Strategic Conspiracy Narratives

Madisson and Ventsel cover a timely and urgent topic from a neglected per-
spective. 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 under-
stand 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
Strategic Conspiracy Narratives
Strategic Conspiracy Narratives proposes an innovative semiotic perspective for analysing

how contemporary conspiracy theories are used for shaping interpretation paths and identities
of a targeted audience.
Conspiracy theories play a significant role in the viral spread of misinformation that has an
impact on the formation of public opinion about certain topics. They allow the connecting of
different events that have taken place in various times and places and involve several actors
that seem incompatible to bystanders. This book focuses on strategic-function conspiracy nar-
ratives in the context of (social) media and information conflict. It explicates the strategic
devices in how conspiracy theories can be used to evoke a hermeneutics of suspicion – a
permanent scepticism and questioning of so-called mainstream media channels and dominant
public authorities, delegitimisation of political opponents, and the ongoing search for hidden
clues and coverups. The success of strategic dissemination of conspiracy narratives depends
on the cultural context, specifics of the targeted audience and the semiotic construction of the
message. This book proposes an innovative semiotic perspective for analysing contemporary
strategic communication. The authors develop a theoretical framework that is based on the
semiotics of culture, the notions of strategic narrative and transmedia storytelling.
This book is targeted to specialists and graduate students working on social theory, semi-
otics, journalism, strategic communication, social media and contemporary social problems in
general.
Mari-Liis Madisson received her PhD in Semiotics and Culture Studies from the University
of Tartu, Estonia in 2016. She is a Research Fellow at the Department of Semiotics at the
University of Tartu and a visiting Research Fellow at School of History, Anthropology, Philo-
sophy and Politics at the Queen´s University Belfast, UK. Her research combines cultural
semiotics, political semiotics, communication and media studies. Her research interests lie in
online culture, conspiracy theories, information influence activities and extreme right
communication. She is the author of The Semiotic Construction of Identities in Hypermedia
Environments: The Analysis of Online Communication of the Estonian Extreme Right (2016).
Andreas Ventsel is a senior researcher of semiotics at Tartu University, Estonia. He holds an

MA degree and a PhD in Semiotics. He teaches a range of subjects in semiotics, society and
politics, cultural theory, and research seminars. His research is interdisciplinary, which
includes semiotics, discourse theory, visual communication, rhetoric and political analysis
with particular focus on post-structural political thought. Since 2007, Ventsel has participated
in several research projects in the fields of semiotics, visual studies and strategic
communication. He has presented the results of research on these topics in around 100 aca-
demic articles and has been the editor of several Estonian-based and international scientific
journals. He is the author of Towards Semiotic Theory of Hegemony (2009).
Conspiracy Theories
Series Editors: Peter Knight, University of Manchester,
and Michael Butter, University of Tübingen.
Conspiracy theories have a long history and exist in all modern societies.
However, their visibility and significance are increasing today. Conspiracy the-
ories can no longer be simply dismissed as the product of a pathological mindset
located on the political margins.
This series provides a nuanced and scholarly approach to this most
contentious of subjects. It draws on a range of disciplinary perspectives
including political science, sociology, history, media and cultural studies, area
studies and behavioural sciences. Issues covered include the psychology of
conspiracy theories, changes in conspiratorial thinking over time, the role of the
Internet, regional and political variations, and the social and political impact of
conspiracy theories.
The series will include edited collections, single-authored
monographs and
short-form books.
The Stigmatization of Conspiracy Theory since the 1950s

“A Plot to Make us Look Foolish”
Katharina Thalmann
Conspiracy Theories in Turkey

Conspiracy Nation
Doğan Gürpınar
Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories

Edited by Michael Butter and Peter Knight
Contemporary Conspiracy Culture

Truth and Knowledge in an Era of Epistemic Instability
Jaron Harambam
Strategic Conspiracy Narratives

A Semiotic Approach
Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel
Strategic Conspiracy
Narratives
A Semiotic Approach
Mari-Liis Madisson and

Andreas Ventsel
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel
The right of Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Madisson, Mari-Liis, 1988 – author. | Ventsel, Andreas,
1976 – author.
Title: Strategic conspiracy narratives: a semiotic approach/Mari-Liis
Madisson and Andreas Ventsel.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge,
2020. |
Series: Conspiracy theories | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020001487 (print) | LCCN 2020001488 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Conspiracy theories. | Soros, George.
Classification: LCC HV6275.M33 2020 (print) | LCC HV6275 (ebook) |
DDC 001.9-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001487
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001488
ISBN: 978-0-367-03098-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-02038-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
Acknowledgementsix
Introduction 1
Determining the theoretical framework 2
The structure of the book 4
PART I
Theoretical framework 7
1 Semiotic conflicts in strategic communication 9

Conceptualising the conflict of meanings 9
On the specificity of the informational influencing on
social media 16
Information conflicts and strategic narratives 20
2 A semiotic approach to conspiracy theories 32

Studying conspiracy theories spreading on the Internet 32
The functions of identity creation in conspiracy theories 36
The semiotic approach to conspiracy narratives 40
PART II
Semiotic analysis of strategic Soros-themed
conspiracy narratives 49
3 Strategic Soros-themed conspiracy narratives in politics,

marketing and alternative knowledge 51
Strategic construction of conflict in conspiracy narrative 51
viii Contents
George Soros – the Grand Old Scapegoat of contemporary
The strategic devices of the Soros-themed
conspiracy
narratives 62
4 The main meaning-making mechanisms of strategic

Conspiracy theories as a trigger of affective communication 92
Transmedial strategic conspiracy narratives 98
5 Conclusion and future directions 109

Sketching the methodology of social media strategic conspiracy
narratives 111
Bibliography114
Index129
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all who have contributed into
developing our ideas on conspiracy theories and publishing this book.
Special thanks go to all members of COST 15101 and especially Michael
Butter and Peter Knight for leading this inspiring and thought-provoking project.
Many thanks also to our comrades from the East -
European picnic club:
Anastasiya Astapova, Onoriu Colăcel, Corneliu Pintilescu, Ivan Brlić, Franciszek
Czech, and its French and Swedish “correspondence members” Julien Giry and
Andreas Önnerfors for their support and friendship which made all our
conferences unforgettable events.
We are indebted to many of our colleagues from Tartu University who have
supported and inspired our academic endeavours in several ways. We would
especially like to thank Lauri Linask for his insightful feedback to the draft of
our manuscript and Ene-Reet Soovik for translating our book into English.
This work was supported by the research grants PRG314 “Semiotic fitting as
a mechanism of biocultural diversity: instability and sustainability in novel
environments”, PUTJD804 “Semiotic perspective on the analysis of strategic
conspiracy narratives” and SHVFI19127 “Strategic Narrative as a Model for
Reshaping the Security Dilemma”.
Last, but not least thanks go to our cat Werner – the greatest and most
powerful conspirator and an endless source of inspiration.
Introduction
Especially after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Brexit

referendum in 2016, the power of viral conspiracy theories related with
disinformation and misinformation crusades has become undeniable. In strategic
communication, conspiracy theories have proved themselves as an effective
means of creating distrust or even fear of and disdain towards political oppon-
ents, of spicing up points being made and constructing a positive self-image of
moral superiority. Even if we consider ourselves as media literate citizens
capable of critical thinking, we may have met catchy explanations that link
certain social events and real persons with intriguing conspiracy references. For
instance, we may have heard that there is no human-induced climate crisis, and
that the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg is a puppet of a
globalist influence network; that Hillary Clinton is linked to a secret cabal of
paedophiles and Satanists; that the 2016 European migration crisis or
Coronavirus (COVID-19) was actually launched by George Soros and his
minions as part of their plan to destroy nation states and control the population.
Conspiracy theories serve as successful attention grabbers, as they link topical
events with forceful and fairly easily graspable meanings and, as a rule, also
contain a fair share of mystery and thrills – after all, they talk of the insidious
deeds of a sinister group that have remained hidden from the public despite all
anti-corruption means taken and instances of surveillance involved. Conspiracy
theories are well-suited to a sharing culture based on quick reactions and the
rather limited argumentation of social media which provides simple, funny and
intriguing explanations an opportunity to become viral and to stick.
Under the conditions of contemporary information overload, conspiracy the-
ories are valued highly as they function as features that make it possible to draw
meaningful connected images from the jumble of dots that bits and pieces of
information consist of. What is more, they often offer ready-made templates, on
the basis of which members of so-called “enlightened audiences” can draw
similar connecting lines in future interpreting situations and thus find proof to
the existence of conspiracies in random data. A conspiracy theory can function
as an important anchor point of the interpretation process and is thus potentially
much more dangerous than discrete false statements or fake news, as it often
directs the audience towards interpretations of whole series of events that have
2 Introduction
actually taken place, as well as various facts, in their own hyper sceptical light
(Benkler et al. 2018, 34). It is important to emphasise that although fake news
that has been produced with the aim of deliberately disinforming the audience
may also be a conspiracy theory, no sign of equation can be put between them,
for conspiracy theories represent a certain type of meaning relations that fake
news need not necessarily involve. Namely, conspiracy theories outline a
specific narrative explanation that sees “a group of people acting in secret to
nefarious end” (Birchall 2006, 34) as the driving force behind events. In contrast
to fake news, contemporary conspiracy theories are not created only because of
someone’s wish to disinform the target wittingly, as their authors may also
articulate such theories for their sincere fear of conspiracies or due to a playful
wish to explain some occurrence via a conspiracy.
The main goal of our book is to study the function of conspiracy theories in
various contemporary information conflicts and influencing activities – we are
interested in how, on the one hand, conspiracy theories can be applied as a tool
in attention grabbing and targeting of audiences, and how they can be used to
generate alienation; and, on the other hand, how they are used to construct
positive self-images and moral victim positions. Despite the topicality and relev-
ance of this research focus, no systematic studies have been published as of yet
that concentrate on strategic conspiracy theories in relation with the information
influencing activities occurring in contemporary digital media.
Determining the theoretical framework

