- While anyone with fame and money is susceptible to conspiracy theories, experts say that marginalized celebrities are more likely to be targeted with theories based on racism.
- Recently, Kamala Harris, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, and Chrissy Teigen have been attacked with unsubstantiated theories ranging from "birtherism" to "Pizzagate."
- As the popularity of conspiracies grows online, social media platforms like Twitter are trying to help moderate the spread of misinformation with reply-limiting features. But experts aren't sure that it will really stop the spread of "toxic messaging."
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
For public figures like Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Chrissy Teigen, and Oprah Winfrey, conspiracy theories come with the territory of being famous.
Each has been the subject of unfounded QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories online, where their social media posts are flooded with questions about child sex trafficking, among other things.
According to a 2019 study in the Advances in Political Psychology, Conspiracy theories are "attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors."
By that definition, Knowles-Carter, Teigen, Winfrey, and other celebrities are easy conspiracy theory targets because of their wealth and power, but they also have more working against them in the battle against the unfounded, damaging tales.
Discrimination lives within the theories
Other than their wealth, the three powerful women mentioned above all have minority intersectional identities — Knowles-Carter and Winfrey being Black women and Teigen being a Thai-American woman.
These identities compound with their socio-economic status, making them greater targets for conspiracy theories, says Elise Wang, an English professor at California State University Fullerton. "Conspiracy theories are often predicated on racism and I think it depends on what culture they're embedded in — what kind of racism takes front and center."
In Wang's 2019 TEDxTalk, she noted that conspiracy theories about aliens are often based on the same "fear of infestation and infiltration" that contributed to the Japanese-American internment from 1942 to 1945. Former President Barack Obama faced illegitimate questions about his citizenship throughout his presidency based on misinformation and conspiracy theories.
"The sort of hatred for Obama is impossible to understand outside of white supremacy and outside the idea that conspiracy theories are a good way of coping with a reality that you just refuse to accept," Wang said.
The 2019 Advances in Political Psychology study found that previous bad experiences with Black people were "associated with expressed doubts about Barack Obama's American citizenship and eligibility to be president."
Like Obama, Kamala Harris is now facing the same type of "birtherism" conspiracy theory. Wired reported that this theory is "one of the most basic racist frameworks applied to Black people," and can be traced to the long racist history of immigration and citizenship in the US.
"I think it's really difficult for the targets of these campaigns because almost anything they do gets wrapped back up into [the theory]," Kate Starbird, Associate Professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, said. "Almost any action they take can be melded back into the conspiracy theory itself."
For certain Black celebrities, this has meant a consistent and growing chorus of conspiracy theorists in their comments.
Anyone who's in the minority can become a target
Wang says that for popular theories in America, such as Pizzagate, they don't always have much to do with race specifically, but it's a factor that gets included over time. "They always sort of rope that in at some point, like that's a natural direction, I think, that conspiracy theories in America tend," she said.
Conspiracy theorists often focus on anyone who stands out as a minority.
Knowles-Carter, for example, arguably has just as much star power as Madonna or Taylor Swift, but is highly targeted by conspiracy theorists because she stands out from the pantheon of pop divas.
"It's not that she has power that white stars have not had. It's just that she is a Black woman who now has the same power," Wang said.
Hungarian-American investor George Soros is often a victim of targeting because of his Jewish background and involvement in democratic initiatives.
"Because he is Jewish, he's a billionaire, and he is very powerful, and so, he just becomes a kind of magnet for these conspiracy theories," Wang said.
Conspiracy theories are rapidly spreading online
Those small, sometimes hidden communities of believers are everywhere online.
"It's growing across platforms. We can see it on Twitter. We can see it on Facebook and on Instagram. And then there's, in some of these cases, different sub-communities but the information is moved across them," Starbird said.
In March, Winfrey responded to a theory that was spreading. As reported by Insider, "her tweet did little to convince hardcore conspiracists in her replies."
Once these theories spread online, according to Starbird, it's almost impossible to stop them.
"I don't even know what to tell somebody who's suffering one of these campaigns in terms of how they could better present it," she said.
A potential solution is for social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to step up and step in. A new feature on Twitter, which allows users to limit who replies to their tweets, may help curb harassment, targeting, and the spread of misinformation.
"Everyone will be able to use these settings so unwanted replies don't get in the way of meaningful conversations," Suzanne Xie, director of product management at Twitter wrote on the platform's blog.
De-platforming, the suspension of accounts spreading misinformation or harassment, is another potential solution.
But, some feel these policies could contribute to the impeding of free speech. Earlier this month, both Facebook and Twitter blocked President Donald Trump from sharing a misinformation video about coronavirus. Trump told Cleveland's WTAM radio show that he was being "censored," as reported by Bloomberg.
"It's not even about stopping the speech," Starbird said. "It's about the [companies] seeing how the platform has been allowing them to be gamed by folks that want to spread toxic messaging. And that's where they can really take action and just get their recommendation algorithms to stop helping these toxic communities grow."
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