Transatlantic Conspiracy Viruses The Migration of American Conspiracy Theories to Europe and the Netherlands through New Media

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, both in Europe and in the United States, the status of truth and expertise is at the heart of an intense debate about factual discourses. The Trump presidency (2017-2021) and the COVID-19 pandemic have served as perfect breeding grounds for old conspiracies to re-emerge and gain renewed recognition in a global war of information that is fueled by the increasing involvement of fringe movements on new media. This thesis aims to show how American conspiracy theories have migrated to Europe, and how the have been received in Netherlands in particular, through these new media forms, and have thus formed a global phenomenon of increasingly visible conspiratorial thinking on both sides of the Atlantic.