[Feature: Social Media and Society] Masayuki Karasudani: Conspiracy Theories and SNS

The term "conspiracy theory" has become a common phrase lately. I suspect quite a few people reading this text share that feeling.

A conspiracy theory refers to a way of thinking that attributes the causes of problems occurring in the world to someone's conspiracy without sufficient evidence.

The author's interest in the problem of conspiracy theories was sparked by the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. This January 6th attack was triggered by Trump supporters who believed in the "stolen election conspiracy theory." This theory claimed that although Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election, the Democratic Biden camp "stole the election" through fraudulent means. Trump continued to incite this conspiracy theory relentlessly, instigating his supporters and leading to the attack. It was an event that left a strong impression of how politically weaponized conspiracy theories can possess enough power to potentially destroy democratic politics.

Since then, the author has remained interested in the influence that conspiracy theories exert on modern democratic politics. In 2024, I published a translation of American journalist Mike Rothschild's The Storm is Upon Us, titled "Why Conspiracy Theories are Born: QAnon and Social Media" (co-translated with Amiko Nobori, Keio University Press), and in June of this year, I published "The Conspiracy Theory Next Door" (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho).

Initially, the author's interest was focused solely on Trump's conspiracy theory politics, with almost no interest in Japanese conspiracy theories. However, since around last year in Japan, cases have begun to appear where conspiracy theories spreading on SNS (Social Networking Services) have started to influence politics. It can be said that clarifying how conspiracy theories are entering Japanese democratic politics is now an urgent task.

Therefore, in this short essay, I would like to point out that the "normalization of conspiracy theories" has begun to progress in Japan, with an increasing number of people awakening to the "pleasure of conspiracy theories," and that the "radicalization of conspiracy theorists" will become an important research topic for the future.

While conspiracy theories are harmful disinformation, they fascinate people and create followers. For this reason, conspiracy theories are feared by people in modern society, and the term "conspiracy theorist" functions as a kind of stigma (negative label).

It is said that it is difficult to imagine any human group throughout history that is unrelated to conspiracy-minded thinking, but the existence of SNS is undoubtedly a major factor behind why conspiracy theories have come to be recognized as a "malady of modern society." As the spread of SNS pushed forward the "normalization of conspiracy theories," their influence began to grow.

The normalization of conspiracy theories here refers to a situation where conspiracy theories are continuously born 24 hours a day within conspiracy theory communities on SNS. The spread of SNS has brought about an era where anyone can easily become an information sender, and conspiracy theories that could once only be known through niche magazines or movies now flow into SNS timelines without one even realizing it. Access to conspiracy theories has become easy, and the speed of dissemination has become incomparably faster.

However, it is not just the ease of access and speed of dissemination that have changed. Important changes have also occurred in the production process of conspiracy theories. Even today, conspiracy theories tend to be told as the "truth" that the media does not report after incidents or events that leave deep psychological scars on people, such as assassinations, terrorism, wars, conflicts, natural disasters, or major accidents.

But conspiracy theories in the SNS era no longer need to wait for an incident to occur. As in the case discussed in the next section, if someone tweets a thought they had while watching the news on SNS and it goes viral, a new conspiracy theory is born just like that. We are now living in an era where conspiracy theories multiply infinitely through daily posts on SNS, without waiting for the occurrence of extraordinary events.

The normalization of conspiracy theories brought by the SNS era has begun to produce people who awaken to conspiracy theories one after another. SNS is truly a conspiracy theory awakening device.

The pleasure of conspiracy theories refers to the sense of superiority and intellectual gratification that comes from knowing the "truth" of a hidden conspiracy that many people do not know. To those who have awakened to the pleasure of conspiracy theories, everything in the universe appears as a message suggesting a hidden conspiracy. They begin to find pleasure in detecting hidden connections between seemingly unrelated things and exposing the conspiracies hidden behind them.

Let's look at one specific example. At the end of August this year, JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency), which was trying to promote exchange projects with Africa, was suspected and criticized by internet users for allegedly trying to push forward a project to accept immigrants from Africa without explaining it to the public, leading to an uproar that included a demonstration calling for the dissolution of JICA. After this uproar, the following post by a certain X user*1 hit over 20 million impressions within a few days.

It's so scary that emergency contraceptives are being sold after we were told that immigrants will increase from now on.

