פרסומים

Nature makes me nervous. Insofar as we are theorists, it should make us all nervous, since “[t]he main thrust of recent theory . . . has been the critique of whatever is taken as natural” (Culler 1992: 207). Evidently there was a time when it made Monika Fludernik nervous enough that she placed the word “natural” between scare quotes in the very title of her groundbreaking book, Towards a 'Natural' Narratology, published just over twenty years ago. Fludernik keeps “nature” quarantined in her title and throughout the better part of her book - prudently so, since “nature” is such an ideologically charged concept. But it is hard to keep nature in its place once it has gotten a toehold in an argument, as this article aims to document. © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press

While the role of social media in the spread of conspiracy theories has received much attention, a key deficit in previous research is the lack of distinction between different types of platforms. This study places the role of social media affordances in facilitating the spread of conspiracy beliefs at the center of its enquiry. We examine the relationship between platform use and conspiracy theory beliefs related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on the concept of technological affordances, we theorize that variation across key features make some platforms more fertile places for conspiracy beliefs than others. Using data from a crossnational dataset based on a two-wave online survey conducted in 17 countries before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that Twitter has a negative effect on conspiracy beliefs—as opposed to all other platforms under examination which are found to have a positive effect.