Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Italy
Gianmarco Navarini, "Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Italy"
English | ISBN: 1032703601 | 2024 | 226 pages | PDF | 4 MB
English | ISBN: 1032703601 | 2024 | 226 pages | PDF | 4 MB
This volume explores the role played by conspiracy narratives in the contemporary Italian political, cultural, and social context, through a series of case studies.
It begins with a historical and genealogical account of the troubled success of Italian conspiracy thinking from the early 1970s to the present day. Among the issues examined are the unclear division between legitimate/illegitimate forms of knowledge, the use of conspiracy as a confrontational discursive device, the emergence of moral panic, and the stabilization of information outlets against dominant official explanations. The analysis covers the case of a well-known national survey, and a digital platform specializing in conspiracy storytelling. The second axis of the book concerns the pervasive use of conspiracy as a theory or narrative that currently circulates in various Italian cultural fields: multiculturalism, immigration, and racism; Catholic traditionalism; football fandom; small business economics; and cooking and food.
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