Many of us are familiar with Umberto Eco’s famous sentence “Semiotics is in
principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie”
(Eco 1976, 7). Eco adds: “If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it
cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used ‘to tell’ at all” (ibid.).
Indeed, the essential conventionality of sign processes, as well as the
acceptance of the possibility of lying or being mistaken in meaning-making, is a
part of the foundational principles of the semiotic approach, and the analysis of
the success or failure of communication has been taken as one of the main tasks
of semiotics as a discipline. This is one of the reasons why we believe that a
semiotic approach is innovative for/in describing and conceptualising
conspiracy theories circulating on social networking sites (SNSs), because it
makes it possible to understand multimodal and intertextual combinations of
various texts and different patterns of interaction co-evolving with those texts
(see Leone et al. 2020).
This book has a predominantly theoretical focus and its main theoretical
body relies on the concept of strategic narrative developed in the tradition pol-
itics of international relations, work in the field of cultural semiotics and
existing semiotic studies of conspiracy theories. These conceptual frameworks
are developed further by taking into account the specifics of social media
communication. Our aim is to elaborate a theoretical -
analytical framework
meant for analysing conspiracy theories in the context of strategic
Introduction 3
communication, and we will illustrate our conceptual framework with several
examples of theories related to George Soros that demonstrate various angles of
strategic meaning-making.
Before we proceed to a brief introduction of the book’s contents, we explain
the selection principles of the theoretical framework we aim to create and define
its field of application. We consider strategic communication as an umbrella
term that covers various long-term and goal-oriented
communication activities,
such as strategic planning, media development, audience design, image care,
etc. In its broadest meaning it is “purposeful use of communication by an organ-
isation to fulfil its mission” (Hallahan et al. 2007, 3). Generally speaking, stra-
tegic communication management has to balance three factors: the message(s),
the media channel(s) and the audience(s) (Bockstette 2008). The present book
first and foremost focuses on the level of the message, as our main aim is to
create an analytical frame with the help of which to study meaning-making in
strategic conspiracy narratives and how this meaning making shapes the target
audience. We regard meaning-making as a process through which participants in
communication attempt to understand each other and the world, to influence
their conversation partners and, in some cases, even mislead them.
We are aware of the difficulties that researchers meet when facing the
discussion of the multidirectional and asymmetric meaning-making in social
media. For instance, questions of the goal-oriented
and intentionality of text cre-
ation arise in studying strategic communication: to what degree is it possible to
determine the real authors of texts and their original aims in the hybrid informa-
tion stream of social media; whether and to what extent can an organisation or
an actor be attributed concrete communicative aims. We find that in combining
the notions of the strategic narrative currently gaining popularity in the discip-
line of international relations, and Umberto Eco’s concepts of the Model Reader
and the Model Author as the frameworks for text creation strategies, we will be
able to offer an original treatment focusing on meaning-making processes and
provide these questions with answers in the context of strategic conspiracy nar-
ratives. Our model first and foremost emphasises the unity of the strategic
devices which is primarily constructed on the level of the text.
In connection with this question, it is important to discover whether, and to
what degree, the information stream of (social) media and particular posts as
information fragments that often have a limited linear textual component, can be
considered as narrative. According to Eco (2005, 77–78), non-narrative texts can
be expanded and made narrative for the purpose of analysis if the possibilities
the texts include are actualised. As researchers, we can construct the narrative
unity on the more abstract level of the analysis of the text corpus – the event of
conflict, the characters participating in it, the context surrounding the event etc.,
even though all the formal characteristics of narrative do not appear explicitly in
a particular text.
We also feel compelled to specify some things in connection with the
ontology of our research object. Our main focus of attention is directed at
semiotic analysis of the textual strategies of conspiracy narratives circulating
4 Introduction
in online environments; so we will study in more depth particular textual
units (e.g. videos, social media posts, news items, blog entries, etc.) that
mediate conspiracy theories and the socio-communicative context of their
spreading. Thus, in the framework of this study we shall not explore macro-
sociological factors concerning, e.g. power relations that depend on the

infrastructure of social media and the accessibility of big data, nor digital
divides existing within the population, etc.
Neither do we study the relationship of the identities shaped on social media
with other (also offline) identity-creating practices of the subjects. We proceed
from the premise that online interactions, as well as many other types of
communication, are correlated with interpretational horizons, which include
specific value domains, attitudes and prejudices (Madisson 2016a, 9). The rela-
tion between online and offline spheres should be understood as an intertwined
realm, because those who meet in online interactions usually are not personas
created for one-time identity-games but subjects who have “histories, social-
locatedness in various structures, demographics, epistemological standpoints,
etc.” and what happens on the Internet significantly influences how people
experience life when they are not online (Jurgenson 2012, 85).
The structure of the book

In the first part of the book we explain and expand on our main concepts, such
as semiotic conflict, information conflict, strategic narrative, semiotic logic of
conspiracy theory, etc. We treat conspiracy theories as strategic narratives. In
this book, a strategic narrative is defined as “a means by which political actors
attempt to construct a shared meaning of the past, present, and future of inter-
national politics to shape the behavior of domestic and international actors”
(Miskimmon et al. 2017, 6). As any narrative, conspiracy narratives are
characterised by the presence of antagonists, protagonists, concrete goals and
activities making reaching those goals possible, spatial and temporal
relationships, etc. We also discuss problems accompanying conspiracy theories
spreading on social media, first and foremost questions arising in connection
with deliberate shaping of information streams. This is why we expand the
conspiracy narrative with Umberto Eco’s conception of the Model Reader that
allows the researcher to study which semiotic strategies have been used in
constructing the audiences targeted in the strategic conspiracy narratives, as well
as the unity of the aims the narrative pursues.
In the second part of the book we analyse the strategic use of conspiracy nar-
ratives based on the theoretical frame outlined in Part I, and observe three areas:
the discourses of politics, marketing, and alternative knowledge. In our
examples, we focus on the conspiracy theories that depict the Hungarian Jewish
billionaire investor George Soros as an omnipotent villain. We admit that such
conspiracy theories often emerge spontaneously, as it were, at the grassroots
level, yet there are numerous examples in which different strategic actors
skilfully use these theories in order to amplify their own messages and influence
Introduction 5
the audience’s perception of the situation. What is central in our treatment is the
question of conflict construction as the strategic core of conspiracy theories, as
proceeding from the mode of shaping the audience or the targeted model reader
will depend on the peculiarities of the conflict. We treat constructing the conflict
between the own and the alien in the framework of cultural semiotics (modelling
the relations of culture–anti-culture, culture–non-culture) (Lotman, Uspenskij
1978), Ernesto Laclau’s theory of hegemony (2005),1 Chantal Mouffe’s (2005)
notion of agonistic logic and Michel Foucault’s notion of subjugated knowledge
(1980). In the context of subjugated knowledge, the main research question is:
how are conspiracy theories used in order to deprecate/demonise dominant
institutionalised knowledge? These kind of conspiracy theories often rely on
socio-cultural myths, popular plots, historical narratives and religious beliefs.
In the final chapter, we explain conspiracy theories’ potential to catch atten-
tion, bring along affective reactions in the target audience and cause cascades
of sharing on social media against the background of contemporary information
overload. More specifically, we bring out how the strategic disseminators of
conspiracy theories construct their messages so that these seem as urgent as
possible to the audience and thus require immediate reaction. We also discuss
the role of the affordances of social media in amplifying such affective
communication. Next, we focus on strategic transmedia storytelling that
embraces several modalities and platforms. We explain which techniques are
used by strategic actors to evoke curiosity and the immersive experience of the
story, and how they create cohesion between different story entries. After that,
we demonstrate how, in transmedial conspiracy narratives, semantic gaps and
triggers function via which the model reader can be led towards desired associ-
ations and, at first glance, irreconcilable levels of meaning can be united.
Note
1 On syntesis of cultural semiotics and Laclau’s theory of hegemony see also Ventsel
(2009a, 2011, 2014) and Selg and Ventsel (2008, 2010, 2020).
Part I
Theoretical framework
1 emiotic conflicts in strategic
S
communication
We have all probably met conspiracy theories that try to provide explanations to
different social, cultural or economic problems. Usually this is accompanied by
the reduction of a complex problem to a simple scheme. Such simplifying clarity
that is characteristic of conspiracy theories can be better understood in the
framework of the concept of conflict, for conspiracy theories are commonly
characterised by a simple explanatory scheme: someone has been deprived of
something or it has been taken from them. What is important is the existence of
at least two parties – the victims and the perpetrators who cause their suffering.
This work conceptualises such conflicts first and foremost as semiotic ones,
i.e. conflicts on the level of meaning-making, and discusses them in the frame-
work of information conflicts and strategic communication.
The following chapters introduce the key notions in our study: semiotic
conflict, information conflict and strategic narrative. We position and define
these from the point of view of (cultural) semiotics. We also explain methodo-
logical difficulties arising in social media research in connection with how to
analyse and differentiate the potentially strategically motivated discourse from
strategically non-motivated discourse in social media communication.
Conceptualising the conflict of meanings

The terminology of social theories includes terms such as social hierarchies,
distribution of resources, group belonging/exclusion, etc. What unites these con-
cepts is the fact that they all describe social life as in principle open to
inequality, which in its turn is the basis for the diversity of conflicts. In a public
discussion concerning any topic, consensus may prove to be the ideal, the final
aim with which avoid conflict, but the starting point of discussion is still a
conflict or the potential possibility of a conflict. Situations may occur in which
social tensions appear to be un-relievable, and in such cases one of the possible
ways of mitigating the inequality is the amplification of the conflict that will
result in earlier social relationships becoming transformed and replaced with
new ones. True, this usually lays a basis for the emergence of a new inequality.
Examples can be found in the bloody cataclysms that have followed the
realisation of different revolutionary utopias. Conspiracy theories have often
10 Theoretical framework
played an important role in the amplification of such conflicts, for instance
during the French Revolution when King Louis XVI was met with accusations
of high treason and of collaborating with foreign powers, or the tales circulating
in pre-revolution Russia concerning Rasputin’s links with Germany.
In a comprehensive analysis of peacebuilding, Lisa Schrich proposes under-
standing conflict in three dimensions. First, there is the material dimension that
consists of conflict related to land or material resources that are in demand.
Second, there is the social dimension, based on a complex interaction between
communication, relationships and social interactions. This conflict is framed by
social hierarchies, status, social positions, etc. And, third, the symbolic
dimension “focuses on how people’s worldview shapes how they understand
and make meaning of the world, and in particular, conflict. It brings attention to
the perceptual, emotional, sensual, cultural, and identity -
driven aspects of
conflict” (Schrich 2005, 32).
In this book, we shall not reduce the emergence of conflict to an inequality of
the social or the material basis, which is why we do not propose studying the
possible reasons for the spreading of conspiracy theories caused by economic or
social hierarchies as our aim. First and foremost, we concentrate on the symbolic
level of conflict as we are interested in the ways of discursive representation,
shaping and solving of social conflicts in the course of communicative action.
Here, we proceed from the position in discourse theory that all social reality is
meaningful and determined by norms, value systems, rules and shared truths that
simultaneously shape social practices. It is impossible to access a point from
which reality would speak directly, as it were, without discursive mediation.
Social relationships, that can always also be viewed as power relationships and
thus potentially conflict-laden,
are not pre-given,
but constructed through social
meanings. As Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 153) put it, “The problem of the
institution of the social is the definition and articulation of social relations in a
field criss-crossed with antagonism” and it is discourse in which “objectivity as
such is being constructed” (Laclau 2005, 68). At this point it is important to
emphasise that we do not wish to participate in the classic debate between
realists and idealists. According to an apt example given by Laclau and Mouffe,
it does not make sense to deny the existence of an earthquake. Yet whether the
meaning attributed to the earthquake is the wrath of God or that of a natural dis-
aster will depend on the discursive structuration, the formation of discourse
(Laclau, Mouffe 1985, 108). We claim the same in this book – while studying
conspiracy theories in the framework of semiotics of conflict we shall not reduce
the reasons for their emergence to an essentialist basis, be it material inequality
or the specificity of human psyche (paranoia), but will treat it as a discursive
phenomenon via which the economic and social aspects will become
meaningful.
Thus, it is possible to view the emergence of a conflict as the result of a
mutual influence of several economic, social and cultural factors, yet not as
reducible to these. What is more, the symbolic level does not mediate conflicts,
but can be their source, as each order creating a socio -
semiotic system or
Semiotic conflicts in communication 11
discourse will exclude other meaningful orders and thus serve as a potential
trigger of conflict. At the time of contemporary information overload the ways
in which some topics are served in the media to catch the audiences’ attention is
of decisive importance. In addition to the reproduction of a discourse, an
“attractively packaged” treatment of a topic – and emphasising a conflict usually
is an attention magnet – creates the possibility of a new discourse emerging as
other, potentially important, topics remain in the shadow. If “reality” is revealed
to us in discourse, the following questions will be raised: how discourses are
being produced through signs, and whether there is anything in the structure of
the sign and in sign systems that turns them from bare means of discourse
formation and communication to the reason for conflicts potentially developing.
The ontology of the semiotic conflict

