NAS-Lecture-Series: Feeling Is Believing

Lecture Series of the North American Studies Program: "The White House Embattled: The U.S. Election 2024"
Prof. Donovan O. Schaefer, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia:
"Feeling Is Believing: Rethinking the Role of Conspiracy Theory in the 2024 U.S. Election Cycle":
Why has conspiracy theory risen to prominence in our current political moment–especially in the US, where presidential candidate Donald Trump has frequently affiliated himself with conspiracism? How is conspiracy theory deployed as a political tool? This talk proposes a new way of assessing the relationship between thinking and feeling, highlighting their deep interrelatedness and enabling us to see conspiracy theories as powerful political tools. This helps draw a clearer map of the role conspiracy theories are playing in the 2024 US election and devise more effective ways of responding to them.