If it feels like your social media feed is littered with more conspiracy theories spreading faster than ever, experts say it’s not just your imagination. They’re also a sign of deeper issues that exist right now in the United States.
The internet has exploded with conspiracy theories following the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night in D.C., with some questioning whether the whole thing was staged. The suspected attacker himself had a social media feed that leaned into such theories following the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.
Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, says two big factors are fueling this phenomenon.
“One is that people are having a hard time discerning truth from misinformation or just falsehoods. So there’s this inability to process information and discern truth,” Golbeck told WTOP.
“On the other side is a lack of trust in institutions and experts — the kind of people that we would turn to normally to help us make those decisions.”
Golbeck said this environment has created a “perfect storm” for conspiracy theories, especially in the wake of disruptive events like the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re in this really unique space in the U.S. right now where a lot of those official sources of information have been putting out bad information,” she added.
She said that’s helped to erode trust on both sides of the political spectrum, making it easier for falsehoods to take hold. Golbeck said this is all a symptom of something bigger — a backslide in democratic values.
“I think it’s really important that we think about when someone’s trying to make us not trust an institution, are they doing that because the institution is honestly not trustworthy? That’s good to know,” she said.
“Or is it that it is trustworthy, and they’re trying to erode that trust for a different reason? There should be some level of suspicion when there are people trying to create the conditions where conspiracy theories arise, because often those are antithetical to what democracy needs.”
Golbeck said when that distrust happens, it’s often serving those in power: “Because if they can get us — not to necessarily believe the lies that they’re telling us, but to not believe in anything — to just see information and be like, ‘I don’t know what’s true or what isn’t true, I don’t believe anything anymore,’ what we see is the decline of democratic institutions.”
Golbeck called it a dark time for those like her who study conspiracy theories but believes the way out of this cycle can start here in the D.C. region.
“We are a region of experts,” she said. “We can bring that to each other, and that’s also something that democracy is built on. As a people, we have the power within ourselves. I think we need to do the work to rebuild those institutions.”
She encouraged people to seek out trusted sources who base their information on facts, science or objective truth, not just opinion.
“Democracy requires people to understand and have access to the truth,” she added.