Drawing on one of the founders of semiotics, Ferdinand de Saussure, the sign
can be interpreted as an in-system correlate between the signified and the signi-
fier (2011). The conception of the sign by the important founder of another
semiotic tradition, Charles Sanders Peirce (1932), proceeds from the tertiary
division of the sign – the object, the representamen and the interpretant – and the
transformation of the relations between them in the semiotic process in which a
certain ambivalence of meaning has been encoded via the interpretant. Yet in the
case of both Saussure’s and Peirce’s models of signs, we can see the possibility
of the sign itself positioning as the source of a conflict: the sign’s relation with
the mediated “reality” has been developing in different communication situ-
ations over time and rendered socially “naturalised”, although it is essentially
contingent and could in principle be different. It is true that this will not lead us
to a better understanding of the connections between meaning -
making and
conflict, but only indicates that every signification process is potentially a source
of conflict as well as of power relations (Ventsel 2009a, 2011; see also Marchart
2007, 5–6). In order to better understand which factors contribute to semiosis
and how this can lead to a semiotic conflict we need to regard meaning-making
in the context of communicative activity.
According to cultural semiotics, that rather proceeds from a Saussurean view
of meaning-making, sign systems such as natural languages, languages of art
(literature, painting, theatre, etc.), ideologies, cultures, etc., are immanently
organised structures. It is only structured organisation that allows us to speak of
meaningful information that opposes disorganisation (Lotman et al. 2013,
54–55). It is true that it is only from an internal point of view of a meaningful
unit (e.g. a culture, community, etc.) that it looks like “chaos” or seems not so
organised. From an external point of view, which can be, e.g., the researcher’s
position, in most cases it is information organised in a way that is different from
other perspectives (ibid.).
At the same time there is no mechanism in any sign system that would
guarantee the latter’s functioning in isolation, for sign systems only operate in
unity, relying on one another (ibid). The particular identity of a meaningful
unit is formed in the context in which it functions and enters into contact with
other semiotic systems. Being thus defined helps the semiotic unit (which can
be the conspiracy theory of Rasputin’s plotting mentioned above or a broader
ideological discourse) to differentiate between the semiotically own and the
semiotically alien, filters outside information and sets off the mechanism of
re-processing outside information into the inside (Lotman 2005, 208–209). In
the course of such a process, the identity of the semiotic unit is shaped and it is
characteristic of meaning-making that in a situation in which two semiotic
units come into contact they immediately proceed from a situation of
reciprocal neutrality into a situation of reciprocal complementarity – they start
to cultivate their own specific character and mutual contrast (Lotman
1997, 11). Thus the “chaos” that is considered alien from an internal point of
view is not always original, uniform and equal to itself but is as actively
created by humans as is the cultural field (Lotman et al. 2013, 54). It is always
the result of relationality, and what various conspiracy theories or ideological
discourses will turn out to be like will in several respects depend on the
context of their spreading and the functions they have in communication (see
also Selg, Ventsel 2020).
In the context of the information war discussed in this book the relationality
introduced above emerges in the descriptions of the antagonists and protagonists
of conspiracy theories and the goals of their activities. The identity of a semiotic
unit (protagonist, antagonists, event, etc.) is not characterised by a set of
unchanging authentic or primordial properties, but rather defined through
constantly developing processes of meaning-making, transformed in interplay
with an altering socio-cultural context (Campbell 2008, 410). The processes of
identity creation are not predetermined by certain essential (material or social)
factors, but suggest the making of semiotic choices, as well as a degree of
contingency and unpredictability. The cultural semiotic approach sees the pro-
cesses of identity creation as an integral part of communication and follows an
anti-essentialist perspective which treats identities as a matrix of difference
(Madisson 2016b, 22).
Such a process of identity-creation can be observed in the framework of
various intertwined functions. In addition to differentiating between the own and
the alien, as well as identity shaping, semiotic units have the function of
transmitting and storing information and creating new meanings (Lotman
1988a). A precondition for the realisation of the functions is the existence of
memory, as without it no dialogue could possibly arise. Cultural semiotics does
not view memory as a passive space where information packages could be
stored, but it is an active (re)generator of meanings (Lotman 1988a, 55). A
tension of meaning-making
arises in situations in which “[c]ulture is united with
its past by memory generates not only its own future, but also its own past, and
in this sense is a mechanism that counteracts natural time” (Lotman, Uspenskij
1984, 28). Memory should thus be observed first and foremost as a dynamic
semiotic mechanism that becomes activated in the interaction of codes and texts
in concrete acts of communication.
Although in each process of meaning -
making these three functions
(communication, memory, innovation) operate simultaneously, in particular situ-
ations we can speak of the prevailing of one or another function. Semiotic
conflicts develop in the communication process in which, in addition to the
essential overlap of sign systems, tension also arises due to the differences in the
functions of semiotic systems. For different interpreters, the goal of conspiracy
theories can be seen as either the retaining the status quo or launching a new
system of meanings and social changes. For instance the repeated addresses of
the Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán against the presumed conspiracy organised
by George Soros, that is purportedly undermining the state and national unity,
serve the Orbán’s aim of retaining his position and legitimising stricter measures
against NGOs. Soros’s Jewish ethnicity and his image as a financial magnate
can be used strategically in constructing a common figure of the enemy, in
contrast to which the populist “people” is created. However, the same
conspiracy theory makes it possible for Orbán’s opponents in the political
struggle to show him as a ridiculous enemy of democracy and an anti-Semite.
Naturally, not every tension will develop into a real conflict and not every
conflict has been shaped consciously, but may arise from the coincidence of
arbitrary circumstances, carelessness or ignorance of the context. However, such
contingent conflicts can be made later strategic use of; we shall demonstrate such
conspiracy theories in the examples given in Part II of this book. The realisation
of the conflict will be determined by the domination of a function in
communication that suppresses other modes of meaning-making and modelling
of the world. As we can read in The Theses of Semiotics of Culture, “particular
importance is attached to questions of the hierarchical structure of the languages
of culture, of the distribution of spheres among them, of cases in which these
spheres intersects or merely border upon each other” (Lotman et al. 2013, 53).
In this subchapter we outlined the nature of semiotic conflicts that are
potentially present in a latent form in each meaning-making process. In view of
the discussion conducted in this book we need to move further and speak of
information conflict. This is based on the ontology of the semiotic conflict, but
presumes a deliberate shaping of the conflict, a strategic nature of some
communicative activities.
Information conflicts and information warfare

