Strategic Conspiracy Narratives

"Madisson and Ventsel cover a timely and urgent topic from a neglected perspective. They relevantly add to the existing literature and spur futher debate. Deeply grounded in semiotic theory (the "School of Tartu"), their book makes an effort to keep distance and balance in relation to a thorny subject. Semiotics provides a more equilibrate understanding about the nature of conspiracy theories, concentrating more on the discursive aspect than on the political one. Conspiracy theories will be, unfortunately, more and more present in the public debate, as well as in cyberwarfare; Madisson and Ventsel praiseworthily pave the way to the academic study of this urgency." — Professor Massimo Leone, University of Turin, Italy

"Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel have produced an excellent and timely book. This will be required reading for anyone wanting to understand conspiracy narratives and to develop innovative ways to analyse how they circulate online. Drawing on semiotics and strategic narrative theory, Madisson and Ventsel present a compelling analytical framework which they apply to their empirical analysis of strategic conspiracy narratives involving investor and philanthropist George Soros. Highly recommended." — Professor Alister Miskimmon, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

"Madisson and Ventsel cover a timely and urgent topic from a neglected perspective. They relevantly add to the existing literature and spur further debate. Deeply grounded in semiotic theory (the "School of Tartu"), their book makes an effort to keep distance and balance in relation to a thorny subject. Semiotics provides a more equilibrate understanding about the nature of conspiracy theories, concentrating more on the discursive aspect than on the political one. Conspiracy theories will be, unfortunately, more and more present in the public debate, as well as in cyberwarfare; Madisson and Ventsel praiseworthily pave the way to the academic study of this urgency."

Professor Massimo Leone, University of Turin, Italy

"Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel have produced an excellent and timely book. This will be required reading for anyone wanting to understand conspiracy narratives and to develop innovative ways to analyse how they circulate online. Drawing on semiotics and strategic narrative theory, Madisson and Ventsel present a compelling analytical framework which they apply to their empirical analysis of strategic conspiracy narratives involving investor and philanthropist George Soros. Highly recommended."

Professor Alister Miskimmon, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

"This book illustrates the changing dynamics by which [conspiracy theories and narratives] circulate and can be engaged with through digital media. The authors conclude the book with an outline of the different methods to be used with such a rich but massive set of data… The book points the reader in two directions then: to this untested landscape of the reception of conspiracy narrative and to a much wider analysis of how conspiracy narratives and their opponents function across other issue areas and political questions. Given the growing presence of these groups and their ability even to win seats of authority in government, this is a vital task."

Ben O’Loughlin, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, in International Journal of Communication (14, 2020)

"Strategic Conspiracy Narratives by Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel formulates at least three valuable concepts: strategic narrative, code text, and phatic communication… Strategic Conspiracy Narratives is an important and timely contribution to the field of applied semiotics that can offer valuable insights both to semioticians and researchers in conspiracy theories. I hope that it will inspire many academics and students to study the meaning-making mechanisms of conspiracy theories instead of merely despising or decrying them."

Todor Hristov, Sofia University, Bulgaria, in Semiotica (2021)
"In Strategic Conspiracy Narratives: A Semiotic Approach, Madisson and Ventsel have indeed found a novel angle from which to address the phenomenon. They are interested in the ways in which stories that articulate some unpleasant event as being the result of a conspiracy are modelled and spread in social media… [the] book should be of broad interest to scholars of culture, language, media, and (political) communication who are versed in textual/rhetorical/discourse analysis and seek to enrich their methodological toolkit. The book provides useful insights into how strategic communication is shaped in political life, so students of (international) politics and power would also benefit from reading it."
Sten Hansson, University of Birmingham, UK, in Social Semiotics (2021)
"Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel’s book deals with conspiracies in an original, systematic, and semiotic way… This volume demonstrates convincingly that Umberto Eco and Juri Lotman have left us many useful heuristic tools to analyze conspiratorial ‘pathologies.’"
Anna Marie Lorusso, University of Bologna, Italy, in Punctum (07:01, Summer 2021)
"The political-strategic and identificational logic of conspiracy theories… at the centre of Mari-Liis Madisson’s and Andreas Ventsel’s book Strategic Conspiracy Narratives: A Semiotic Approach could already be glimpsed in Ancient Rome. [The book] stresses the novelty of the contemporary situation, stating that although "bursts of conspiracy theories have been detected as having occurred in culture centuries ago… it can be claimed with certainty that never before in history have so many people been simultaneously informed about versions of particular conspiracy theories as in this day and age of social media." [The book makes the point that] conspiracy theories should not be viewed primarily as responses to power by the less powerful, but also as strategic tools in the hands of the powerful (from state governments to large corporations) with which to persuade people to vote for them, consume their products, and show aggression towards those others, the scapegoats. Thus, conspiracy theories as speech acts perform a very particular sort of politics, one which casts the enemy as a wrongdoer that should be ostracized or eliminated, even though this "enemy" is often already an outcast or a marginalized group of people."
Ott Puumeister, Tartu University, Estonia, in Sign Systems Studies (48:2/4, 2020)