¡Descarga ENSAYO: conspiracy theories, background and relevance y más Monografías, Ensayos en PDF de Inglés solo en Docsity! Conspiracy theories Political sciences Over the course of history, conspiracy theories have been a major concern for humans. Since ancient times the number of conspiracy theories have been diverse, and many of these have been blamed on minorities such as for example the Jews. The first time ever the term conspiracy theory has ever been used was by an important Austrian philosopher of science Karl Popper during the 20th century. A conspiracy theory is an attempt to explain harmful or tragic events, as a result of the actions of a small powerful group. Many argue on why so many people follow or support conspiracy theories that much, especially today, in the 21st century, and on why politics (or politicians in general) are so implicated in this matter. The opinion that conspiracy theories appear because of the lack of scientific evidence is largely outspread. This subject is also very related to fear on many aspects and can cause dramatic consequences and changes on people’s lives. One of the simplest ways to explain why so many people support conspiracy theories and know about them, is primarily because social media. Of course, before social media conspiracy theories were also very popular, but the groups of individuals were more reduced, in comparison to the groups that can be formed nowadays. Additionally, many support these assumptions because of mostly the substantial need of an individual to have an understanding or need for a sense of safety or control of their environment. One of the best examples to explain this, is currently with the corona-virus pandemic. The theories that revolved around this topic, and the most popular ones, are the ones that say the virus was created by Bill Gates, that it had been spread by 5G towers around the world, or even that it had been created in a Chinese biological warfare lab. The three examples cited above have all a common feature: they give comfort to the people who come to believe them. There are many reasons on why conspiracy theories are so involved in politics, and it’s hard to tell who benefits from them. Many politicians have been involved on such conspiracies, and the amount of people that happened to believe in them increased due to the current pandemic. But why did such things happen? How do they appear? Conspiracy theories appear when a nation faces a collective tragedy, and in this kind of event causes the people to lose trust and later the beginning of blaming the nations government. Another fact that contributes to the increase of conspiracies is the way in which governments keep secrets (state secrets and so on) and later try to hide them. This is of environment is perfect for the gradual flourishing of many conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, conspiracy theories are very dangerous for us as individuals and our society in general. The belief in conspiracy theories is related to a disbelief in science. One of the biggest dangers is the fact that they can never be proved wrong, all evidence against these ideas ends up becoming part of the conspiracy itself. Many agree that nothing can be done to make conspiracy theories disappear, and especially with the internet. It is also important to know the psychology in conspiracy theories