The term “information conflict” is used to “encompass both military and non-
military applications of information warfare tactics and conflict will include stra-
tegic information security and influence operations” (van Niekerk, Maharaj
2013, 1163). Traditionally, information conflicts have been treated in the frame-
work of information war in the field of the military. Information war can be
defined as “all actions taken to defend the military’s information-based pro-
cesses, information systems and communications networks and to destroy,
neutralize or exploit the enemy’s similar capabilities within the physical,
information and cognitive domains” (Brazzoli 2007, 219).1
Conceptions of information war evolved in several countries starting from the
second half of the twentieth century. In such a war, information is the goal, the
resource and the means. To conduct information war, special information
weapons are devised that depend on the goals aspired to and the nature of the
informational environment. According to the Danish expert on information war,
Thomas Elkjær Nissen, the informational environment consists of three
interconnected dimensions that interact with one another: the physical, the
informational and the cognitive. The informational dimension specifies the phys-
ical dimension, indicating where and how information is being collected, pro-
cessed, stored, spread and protected. In the cognitive dimension, information is
forwarded and received, as well as reacted to and acted upon (Nissen 2015, 24).
On this level people’s reactions and decisions are generated that those who issue
the messages wish to affect with their information weapons. The information
weapons can be, for instance, means of radio-electronic
communication; means
of program-electronic communication, i.e. those that concern software and hard-
ware; and informational -psychological
means. The former two are targeted
against technology, while the means of the latter kind are employed first and
foremost to influence people’s decision-making processes. Physical,
informational and cognitive dimensions intermingle, but analytically this tertiary
division can still offer a framework for understanding the structure of the
informational battlefield and provide a usable toolkit for “understanding the
information ‘battle-space’
and how both technology (including social network
media), processes (technological and human) and content (images, words and
the perception of observable action) fit together and create effects” (Nissen
2015, 25). In this book we mostly focus on the third, cognitive dimension.
Although information warfare has traditionally been considered as a military
concept, Blaise Cronin and Holly Crawford (1999) and Winn Schwartau (1996)
have shown it to be relevant as regards social, corporate and personal spheres.
Saara Jantunen, researcher of information warfare of the Finnish Defence Forces,
remarks that according to the principles of hybrid warfare influencing the
opponent, e.g. economically, with cyber attacks and with psychological
operations, organised influencing activities may mean that information warfare
need not even be part of conventional direct military operations, but the influen-
cing may take place over mass media, social media, conversations between
ordinary civilians and in other non-military environments. Thus, information war
does not leave the impression of being an activity of the state but is conducted
with the help of civilians and bystanders (Jantunen 2018, 37). Therefore,
employing a unidirectional behaviourist model that treats communication as “a
mouthful given to the target auditorium from above, intended to tease out a
desired reaction in the auditorium” (Jantunen 2018, 225) will not suffice to
explain contemporary information conflicts. In a web-based and networking
world, communication cannot be reduced to a chain of stimuli and reactions, but
is asymmetrical, pluri-directional and interactional.
In his book Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
(2013) the conflict theorist David Kilcullen identifies three reasons for the
change in nature of conflicts. Today’s conflicts are more urban; technology has
changed the nature of warfare; and democratisation of technology gives different
social groups the strength to participate in them. Thanks to the leap in the
development of information and communication technology and its relatively
cheap cost, nearly all of us can access the interpretation and production of
information flows. The three characteristics pointed out by Kilcullen create con-
ditions that, taken as a whole, magnify the role of social media in future conflicts
where wars will be fought more for local power, money and control over the
decision processes of the population. Nissen (2015, 9) characterises the complex
influence structure of today’s communication as follows: “Effects that support
the goals and objectives of the multiple actors ‘fighting’ in the social network
media sphere, including influencing perceptions of what is going on, can, in
turn, inform decision-making and behaviours of relevant actors.” Thus, one of
the most significant reasons in reconsidering the conception of information war
is the increasing role of social media in interpersonal communication. The con-
cepts of information war and war in general do not only point at conventional
confrontations between states, but sooner concern identity and identity claims
based on the logic of inclusion and exclusion (ibid.).
In our book, we also treat conspiracy theories in the conceptual framework of
expanded information war and information conflicts, in which the possible aims
of their application can include marketing, establishing alternative knowledge or
undermining an opposing political regime. Through shaping information
conflicts, adversaries or competitors can directly assault or strategically under-
mine the opponent’s assets (Denning 1999). In an age of social media, the speed
of reaching audiences is a significant parameter of information culture.
Attribution of meaning to any particular piece of information and checking its
credibility is becoming ever more difficult and requires increasingly more
resources. At the same time, the motives behind people’s sharing of bits of
information that seem exciting and intriguing, although of dubious value, cannot
be boiled down to just their evil plans of fanning a conflict or a desire to increase
the number of clicks. As a rule, entertainment aspects and the marking of com-
munity belonging (Ventsel, Madisson 2017, 99) also play a role here. Still, it is
possible to use such pieces of information for strategic purposes, either in
generating and directing an information conflict or, to the contrary, in devising
one’s own protective strategy. Social media can also be used to damage or
improve the reputation of an organisation or an individual; Gaines-Ross (2010)
labels this phenomenon, “reputation warfare”. The emission of the WikiLeaks
materials on the Internet in 2010, or the exposing on the Web of nearly
11.5 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca,
in which documents torn out of their contexts were used in new communication
situations with aims different from the original ones (see Singer, Brooking
2018), might serve as good examples here.
The semiotic point of view presented in this book proves all the more useful
considering that social media encompasses a diverse range of communication
styles, including multimedia and short messages, and connects a wide range of
actors; it is a complex network. The internet researcher Andrew Chadwick
(2009) claims that the emergence of hybrid media systems creates a new onto-
logical situation in which the social is constituted by “simultaneous integration
and fragmentation”. Conscious shaping of the conflict of cognitive dimension is
based on the mechanisms and functions referred to above, as well as an
awareness of the peculiarities of social media communication. In the following
subchapter we shall focus on some of these.
On the specificity of the informational influencing on

social media
As pointed out in the Introduction, different parties in information conflicts may
realise the multi-faceted potential of conspiracy theories in the strategic shaping
and directing of the opinion climate. The explanatory frames of conspiracy the-
ories offer simple solutions and they successfully catch the attention of the target
audience; thus, they can fruitfully be applied as a strategic narrative whose aim
is to shape the perception of the situation by its target audience and the latter’s
behaviour. Conspiracy theories make it possible to fortify communal identity but
also to create confusion and sow distrust regarding certain information and
institutions, cause fear and suspicion, and amplify confrontations.
Several researchers of today’s information wars have identified that, in the
past decade, influencing directed against democratic countries and their citizens
has mostly been taking place via social media (Nissen 2015; Singer, Brooking
2018). Social media is an important theatre of information conflicts as it makes
it possible for strategic actors: (1) to retain their loyal supporters and, as it
were, shape and groom them as an audience; (2) to win the support of neutral
audiences; (3) to undermine opponents by disseminating one’s own narrative
(see Nissen 2015, 84–85). Thus Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and other
platforms of participatory media have evolved into the main channels via
which coordinated misinformation is being distributed in time of peace. The
influencing on social media is particularly effective in latent or early phases of
conflicts and crises, for then the audiences are not in a heightened critical
mindset nor yet suspicious of possible misinformation (Nissen 2015, 101).
Below, the adaptation of contemporary influencing to the possibilities of
communication and the signification possibilities of social media will be
discussed in more detail. We rely on several weighty studies on the opinion
climate and meaning-making tendencies of social media, and highlight some
reasons why strategic conspiracy narratives are particularly well-suited to the
narrating practices of social media.
The role of social media influencers in the shaping

of conflict
In an era of participant media, the diversity of public platforms for discussion
has diversified considerably and speakers need not depend on journalism as a
mediating gatekeeper in order to reach a potentially large audience. The paradox
of social media, however, lies in the fact that the number of opinion holders and
discussion platforms has multiplied to such a degree that it is quite likely that
any particular posting will not be noticed by nearly anyone against the back-
ground of a general flood of information. This information overload has
increased the relevance of focusers or filters of attention, which can be
institutions, individual mediators (e.g. social media micro -
celebrities) or
algorithms (e.g. those that mark trending themes), that can bring attention to a
certain topic or an event (Tufekci 2013, 856). On social media, visibility and
virality belong to the most desirable resources in the name of which different
interest groups compete; at the same time, it is also a “force that can be manipu-
lated and sustained by just a few influential social media accounts” (Singer,
Brooking 2018, 335). For instance, such super-spreaders
played an immensely
important role in pushing the Pizzagate conspiracy theories onto the pages of alt-
right social media (Singer, Brooking 2018). It is important to notice that texts
gaining quick popularity are also supported by platform algorithms which “drive
stories quickly, gaining attention to virality and thus further attention”
(O’Loughlin et al. 2017, 34).
The main risk connected with social media influencers lies in the fact that
they wield great power in the development of the social meaning of certain
topics, but their aims and principles of acting often remain hidden from audi-
ences. In the formation of the meaning of contemporary conflicts such
influencers certainly play a key role; their primary aim is to win the visiting
loyalty and trust of a segment of the audience by frequent and interesting post-
ings. Social media influencers bring together information related to particular
topics and many (first and foremost personified) influencers often also dispense
instructions as to how this information should be interpreted. The social media
accounts of particular influencers, and the web pages and groups related to
these, serve as a discussion space where the contents posted can be discussed
with the posters themselves as well as their audiences. Such influencers can
participate in deliberately coordinated networks of influencing activities and be
engaged in the dissemination of strategic talking points dictated from above, as
it were, but their posting activities can also be self -
started, aiming at the
advancement of personal brands, i.e. increasing personal popularity. Often, they
are doing both.
The other main aim of these mediators is advocating their strategic narratives
with audiences and making their content self-evident,
as well as self-spreading
or viral via social media. Several researchers of contemporary dis -and
misinformation campaigns have noted that, in most cases, traditional media also
plays a role in concrete fake news or conspiracy theories becoming viral,
although, as a rule, it does not affirm the content of the information, but notes its
wide spreading on social media (Jantunen 2018; Nissen 2015). At the same time
it is important to note that even though dominant media outlets indicate that it is
a “conspiracy theory” or an unchecked claim spreading on social media when it
comes to such content, the popularity of the particular social media thread(s)
will experience a noticeable rise after the appearance of such media coverage
(Silverman 2015, 3). Thus, the aim of social media influencers is to create posts
that are sufficiently intriguing and absorbing to trigger an extensive flood of
shares, which, in turn, would increase the likelihood of getting over the
threshold of traditional media outlets (this is most easily accomplished in the
case of tabloid newspapers).
Side by side with the growth of the new type of influencers and the appear-
ance of the logic of self-perpetuating
virality, it is important to highlight the
unprecedentedly high proportion of information practices that are directed at
co-experiencing and expressing an immediate reaction, in order to understand
the communication and meaning -making
tendencies characteristic of social
media. The popularity of widespread reactions and of the copying and sharing
functions on numerous social media platforms is seen as connected to the
discussion of social media becoming more affect-or emotion-based and less
argumented (see Andrejevic 2013; Dean 2010; Harsin 2014, 2015; Papacharissi
2014; van Dijck 2013). A large portion of the posts on the timelines of social
media groups or various users is made up of texts consisting of emojis, reaction-
GIFs and content that has been published earlier, the function of which is gener-
ally neither the discussion of the statements made by the conversation partner
nor offering new examples or points of discussion. Such postings rather express
an awareness of a particular topic and the intensity of one’s interest in it and
emotional reactions to it. They make it possible for users to participate in
discussions without taking specific articulated stands (Madisson, Ventsel 2016a,
343–344).
The researchers of misinformation campaigns on social media have noted
that in order to achieve the greatest possible number of ‘like’-s and ‘share’-s,
strategic messages are often packaged as infotainment (Nissen 2015, 50; Singer,
Brooking 2018). They are equipped with entertaining elements (humorous
memes), for instance, stories of strong human interest about victims suffering
from wrongdoing or heroes fighting injustice, as well as sensationalism and
content appealing to shock value. The latter criteria are perfectly met by
conspiracy theories as these attribute extreme malice and amorality to famous
and influential people or institutions. For instance, the Pizzagate conspiracy
theory that sparked major engagement on social media connected Hillary
Clinton with a secret network of Satanists and paedophiles. It is important to
note that a trigger for sharing such posts is not only concern and fear of
conspiracies, but an important role is also played by the “kitsch entertainment
value of conspiracism as a hip, alternative stance” (Butter, Knight 2016, 5), as
well as the wish to test the reactions of one’s network of friends. The
emotionally saturated gossip that has arisen around conspiracy narratives such as
Pizzagate has value as an influencing recourse, even if the audience is aware of
its dubious truthfulness. Namely, it makes it possible to playfully introduce and
ingrain strategically important explanation schemes, as well as familiarise the
audience with the code repertory necessary for the comprehension of future
messages. Studies have shown that even if conspiratorial claims are dismissed,
the mere exposure to conspiratorial discourse will create distrust of official
explanations (Lewandowsky et al. 2017, 355; see Jolley, Douglas 2013).
Affective narrating practices and affective communities