This post linked the news that a Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare committee had relaxed regulations on the use of emergency contraceptives (contraceptives taken within 72 hours after sexual intercourse) to prevent "unintended pregnancies" in women and approved their sale as over-the-counter drugs with the JICA uproar.

In the reply section of the post, comments agreeing with the post were written, such as "Is it like, if you get raped by an immigrant, just take this for now??" "A notice from the government saying 'please accept sexual violence ♪'" "Young women will be raped left and right" "AIDS is likely to increase too" "They never sold it resolutely until now, the government is gross."

The number of impressions for the post reached 23.19 million, and the number of "likes" reached 230,000. Among the people who empathized with this post, the fact that they were connecting completely unrelated "dots" was never seen as a problem. Rather, for them, the value lay in the fact that the hidden, ugly intentions of the Japanese government (offering young Japanese women to lawless immigrants to obtain cheap labor) had been exposed. Conspiracy theorists find supreme joy in detecting hidden evil plots (which are actually just delusions) that many people have not noticed.

Today, as the normalization of conspiracy theories progresses and more people begin to awaken to the pleasure of conspiracy theories, the radicalization of conspiracy theorists is of particular concern.

In recent years, indiscriminate murder cases motivated by a conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement (GR) have occurred frequently in the West. GR is a way of thinking that warns that the superior status of white people is being taken away due to an increase in immigrants and a declining birthrate. It is a conspiracy theory claiming that the increase in immigrants is being carried out through an intentional conspiracy to "replace" the status of white people.

The most well-known example is the indiscriminate mass shooting that occurred in March 2019 at a mosque in Christchurch, southern New Zealand, targeting Muslims. The perpetrator of this incident, which left 51 people dead, was Brenton Tarrant, an Australian who was 28 years old at the time.

According to Cathrine Thorleifsson and Joey Düker, four copycat crimes (two in the U.S., one in Norway, and one in Germany) were born around the world within that year of 2019 (Thorleifsson & Düker 2021). All were young men in their late teens to 20s.

Tarrant was able to exert such an influence on far-right conspiracy theorists around the world precisely because he succeeded in staging his ideology and actions using SNS and anonymous message boards. He published a manifesto detailing his GR claims on the anonymous message board 8chan and Twitter, and live-streamed the killings on Facebook. He dramatically performed the righteousness of fighting against "invaders."

Research on the process by which conspiracy theories shared on SNS and anonymous message boards "radicalize" people and develop into actual acts of terrorism has not yet been conducted extensively in Japan. However, this theme will likely be an important issue in future conspiracy theory research.

The idea of GR has spread on Japanese SNS in recent years through terms such as "silent invasion" and "population invasion." For example, during the July House of Councillors election period, when the emerging political party Sanseito made great strides, the topic that many "naturalized citizens" were mixed among Diet members was enthusiastically shared by people supporting Sanseito, the Conservative Party of Japan, and Nippon Seishinkai, which is still fresh in memory*2. These people claim, without showing any reliable evidence, that "65% of Diet members are naturalized citizens*3," and therefore denounce the current Japanese government as having a treasonous character. They then argue that an "Anti-Espionage Law" is necessary to smoke out those who are not "real Japanese" within the Japanese government.

This "naturalized Diet member" discourse is further related to the "population invasion conspiracy theory" by China. The population invasion conspiracy theory claims that an invasion plan is underway in which China sends a large number of people to Japan to effectively make Japan a part of China. It says that by sending a large number of Chinese people to Japan to naturalize them and make them politicians, they will then enact laws to accept a large number of immigrants from China and make Japan a part of China.

Although the specific schedule of the plan varies depending on the person explaining it, it is said that between the 2030s and 2050, 50 million Chinese people will be sent to Japan, the entire western Japan area will become Chinese territory, and the eastern half will become an autonomous region. Of course, there is no reliable evidence to support the plan. It is a typical conspiracy theory born from the anxiety and fear in Japanese society that it will eventually be swallowed up by a China that is becoming a major power.

Since Japan is not a gun society, the possibility of indiscriminate shooting incidents like those in Western societies is low. However, today, as the population invasion conspiracy theory, which can be called the Japanese version of GR, is permeating, it can be said that Japanese conspiracy theories have reached the same level as those in the West. Therefore, it will be necessary to carefully monitor how much political conspiracy theories, including the population invasion conspiracy theory, will radicalize in the future.

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