De-CRIPT explores a growing tension in Western Europe: as socioeconomic inequalities deepen, struggles over what counts as “true” become increasingly visible in the infosphere and across everyday life (Drążkiewicz 2023, Postill 2024). To trace these dynamics, De-CRIPT focuses on two influential conspiracy frameworks – The Great Replacement and The Great Reset – across four communities marked by different histories of dispossession or devaluation.
Rather than assuming two neatly opposed sides, the project treats these struggles as unfolding on two intersecting dimensions.
On one level, a constellation of truths (Corntassel et al 2024) unfold, ranging from official or mainstream explanations of social events to alternative, critical, or conspiracist interpretations. These narratives often overlap, borrow from each other, and have a reciprocal relationship.
Second, truth claims take on lives of their own. Political actors, experts, influencers, or conspiracy entrepreneurs may frame certain interpretations in pursuit of specific goals, yet people on the ground can rework, adapt, merge or repurpose these claims as they navigate uncertainty, insecurity, and everyday challenges. A claim launched to advance a reactionary agenda, for instance, may be taken up by actors who are not committed right-wingers, but who use it to articulate demands for recognition or redistributive justice.
Through this comparative approach, the project investigates:
- how conflicts over truth emerge, circulate, and mutate across online spaces and everyday offline interactions;
- how the intentions of epistemic and political authorities diverge from, or align with, the practical meaning-making of ordinary actors.
At the methodological level, research will rely on:
- digital ethnography to map the online repertoire of discourses throughout consensualist-conspiracist continuum;
- traditional (offline) in-depth, immersive ethnography in urban and rural communities affected by processes of dispossession and devaluation, among two main categories of social actors: 1) residents of the selected locations, and 2) local authorities and representatives of institutions who may or may not be residents themselves (police officers, school teachers, front-line bureaucrats, social workers, bank employees, medical staff, unemployment centre staff, representatives of the counter-disinfo sector such as legacy media or NGOs)
The PhD researcher, in particular, will investigate a specific case of conflicts over “truth” in the Spanish context. The study could explore different contexts, including but not limited to:
- marginalized neighbourhoods
- rural areas affected by major transformations
- groups of young people embracing far-right claims
- so-called “conspiritual” groups
- crypto-currency groups
For any questions regarding the positions or the project, and how to apply please feel free to get in touch: ceciliavergnano@ub.edu, cc belengonzalezgomez@ub.edu