As mentioned above, influencing on social media is particularly effective in an
emerging conflict situation, when the official account of the events still contains
gaps or contradictions. In cases such as, for instance, terrorist attacks,
unexpected data leaks or natural disasters, social media is the main source of
obtaining information and it is then that influencers disseminating strategic nar-
ratives will be able to establish the explanation frames they are offering. Legal
scholars and communication researchers Cas Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule
have identified that after unexpected socially significant events conspiracy cas-
cades are often unleashed on the Internet that explain the events in a language
that is generally understandable and cast doubts on previously accepted views or
institutions that had been perceived as trustworthy. Such cascades of conspiracy
theories offer a certain solution to the information vacuum of the official
channels, but their more important task is triggering intense emotions (e.g. fear,
indignation and disgust) and releasing collective affect (Sunstein, Vermeule
2009, 215). Internet researchers have noticed that in periods when crises are
unleashed, affective communication takes over on social media as people share
their impressions about the degree of their sense of feeling disturbed as well as
their emotions and associations via tweets, reactions and other phatic postings
(see Dean 2010; Papacharissi 2014). At such moments, social media functions
as a point of convergence of affects and as a structure catalysing a common
expression of affect (Prøitz 2017, 10). The importance of such affective
communication practices lies in the fact that in the course of such practice, a
cognitive atmosphere that will surround the topics and a rudimentary way of
preliminary labelling of their collective meaning will be shaped (Papacharissi
2016, 311). The basis for such affective communication lies in the expression of
the joint recognition that some aspects are of key importance in understanding
certain events, but that these are not yet divided into clearly distinct meaningful
units, but seem intuitively meaningful for people. Such making of connections
on the basis of strong emotions and affective recognition and weak or even non-
existent (rational) argumentation has been called a collective gut feeling or
visceral response (Andrejevic 2013; Marmura 2014; van Dijck 2013).
Sunstein and Vermeule (2009, 216) have noted that affective conspiracy
cascades have a direct connection with group polarisation and the formation
of communicative echo chambers. Their conclusion has been corroborated by
quantitative studies dedicated to conspiracy theories spreading on social
media (Bessi et al. 2015a, 2015b; Del Vicario et al. 2016). The affective
common core can turn into a basis for creating a more permanent community.
Such communities are often characterised by selective exposure to conspiracy
cascades based on a collective visceral response and the continuous looking
for validation to convictions they already hold (selective exposure and
confirmation bias). Sunstein and Vermeule (2009, 217) emphasise that in the
formation of echo chambers of conspiracy theories and amplification of the
belief in conspiracies, influencers who initiate interactions that will “lead
people toward a more extreme point in line with what group members initially
believed” play a major role.
Information conflicts and strategic narratives

