ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 considers two different ways in which Covid-19 conspiracy theories have been framed as an issue of concern. This involves first considering the metaphor of the “infodemic” that the WHO and others around the globe adopted to describe the mis- and disinformation that accompanied the pandemic and made the task of tackling it harder. The chapter looks not only at whether the mis- and disinformation circulating was comparable in scale to the pandemic in the way that the term “infodemic” might suggest, but also at whether this metaphor accurately captures what is at stake. Alongside this key framing metaphor, chapter 2 evaluates the many different polls that have been conducted to demonstrate levels of belief in Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Polls might offer percentages as though they are raw data, but the chapter unpacks how such data are always already “cooked” in various ways. It argues that in focusing on the question of belief, some polls miss what might be most important about Covid-19 conspiracy theories: that there is a proportion of the population that simply does not know whether something is true or not, but which is willing to entertain conspiracist explanations; that some people consider a conspiracy theory to be as plausible as any other explanation.
