), although due to social ingroup dynamics, ingroups will tend to treat their own KIs and KLs as experts, regardless of actual authority or expertise.
External Quote:
Given the pivotal role of expert figures in conferring legitimacy to UFO conspiracy theories, developing strategies to represent scientific consensus and expertise in public discourse accurately is paramount. Initiatives aimed at debunking disinformation and enhancing public engagement with science, such as science communication training for researchers and digital literacy programs, could mitigate the influence of unfounded conspiracy theories. Moreover, examining the psychological and social drivers behind the endorsement of conspiracy theories could inform interventions designed to build resilience against disinformation (Swami et al. 2010; van Prooijen and van Vugt 2018). This multifaceted approach not only addresses the immediate challenges posed by UFO conspiracy theories but also contributes to a broader strategy for fostering a well-informed and skeptical public discourse.
This isn't bad but my colleagues in the industry are still stuck in thinking fact based fact checking or "critical thinking" works. Emotion and attitude will operate over fact (belief) in most cases. This is more of an operational side to influence but you can think of it like a self-regulatory diamond. Belief is at the top; Emotion, Attitude, and Perception are at the middle (with Emotion and Attitude taking the sides), and Behavior being at the bottom. All of these circularly regulate one another, although belief is the hardest to change and target, and is most open to alteration when aligned behavior is at play, though easiest to intentionally alter through emotion and attitude.
This is where I've noted elsewhere, it's important to understand there's two split industries in that regard. The "Counter Malign Influence" industry is new, this mostly includes
not actual experts in influence, deception, or counterinfluence/counterdeception. Generally, these are people that heard the terms, already had misunderstandings of them, then created a private sector field around their understandings.
For example it's insanely common to hear my colleagues degrade PSYOP, frame adversarial activities as "PSYOP', then circularly use that to refuse knowledge derived from counterpropaganda which is a field that has existed for nearly 80 years and contained the earliest antecedents to our own field such as the AMWG. The thing is, none of our adversaries they talk about in this regard use "PSYOP", they have their own concepts, PSYOP as a refined concept is American and a bit British (and even our partners that imported the term do not hold it the same as us!).
Instead actual expert information derived from decades of experience is intentionally ignored and degraded by industry KIs and KLs, predicating it as being the same as the offensive adversarial activities we see (where even for us, most of PSYOP is constructive and cohesive instead of destructive and divisive!) and thus bad and cannot be used to learn from. In turn the same cookie cutter efforts are usually promoted that have remarkedly low cases of success with the actual rooted fields that've existed in refined state for decades, whereas CMI is brand new. This issue is so common in our industry it's very common to see people make up new medical field terms while refusing entire decades of knowledge related to psychology, sociology, communication sciences, etc - for example it's rare but you can find a handful of studies that even reference Continued Influence Effect. You can find many more that talk about how we need things like "information booster shots" because the researchers were surprised to find out fact checks aren't permanent, yet no single reference to CIE.
That point is also the issue with fact checks and also, how we teach "critical thinking" in this context. The issue is, if we're talking eg someone already believing a conspiracy, that is a a tactical or operational effort, not strategic. You can maybe scale it to strategic, but the idea of altering them away from that belief in a counterinfluence context is tactical. "Critical thinking" of course is relevant here, but it works on the strategic level. It helps disrupt and degrade the development, integration, and recirculation of those beliefs among larger social groups (not every person) - ONLY if it is truly taught as critical thinking. If it is termed "critical thinking" but requires resting on someone else's conclusion still, as is common when these sorts of efforts are operationalized, that itself instead is a vulnerability in terms of malign influence. Eg plenty of people can spot Russian MDM now, except, targeting other audiences - people are still horrible at spotting it targeting themselves because they were taught to recognize techniques used against audiences they're not part of.
As an example from the political end, we've spent so many years telling everyone and framing every MDM study about the right wing, that people in left leaning audiences are generally less able to identify MDM targeting themselves. This is because we fail to offer the fact intentional, concerted influence, most of the effort is researching the audience and its vulnerabilities. You're not just creating content for everyone that incidentally happens to work with X. If you take materials from the same campaign
targeting another audience, you're going to condition that person with materials that are not relevant to them. Then, as we see, this circularly induces and reinforces polarizing beliefs that actually degrade critical thinking and social cohesion. It also makes it harder to approach because that new audience believes they are critical thinking but only to the extent someone gives them that identification (for anyone curious also that's where things like Cognitive Warfare comes in vs other terms. Our adversaries absolutely play up that end because it contributes to polarization and the inability to counteract it).
As a bit with the end in where these failure points happen. Scientific communication will not help here! All the audiences that already believe it, take proper scientific studies already, and then conspiracize them due to gaps in information. The issue is the scientists generally already correctly conduct scientific communication. The vulnerable audience there will in turn, offer that the scientists are wrong.
Or two I have seen commonly, a study is "bad" because it doesn't recognize that UAP are real! The issue being those audiences use UAP as a catchall for everything para and not as actually unidentified, and they also will promote studies do this where it's not relevant to the study itself at all, they'd just like to see them confirm the UAP belief. Which, they will take as confirming their belief, even if the article is actually against it. The second is related to that but a more ambiguous in that they'll take everything as self confirmatory and then begin to discredit other information. One I saw recently was people calling out Plasma as potentially being UAP itself! Why? Because "plasmas exhibit hunter-killer behavior" against one another in space. The issue is the person literally just did not understand how plasma and electromagnetism works then refused all like 40 years of understanding explaining why they behave like that.
Here's a good chart from Clint Watts that contains a few of the human factor dynamics that are frequently predominate factors across most "conspiracy theory" categorizations w/r/t belief development and reinforcement. This is one of those areas where speaking to it this complex, it is much better to understand that "conspiracy theories" aren't really a thing outside how we socially frame presentation. At the most we could maybe say they're pieces of MDM that've been integrated into ones worldview, but such is also true with most MDM or else the person wouldn't retain it.
https://clintwatts.substack.com/p/why-does-social-media-lead-us-to
The issue with critical thinking too w/ vulnerable audiences - once you are exposed to this dynamic, if that critical thinking is not in place, these will reign supreme. You cannot teach critical thinking at or past this point as the "Time" objective is misaligned. You need to adjust to strategies and techniques related to belief alteration since you passed the time to build resiliency against it. In fact, if you teach them those fancy sounding resiliency points at or after this dynamic starting, it's very likely to act to reinforce their beliefs since you're not doing anything to prevent them rooting or further developing. Instead they're given new tools and language to confirm their belief and debate with.