“Rewritings of history”, “accusations of Russophobia”, “alternative facts” and
many other similar keywords point at a tendency that can be characterised as a
battle for meanings, as a means of enforcing soft power. This is by no means a
new phenomenon. In post-revolution Russia, the poet Vladimir Majakovski
(2013, 217), a leading figure of Agitprop,2 wrote on the role of the word in
mobilising the masses: “The word is commander of the human army”; social the-
ories have been discussing ideological battles at the centre of social analyses
already for centuries. Yet it seems that, in comparison with earlier periods, a
significant constituent part of today’s conflicts (including military conflicts) is
made up by audiences who have a say in the result of the conflict. Noticeably,
the conflicts are fashioned by the meanings constructed in the course of inter-
actions (e.g. logical as well as emotional debates, etc.) taking place in
communication networks (both physical and virtual) (Nissen 2015, 32). Informa-
tion conflicts can be consciously shaped in the course of coordinated action of
state or non-state actors. Thus today, when a major proportion of information is
circulating on the Internet, we typically meet cases of economic sabotage,
e.g. stealing of product development programmes or other spying on trade
secrets. In addition, as was indicated above, the character of war has changed
significantly. Often a conflict can be shaped and directed on the cognitive level
without any attending activities in the other, physical and informational
dimensions, of the information environment. Thus, various influence operations
can be seen as an extension of military psychological operations in order to
cover public affairs, corporate communication, perception management and
similar activities (Larson et al. 2009). For instance, citizen journalists can docu-
ment battles and potentially influence the agenda of the media and political
discourses via this documentation. New media often receives its input from the
social media used by citizen journalists to publicise their work. This book prim-
arily focuses on the cognitive level of the information environment. We explain
how conspiracy theories are being employed in the battle “for the hearts and
minds” of audiences.
An important strategy of undermining and influencing is the creation of
“information fog”. In order to create “information fog”, select pieces of informa-
tion, contradictions, fabrications, misleading information and downright lies are
used. In cases where “information fog” is created successfully, the audience will
not be capable of differentiating between truth and falsehood. Thus Donald
Trump can label media coverage that is critical of him simply as “fake news”,
which is why it is not fake news as such, but the use of the label to counteract
the position of the opponent that has become a kind of strategy (Farkas, Schou
2018). This is a device of context directing, with the aim to make it more
difficult for the audience to make well-considered
decisions. Such activity will
be more effective when it appears as a strategy used in a deliberate and coord-
inated information war. Thus Jantunen (2018, 204) points out that if “in Western
thinking the aim of information war is to unite the target audience and win it
over to one’s own side”, then “in Russian thinking it suffices if confrontations
and controversies appear in the target audience so that it will not function as
united any more”. Different English-language
Russian propaganda channels,
such as Russia Today, Sputnik, and the social media trolls supporting these,
present a challenge that Western governments have to deal with when
psychologically protecting their nations.
Another option is linked with the presentation of an opposing narrative that
attempts to fashion a public system of meanings and to influence the audience’s
decision-making processes while remaining hidden. It is true that the emission
of strategic narratives (that may be deliberately contradictory) into the media,
and disseminating them there, can bring about an effect similar to that of
information fog – a deliberate disorientation of the audience. In the following,
we shall discuss the concept of the strategic narrative and its functions in
information conflicts.
Strategic narrative
The concept of the strategic narrative was first introduced in Lawrence
Freedman’s (2006) paper, which observes how narrative can be used
strategically to challenge opponents in military conflict. Freedman treated
the strategic narrative as a tool with which to problematise the legitimacy of the
powers of the (military) enemy. Yet strategic narratives may include also the
justification of policy objectives or policy responses to economic or security
crises, the formation of international alliances, or the rallying of domestic
public opinion (Antoniades et al. 2010, 5–6). The expansion of the field of
usage of the strategic narrative concept is closely related to the
reconceptualisation of one of its basic categories – the actor – in which it is not
treated as a term belonging strictly to the military field. It is now open to those
beyond the state (Miskimmon et al. 2013, 30–59) and avoids valorising any
particular actor: “the concern with who narrates and who is perceived to be
narrating and what difference this makes to processes of power and influence in
international relation” (O’Loughlin et al. 2017, 52). Therefore, several authors
have been developing the conception of the strategic narrative further in the
framework of international relations and foreign policy analysis (Miskimmon
et al. 2013, 2017; Ringsmose, Børgesen 2011; Dimitriu, De Graaf 2016), info
warfare (Nissen 2015; Ventsel et al. 2019), as well as in conflict studies
(Wetoszka 2016). In this book we attempt to broaden the field in which this
term can be applied to marketing communication and the sphere of alternative
knowledge. In our opinion this is relevant primarily due to the growth of the
role of social media in shaping public opinion and the frequent participation of
several actors beyond the state in shaping and magnifying the narratives
circulating on social media.
To put it broadly, the interpretive structure or narrative helps the audiences
attribute a meaning to what is going on. Lotman has noted that narrating about
an event presupposes the articulation of logical and causal relations – subsidiary
events are arranged into a fixed storyline; simultaneous events that need not
even be connected are reorganised into a consistent and cohesive chain. Telling
a story entails segmentation of the flow of experience, which has been perceived
as continuous, into many concrete units which are thereafter ordered in a
definite way: temporal and causal relations are created with other elements of
the story, and meaningfulness is attributed to the whole story (see Lotman
2000, 170). Narratives are inextricably accompanied by interpretation. There are
no “true stories”, as events are identified and stories are told from specific
perspectives linked to specific interests; they are not found in the world in a
ready-made form (White 2003, 9). But what characteristics make a narrative a
strategic narrative?
Strategic narratives are characterised by their function and intentionality; that
is, they are accompanied by a deliberate intention to shape the meanings of
conflicts in a way desired. As a rule, via their strategic narratives, actors attempt
to justify their action to audiences and influence the latter’s behaviour
(O’Loughlin et al. 2017, 50). Strategic narratives can be described as “means by
which political actors attempt to construct a shared meaning of the past, present,
and future of international politics to shape the behaviour of domestic and inter-
national actors” (Miskimmon et al. 2017, 6). Strategic narratives usually estab-
lish the identity of the active actor (who we are?), a desired destination (what
we want to achieve?), the obstacles related to it and the recommended way of
overcoming these obstacles (Miskimmon et al. 2013, 3).
One of the primary functions of strategic narratives is it offer “a framework
through which conflicts’ past, present and future can be structured in order to
help establish and maintain power in the international system and shape the
context and the system itself” (Nissen 2015, 45). They create a context that
organises various information fragments and guides the meaning-making of the
(social) media audience. “Strategic narratives may be designed to elicit par-
ticular behavior by referring to historical stories in a complicated sort of
interplay and entanglement” (Miskimmon et al. 2017, 1). Thus, strategic narrat-
ives have to take into account the target group’s views and expectations at the
moment, while being aware of topics that are sensitive from the perspective of
the audience’s identity. It is also important to be familiar with the meaning-
making practices of the audience, e.g. whether it has rather adopted an image-
based or a verbal logic of framing messages; what types of communication
styles are usual, etc. Knowing the target audience and the particular
communication context helps to activate the meaning-making mechanisms in
the audience’s memory, if required, that can be used to shape and direct the
interpretation paths of the targeted audience. Thus, influencing often employs
very emotional and/or contradictory themes, combining events that the target
group knows (or, actually, interpretations of these) with others that have been
orchestrated or even fabricated.
From the perspective of the semiotic conflict and the influence of the stra-
tegic narrative, the question of which symbols, texts and other discursive
phenomena known to the target audience have been used to construct the nar-
rative appears to be as important. According to O’Loughlin et al. (2017, 33)
strategic narratives are not so much characterised by an exchange of rational
claims but they rather are an unpredictable, textured and recursive set of over-
lapping ecologies in which history can be mobilised through visuals, symbols
and appeals to emotion. Much of this may be unintentional. As James Liu and
Denis Hilton point out, symbols in cultural memory function as mediators that
create links between the important socio-political events of today and earlier
generations and history (Liu, Hilton 2010). As a significant memory mech-
anism, “symbols carry texts, plot schemas and other semiotic formations from
one stratum of culture to another” (Ventsel 2009b, 19). Two aspects are rel-
evant for us here: a symbol retains its invariant nature in the flow of time, yet
on the other hand, a symbol correlates actively with its cultural context, is
transformed by its influence and transforms it itself (Lotman 2019, 163–164).
Thus, symbols and texts important for the audience3 here fulfil the function of
collective cultural memory. In this role, they exhibit, on the one hand, the
ability of continuous completion and, on the other, of actualising some
aspects of the information saved there, while other aspects are temporarily or
fully forgotten (Lotman, Uspenskij 1975; Lotman 2000, 104). This is why
texts and symbols that are important from the point of view of particular
audience’s common memory serve as a powerful and emotional discursive
device in strengthening in-group ties, often accompanied by “the exclusion of
another cultural group” (Philips DeZalia, Moeschberger 2014, 4). In the
framework of conflict theory Rebekah Phillips DeZalia and Scott
Moeschberger emphasise the function of symbols as cognitive filters and
anchor points for individuals to assimilate and interpret new information in
relation to culture. This filter ultimately helps to shape cognitive attributions
related to group membership and categorisation. In this way, symbols serve to
both enhance and inform social identities strengthening “us/them” and
“in-group/out-group” perspectives (Phillips DeZalia, Moeschberger 2014,
4–5). In the case of accelerated communication mediated by social media, the
use of such symbols is even more relevant; they function like anchor points
whose cognitive reception is based not so much on reflective information
processing, but on emotional and often affective identification (Ventsel,
Madisson 2017).
Of course, strategic uses of narratives and symbols may not always elicit
those results in the audience that the author of the narrative desired. The effect of
strategic inducement may greatly depend on the preliminary attunement of the
audience to the addresser’s intentions, the perceived reliability of the media
channel and other contextual variables (Ventsel et al. 2019).
Methodological challenges
Differently from the artistic narratives presented in particular works of literature,
non-fictional narratives (including strategic narratives) are often scattered and
intertwined. For example, they can pass through different communication
channels and texts, varying from news and press releases to social media post-
ings and comments. A single media text can contain several, sometimes contra-
dictory, narratives. Similarly, the real aim is scattered and the actor of the
strategic narrative is often hidden in different texts because the success of
discursive power (in the current case, of strategic narratives) greatly depends on
how its direct aim can be disguised from the audience (Foucault 1977).
Therefore, to a certain extent, the unity of the narrative and its aim are always a
mental construction created during the analysis.
According to Miskimmon et.al three levels should be differentiated between
when analysing strategic narratives: formation, which addresses how narratives
are formed by actors; projection, which addresses how narratives are projected
(or narrated) and contested in (social) media, by different spokespersons, etc.;
and reception, which addresses how narratives are received by targeted audi-
ence and how they shape the future actions of the audience (Miskimmon et al.
2017, 9). The present work primarily focuses on the levels of formation and
projection. The main methodological problems on these levels mostly
concentrate around the deliberate quality of the strategic narratives – how to
detect a certain shaper or actor of strategic narratives and approach the
intentional (and sometimes manipulative) formation and projection of narrat-
ives circulating on social media, and how to analyse the targeting of the audi-
ence? In the context of social media, it is more difficult to make claims about
the intention of policymakers, journalists and others involved. Critical
statements about “malevolent intent or supportive claims about goodwill both
appear weak without actual firsthand contact [who is forming strategic
narratives – authors’ comment M-L.M, A.V]” (O’Loughlin et al. 2017, 51). The
same problem has been pointed out by Jantunen, according to whom the asym-
metry of means of influencing suggests that the agents and their motives will
often remain increasingly more unclear in the future. The difficulty in their
attribution has been inscribed in the asymmetric means of influencing (Jantunen
2018, 49).
This is why O’Loughlin et al. recommend that we “think imaginatively about
constructing extremely systematic analysis of those actors’ statements, actions,
and reactions and about how inferences about strategic intention can be
validated” (2017, 51). We are aware of the difficulties of identifying the
intentionality which drives the creation of certain social media content, and
elaborate Eco’s (2005) concept of Model Reader/Model Author and Lotman’s
concept of the structure of audience (1982) in the context of strategic narrative
analysis to explain the techniques of targeting an audience that are always
related with audience memory, and the problem of intentionality of the actor in
social media communication.
The Model Reader and the image of the audience
The basis for influencing via a strategic narrative is the communication between
the author, the text and the recipient, and, as was mentioned earlier, (successful)
communication presumes that the communication partners have a common com-
ponent in their memories. For the message to meet the aims desired by the
sender, its interpretational aspect has to be “part of its generation mechanism: to
generate a text means to trigger a strategy a component of which is foreseeing
the other party’s moves” (Eco 2005, 61). In the eyes of Eco, the recipient is
always postulated as an operator who in a real situation of text interpretation
actualises semantic, syntactic, etc., codes, uses meanings known to them earlier,
creates links between different parts of the text and intertextual links with other
texts. Activity on the part of the reader is added by the author who consciously
writes into the text “the unsaid” in addition to what is said (Eco 2005, 57–58).
The “unsaid” can consist of what is culturally taken for granted, but also, the
other way round, in codes known only to a limited group that make it possible
for the members of that group to uncover the text’s full meaning potential, while
the text remains incomprehensible to those not familiar with the code. In this
context, phatic communication of conspiracy theories will be discussed below. It
is of considerable importance in communicating on social media, for often the
semiotic units that trigger the readers’ activity are given as excerpts, not as a
clear narrative.
From the point of view of the actor (the term used by Miskimmon et al.) or
author (the term used by Eco)4 of a strategic narrative, taking into consideration
such predicting of the possible interpretative moves of the reader and the
directing of these is, on the one hand, caused by pragmatic goals. The author
wishes that his or her message be understood in a way that suits him or her. On
the other hand, another reason lies in the optimisation of communicative
activity, for in a situation in which each constituent part of the message has to be
defined for the reader, the message would become too extensive and lose the
audience’s attention. In this connection, Lotman (1982) speaks of two types of
text construction that proceed from the image of the audience and are different in
principle. First, there are texts that are addressed to any addressee in which the
scope of the addressee’s memory is constructed as an essential minimum for
each speaker of the language (other than that communication and understanding
would prove impossible, i.e. speaking would occur in a private language). The
memory scope here is impersonal, abstract and only contains a condensed
minimum. It is natural that the poorer the memory, the more detailed and
expanded the message must be and the less appreciated are ellipses and
omissions, the blanks to be filled in, as it were (Lotman 1982). Speaking in the
context of the strategic narrative, encoding of the blanks is an indispensable step
by the former, for otherwise the reader might detect the manipulation. The other
text type, on the other hand, considers the audience as a particular addressee
known to the speaker personally (Lotman 1982).5 In case of both text types it is
important that the author of the message form the scope of the memory of the
reader, as, after receiving the text of the message, the audience can, thanks to the
structure of human memory, recall what was previously unknown to them
(Lotman 1982). Thus, on the one hand the author presses on the audience the
nature of their memory (helps the reader remember via using certain signs); on
the other hand the text still retains an image of the audience (that is potentially
hidden in the reader).
In the strategy of text creation, as in any other strategy, the idea of the
receiver’s (in this case conceived of as the potential audience, the reader of the
message) capability of reading the text is crucial. Yet it is important to
emphasise that the competence of the receiver does not necessarily equal the
competence of the sender. In order to guarantee a decoding that would be as
accurate as possible, the author constructs a Model Reader while creating the
text, who in decoding the text would depart from a strategy that would be as
similar as possible to that of the author of the narrative when creating it. Ideally,
the Model Reader should be able to actualise the same competences (codes,
context, etc.) as those which the author desires should be actualised when
reading the text. Although, on the one hand, the authors presume competence
from the Model Reader, on the other hand they establish it themselves. In a
typical situation the members of the audience have different and fragmentary
bits of memory concerning an event and its possible reasons, which means that
the reader lacks sufficient competence regarding some connotations. If the
author of the strategic narrative is capable of uniting these bits of memory with
an explanation scheme related to a strategic narrative (e.g. conspiracy theory),
they can activate a coherent interpretative horizon in the audience, which in its
unity has the potential to guide the readers’ future interpretative paths. Thus,
each text also builds its readers itself (Eco 2005, 63), first by shaping the target
audience in a strategic narrative, which will later make it possible to achieve the
desired aims via using this narrative.
In addition to the Model Reader, the methodology offered by Eco also makes it
possible to analyse the self-images
of the sender, i.e. the Model Author. This
becomes particularly relevant in cases when the author’s position has not been
presented explicitly (e.g. deictically, using the first person singular), but is revealed
through mediated discourses. In strategic narratives, the author’s position is often
hidden for its excessive explication could reveal the intentions of the author of the
narrative and possible manipulation. In the context of information war, the media
texts often refer to “experts” and “former insiders” who confirm the positions of
the main narrative. The audience is more likely to trust a critical claim, comment
or even media content based on erroneous information if it comes from several
sources or if it is being mediated via an authoritative source. Therefore, we can
often hear in Russia’s English-language
media channels such as RT and Sputnik
comments critical of the West coming from “a famous German economist”,
“a recognised member of the European Parliament”, “a popular politician, former
Foreign Minister” or “a well-known
British political analyst”. The Model Author
of the strategic narrative appears as an in-text
role that is pointed at in various
ways: through language usage, the function, the role adopted, etc.
According to Eco, the Model Reader and the Model Author are thus types of
textual strategy, or a set of succeeding conditions that are textually determined
and can thus be studied at the textual level. The conditions of the strategy have
to be met for the text to be able to actualise in its potential content (Eco
2005, 69), which is even more important when we speak of the difficulties of
attributing intentionality in the case of social media texts, which was discussed
earlier. In organising the textual strategy, the question thus arises how the author
can presume the competence on part of the audience, which would help the
reader to build the text in a way that suits its author. To actualise the discursive
strategies of the Model Reader and the Model Author, the reader has to relate to
the system of codes and subcodes6 or other semiotic conditions, some which we
are pointing out below:
• A basic dictionary that determines the elementary semantic qualities of

expressions, that function as minimal meaning postulates or implication
rules (Eco 2005, 84). A “married bachelor” is a mistake/error on this
elementary level. Each word is accompanied by a certain field of meaning
that determines their possible relation with other words belonging to a
similar semantic field. What is important in our context is the choice of
words that starts to direct the interpretation strategy. The change in the
meanings of the terms used as labels in political rhetoric serves as a good
example. For example, the term “Russophobia” has been used with both
internal and foreign political aims in mind and historically, the power elite of
the Kremlin has brought together a great deal of information flows that are
negatively disposed towards Russia under the narrative of “Russophobia”
(Feklyunina 2013; Peterson 2013). After the breakup of the Soviet Union the
accusations of ‘Russophobia’ have primarily been connected with the
expansion of NATO and the European Union, seen as activities directed
directly against Russia. Yet it is important that there are attempts to re-
contextualise it, shifting it from being against the Kremlin’s politics to being
against Russian -
Slavonic (Eastern) cultures, while discursive attempts at
making Russophobia equal with anti -
Semitism have been added to this
(Darczewska, Żochowski 2015). In case establishing such a link turns out to
be successful, it will be able to use it as a strategy in fashioning the
construction of the Model Reader that will shape further interpretation paths
in the auditorium.
• Rhetorical and stylistic hyper-encoding (Eco 2005, 85), in which the reader
should be capable of detecting both figurative expressions as well as those
with specific stylistic connotations (the author has to take this into con-
sideration in creating the Model Reader). Depending on the character of the
target group of the message, the strategic narrative should contain refer-
ences to the peculiarities of the language use predominant in the audience as
well as its slang, the metaphors they would understand, and the audience’s
expectations regarding the boldness of speech and the representation of the
opponents, etc. The narrative of Russophobia that is being skilfully spread
by the Russian media exploits the patterns of representing the confrontation
between the USA and the USSR from the second half of the twentieth
century – the NATO allies of the USA are described as puppets, the citizens
of the Baltic countries as Fascists. The latter label was typically used for
Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians while the Baltic nations were occupied
by the USSR in 1940–1991 (Ventsel 2016b). On the one hand, this has been
caused by the demographic peculiarity of the audience, i.e. part of it is
formed by a population who used to live in the Soviet propaganda space.
On the other hand, it should be admitted that there is the possibility that
semiotic systems and mechanisms of meaning-making, in this case ways of
representing the enemy, can become adapted to new circumstances. What
changes is the content, yet the basic mechanism of semiosis will be trans-
ferred, passed on in time (Ventsel 2007). This can also be observed in case
of the following characteristic.
• Inferences of ordinary scenarios that determine a certain framework of
action for participants in narrative (Eco 2005, 86). For example, the stra-
tegic narrative is being managed, based on a scenario of war. In an example
of Russophobia, it might point at Russia as a fortress surrounded by
enemies. The choice of the scenario shapes the word use that often refers to
parallels with war from history (parallels of the Cold War, links between
Nazism and Russophobia, or words directly belonging to the war discourse
such as “anti -
Russophobic front”, etc.). Such frames are elements of
cognitive knowledge and representations of the “world” that make it pos-
sible for us to commit the basic cognitive acts, such as, for instance, the act
of perception, linguistic understanding and activities (van Dijk 1998).
• Inferences of intertextual scenarios, in which the author of text has to take
into account the reader’s earlier reading experience and familiarity with
genres when constructing the Model Reader (Eco 2005, 88). Differently
from the above, here we must tackle rhetorical and narrative schemes that
are related to a narrower cultural competence, and the creator of the stra-
tegic narrative should avoid such infringement of the genre. The passion
story of Russophobia has similarities with religious passion stories. Also
here we have a persecuted and humiliated nation (the humiliation
accompanying the loss of the Cold War), that is rising from its knees again
(“Russia is rising from its knees again”) and there is one leader who will
make such salvation possible (Alexievich 2016). Exploiting the
foundational plots from the cultural memory in the formation of strategic
narratives potentially increases the latter’s success in finding recognition
with audiences, particularly as concerns communication on social media,
and in including the audience in creating and disseminating subnarratives
that support the main narrative.
• Ideological hypercoding, in which the narrative will shape the Model
Reader’s ideological contingency that will take into consideration the ideo-
logical views of the empirical reader (Eco 2005, 92). This can be illustrated
by the above example of the strategic narrative of Russophobia concerning
and the attempts that have been made to represent it as a new form of anti-
Semitism. If such an anti-Semitic connotation becomes established together
with the narrative of Russophobia in the interpretational world of the audi-
ence, this will open a possibility to ward off criticism from political oppon-
ents and an explicit legitimation of Russia’s state-endorsed policy.
The list of codes and subcodes is certainly not exhaustive and has been
presented in a fairly general manner in this subchapter. Part II will explain them
in the context of strategic conspiracy narratives and show their function in the
discursive shaping of the conflict, the Model Reader and the Model Author.
The Model Reader and the Model Author as a means of

analysing strategic narratives
By adding the Model Author and the Model Reader as text strategic types
deductible from an internal analysis of the discourse itself to the treatment of the
strategic narrative, we are suggesting one possible solution to the problem for-
mulated at the beginning of the “Methodological challenges” section of this
book: who the real actor (be it a policymaker, a marketing strategist or a pro-
jector of narratives) is refers to the problem of the intentionality of the actor of
the strategic narrative and the question of how to achieve strategical aims which
concern targeting the audience. The issue is even more challenging in the case of
social media because it enables multi-directional communication in which all
people who have access to the Internet and computers (and who are not
restricted by other constraints, e.g. censorship) can participate. The content of a
social media narrative can spread non-linearly across several platforms, while its
producer’s hands are off it, which means that the audiences themselves are
allowed to connect important content points. Thus, it is always difficult to say
where someone’s strategic calculation ends and where the active narrative cre-
ation by the interpreters following their own interpretation paths starts.
In case of the strategic narrative it is important that the aims reached for by
the narrative, that to a greater or lesser extent also have to be expressed in the
texts circulating on social media, would at the same time shape the unity of the
Model Reader. The Model Reader points at the author’s understanding of a
segment of the audience to which the author has addressed the message (particu-
larly an artistic text) and what Lotman calls the image of the audience (Lotman
1982). Unlike artistic narratives whose author’s intention may guide the reader
towards multiple paths of parallel reading, the interpretation possibilities of stra-
tegic narratives are limited by the nature of conflict and the particular purpose
desired by the author, as well as by the specifics of the target audience.
Naturally, the real reader may have some background knowledge as to the
intentions of the real actor, e.g. the reader may have a justified suspicion as to
the honesty of the creator of the message. Such an attitude on part of the reader
that directs the interpretation process is likely to undermine the achieving of the
aims aspired to by the strategic narrative, but it also points at the simple fact that
the author of the narrative was not able to take into sufficient consideration the
background knowledge of the real audience when shaping the Model Reader of
strategic narrative. Eco’s model poses questions not so much about the author’s
real intentions, but rather the intentions expressed in the text. It is only these that
the audience can agree with or refrain from.
In addition to explaining the problems of the actor’s real intentions, the con-
cepts of the Model Author make it possible to avoid the sharp distinction
between the actual creator of narratives and the projectors of narratives. As was
mentioned above, the problem of attributing agency is one of the most important
methodological challenges in communication on social media. In our model,
both the real actor as well as the users of social media who develop the narrative
further – the narrative magnifiers or projectors in Miskimmon’s terms – here
make up a single Model Author, whose unity becomes apparent via detecting the
aims that they seek to meet. The narrative is made strategic first and foremost by
the unity of the aim that can be achieved with its help, not by any particular
author behind it. The unity of aims is constructed around the conflict presented
in narrative which in its turn is related to the unity of the Model Reader shaped
in it or an understanding of a certain segment of the audience who is the first to
be influenced. In principle, we could imagine a situation in which the aim of
some influencing information action that the Russian state has been wishing for
is magnified by a paid army of trolls hired by the US military, or a company
whose market share is being threatened is doing the marketing for a competing
company. But is such a self-undermining activity really likely?
It does not mean that the differentiation between the actor of a strategic nar-
rative and its amplifier is irrelevant. It is very significant if we want to make
somebody take responsibility for manipulations. For example, in the case of the
interference in the 2016 US elections we are not so much interested in the pos-
sible amplifiers that worked for a St. Petersburg troll factory, called the Internet
Research Agency, but in the actors who were giving commands to those trolls,
i.e. Russian state authorities. However, this level can be studied with other meth-
odological approaches (e.g. algorithm analysis), while our book presents a
framework of qualitative analysis that makes it possible to explain how the
social media threads of American users were saturated with conflicts as they
were strategically influenced so that people started spreading narratives that pos-
sibly overlapped with Russian strategic aims. Eventually, it was Americans who
participated in the elections, and not trolls from 55 Savushkina Street,
St. Petersburg.7 Thus, those who formed strategic narratives (Russian state
authorities) and those who deliberately (Russian trolls) or inadvertently
(American social media users) amplified the narratives worked in a direction
which possibly resulted in influencing the election results.
Notes
1 Information warfare can be seen to encompass various other concepts; in this book the
following concepts outlined by Brazzoli (2007) are considered: Network warfare (or
cyberwarfare) – offensive and defensive actions in relation to information,
communications, and computer networks and infrastructure; Command and control
warfare – actions taken to manage, direct, and coordinate the movement and actions of
various forces; seeks to protect this ability in friendly forces and disrupt the ability for
an adversary; Intelligence-based warfare – actions to degrade an adversary’s
intelligence cycle while protecting one’s own; Psychological operations – intended to
alter the perceptions of a target audience to be favorable to one’s objectives.
2 “Agitprop” is a word for the (communist) political propaganda applied in the Soviet
Union that was spread among audiences mostly via popular media, such as literature,
games, pamphlets, poems, films, etc. The concept was adopted in Soviet Russia as an
abbreviation of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda (отдел агитации и
пропаганды).
3 The word “symbol” has several different meanings within the humanities, including
semiotics (see Todorov 1977; Lotman 2000). In this book we denote by “symbol”,
content that is in its turn an expression plane for some other content that as a rule is
culturally more valuable (Lotman 2000, 104–105). An important characteristic of a
symbol is its delimitation, i.e. on the content plane a symbol always is a text that can
be differentiated from the surrounding semiotic context (ibid.). Thus, a single sign
(e.g. a tricolour flag as a group’s identification mechanism), as well as a text (the Bible
as a symbol of the Christian religion) can function as a symbol.
4 In this book the concept of actor of strategic narrative and Umberto Eco’s term
empirical author are treated as functionally synonymical.
5 Provisionally, we can label the types as text construction types oriented either towards
the internal or the external audiences.
6 In a most general way, the code can be defined as a regular correspondence between
the content and the expression.
7 The address of a notorious troll factory in St. Petersburg.
2 A semiotic approach to
conspiracy theories
Previously, we have explained the shaping and strategic amplification of

information conflicts on social media and the possibilities of their semiotic
study. In this chapter, the main emphasis is laid on conspiracy theories and the
specificity of the meaning-making
connected with them. We provide a brief
survey of the characteristics and tendencies that researchers from various discip-
linary backgrounds have highlighted as the peculiarities of contemporary
conspiracy culture dominated by social media. We focus on trends in conspiracy
theories that have emerged in connection with the platform affordances of social
media (copying, creating of multimodal texts and the possibility of sharing
reactions) as well as the peculiarities of spreading conspiracy theories in net-
works mediating strategic messages. In the following chapter, we introduce
communicative functions and provide a semiotic model of conspiracy theories.
Studying conspiracy theories spreading on the

Internet
The majority of academic studies dedicated to conspiracy theories in the past
decade see the Internet as the most important channel for spreading conspiracy
theories. It is believed that this has been the main factor in the explosive growth
in the popularity of conspiracy theories and even in their entering the main-
stream in Western countries (Ballinger 2011, 3; Bergmann 2018, 154; Soukup
2008, 9). Although bursts of conspiracy theories have been detected as having
occurred in culture centuries ago (e.g. the witch hunts of the seventeenth
century – see Lotman 2007), 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. In addition
to spreading conspiracy theories quickly and across geographical boundaries,
social media makes it possible to visualise the popularity of any conspiracy
theory of interest through likes, shares and comments, and to indicate who
among a circle of friends has reacted to it. This information is relevant for it may
diminish the risk of being the first in one’s circle of acquaintances to bring up
the topic of a new and preposterous conspiracy theory and thus deserve the label
of a paranoid person (Ventsel, Madisson 2017, 97).
A semiotic approach to conspiracy theories 33
A rather widespread position is that the Internet functions as a Petri dish
cultivating conspiracy theories, for the possibility of creating hyperlinks
afforded by it suits particularly well the tendency of conspiracy theorists to heap
together abundant evidence for the purported existence of a conspiracy and
create all possible kinds of associations between phenomena, events or agents
that seem to be fairly separate at first glance (see Dean 2002, 97–98; Fenster
2008, 160; Weimann 2003, 348; Soukup 2008, 13). Conspiracy culture that has
become adapted to several social media platforms has started to use multimodal
means of signification and increasingly often conspiracy theories are finding
(audio)visual expression (Ballinger 2011, 245; Soukup 2008, 8). In addition to
providing various links, contemporary conspiracy theorists also create intriguing
whole texts in the spirit of participant culture or prosumptions based on mixing
several web resources (Aupers 2012, 27; Ballinger 2011, 244; Madisson 2016b,
199). Thus, video collages or memes pointing at conspiracies are born. Never
before has the visualising of imagined conspiracies been so effortless and easy.
Photographic comparisons, zooming in on certain elements and the possibility of
creating differences in colour and contrast, allow conspiracy theorists to vividly
demonstrate “visual signs of conspiracy” to their audiences (Ballinger 2011,
245; Caumanns, Önnerfson 2020). One of the more widespread practices is the
detection and analysis of popular symbols of conspiracy (the triangle, the
pyramid, the pentagram, the all-seeing eye, special hand signs attributed to
secret societies, the typical eyes and flaky skin characteristic of reptiles) in all
kinds of media texts (see Stæhr 2014).
Contrary to the popular opinion that evolved in the spirit of moral panic,
many researchers are of the opinion that the expansion of conspiracy theories
into online communication does not reflect a conspiracy panic taking hold of
the masses, nor even an existence of beliefs in conspiracies considerably
stronger than in earlier times (Fenster 2008, 245; Weimann 2003, 348–349; van
Prooijen, Douglas 2018, 4). The majority of visitors of conspiracy websites are
characterised by a half-cynical, half-serious attitude, both to the official
versions of the events affecting communal life as well as to the conspiracy the-
ories (Knight 2002, 6). Online communities that mediate conspiracy theories
often do not offer one coherent explanation of the events, while outlining
several alternative versions of the same events is fairly widespread (Knight
2008, 186). Contemporary conspiracy culture invites one to draw one’s own
conclusions and to doubt everything, including evidence and explanations
offered by other conspiracy theorists (Knight 2008, 192). Visiting websites
proposing conspiracy theories is, among other things, motivated by the com-
ponent of entertainment (Johnson 2018), occasionally these pages lead their
visitors to join open-ended, self-perpetuating interpretation games that make it
possible to surf through various images, videos and diagrams and construct
different versions of the conspiracy (Soukup 2008, 20). It is important to note
that interactive conspiracy sites that bring together many users blend
imaginative and humorous descriptions of conspiracies with explanations
expressing sincere concern and fear of conspiracies. Thus, memes ridiculing
conspiracy theories and their creators (Piata 2016) and satirical parodies (Bessi
et al. 2015a) may become components in so-called serious stories pointing at
omnipotent conspiracies (Stano 2020), and the other way round. In summary,
navigators in conspiracy webs will find it difficult to “distinguish fact from
fiction; real evidence from false evidence and, ultimately, to discover the real
truth underneath the pile of interpretations and Babylonian language games”
(Aupers 2012, 27). So, they scan the bits of information they come across
(including those deriving from the so-called official information sphere)
through a lens of permanent scepticism and trust the content that corroborates
their own intuition or gut feeling.
On the role of conspiracy theories in the rhetoric of

radicalising social media groups
On the other hand, several studies have brought forward the idea that conspiracy
theories contribute to the introversion of social media groups concentrating
around extremist world views and to the radicalisation of the ideas prevailing
there (Askanius, Mylonas 2015; Bessi et al. 2015a, 2016; Lewandowsky et al.
2017; Madisson, Ventsel 2016a; Sunstein, Vermeule 2009; Singer, Brooking
2018) and can even lead to concrete acts of violence. These are mostly con-
nected with alt-right “lone wolves” who have become radicalised in web com-
munities and find an expression in conspiracy theories for translating their vague
feeling of social oppression and injustice into the language of concrete aims
(Griffin 2003, 47; Madisson 2016b, 190). Anders Behring Breivik, who was
influenced by Eurabian conspiracy theories (see Fekete 2012; Turner-Graham
2014), and Brenton Tarrant, who in turn was inspired by Breivik’s conspiracy
theory (Önnerfors 2019), serve as notorious examples of such radicalisation.
This radicalisation pattern also characterised Edgar Maddison Welch who made
an armed rush into Comet Ping Pong pizzeria to put an end to a conspiracy of
Satanist human traffickers and paedophiles (see Bergmann 2018; Johnson 2018;
Singer, Brooking 2018).
Studies point out that social media users who actively follow conspiracy
threads tend to be of the erroneous opinion that belief in conspiracies is wide-
spread in society (Lewandowsky et al. 2017, 362). Also, being present in such
an information space will considerably strengthen antagonistic attitudes towards
official explanations (e.g. information obtained from scientists or government
institutions) (Einstein, Glick 2015; Jolley, Douglas 2013; Lewandowsky et al.
2013; Madisson 2016a; Howard 2013). Several studies have found that different
populist or even extremist movements have been systematically spreading
conspiracy theory threads on social media in order to strengthen the victim
mentality mobilising the audience and the oppositional attitudes to the political
elite and mainstream media (Berger 2016; Bergmann 2018; Kasekamp et al.
2019; Krasodomski-Jones 2019). The problem of communities mediating
conspiracy theories that facilitate the formation of echo chambers and social
polarisation has been lately recognised also by social media platforms, as
YouTube (Murphy 2018) and Twitter (Wong 2018a) have made announcements
regarding taking specific means to counter this.
Conspiracy theories as part of strategic communication

Several studies have treated the spreading and/or amplifying of conspiracy the-
ories on social media as part of strategic communication. Due to their attention-
grabbing effect caused by their intriguing and sensational nature, conspiracy
theories make it possible to draw valuable social media traffic to accounts
representing a certain agenda; for instance, it has been suggested that it this
reason that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign team (Singer, Brooking
2018; Johnson 2018; Krasodomski-Jones 2019) and accounts connected with
the Kremlin troll network (Broniatowski et al. 2018; Kragh, Åsberg 2017;
Marwick, Lewis 2017) have been spreading anti-vaccination conspiracy the-
ories. It has been pointed out that both accounts connected with the Kremlin and
with Trump disseminate content created by Alex Jones, one of the most popular
and influential conspiracy theorists (Benkler et al. 2018; Marwick, Lewis 2017).
Connections with Jones’s strong personal brand and the image of Infowars as a
radical anti-elitist media platform make it possible for their messages to gain
credibility in the eyes of the audience segment who doubt the so-called official
explanations. Also, studies have pointed out that Russia continuously spreads
anti-Western conspiracy theories with the help of sock puppets1 and bots that
allow them to sow distrust of other national governments and media into their
audiences and magnify the pre-existing rifts in societies (Pomerantsev, Weiss
2014; Flaherty, Roselle 2018; Jantunen 2018). Both Infowars and the Russian
media channels Sputnik and RT, which serve the aims of Russia’s information
influencing, suggest that their audiences themselves should obtain evidence of
conspiracies in which Western regimes are engaged from the content mediated
by Wikileaks and other leaking sites (Johnson 2018; Yablokov 2015). Such
sources are attractive to conspiracy-interested audiences as they are secret and
offer abundant informational raw material, as it were, that can be given a
meaningful shape by placing it into a framework of conspiracy theories
(Jantunen 2018, 121).
Scholars of strategic communication have noted that conspiracy theories are
also being used in order to exhaust and disorient the audience or to create an
information fog that was briefly discussed in the subchapter “Information
conflicts and strategic narratives”. Information fog is an influencing technique in
which the interpreter is deliberately fed narratives that are in conflict with one
another, while the aim of the activity is to generate general distrust and the
feeling that it is virtually impossible to differentiate between right and wrong
(Nissen 2015, 11). Dissemination of conspiracy theories that concern the same
event and in principle exclude one another has been noticed, for instance, in
Russia’s strategic communication (Flaherty, Roselle 2018; Ventsel et al. 2019;
Yablokov 2015). An explosive spread of conspiracy narratives creating such
information fog could be observed after the revelation of Sergei and Yulia
Skripal’s poisoning case in 2018 (Livingston, Nassetta 2018). A secret network
of Russophobes, the British Secret Service, Georgia, Ukraine, Sweden and the
US were pointed at as responsible for the event; in addition, a theory was
circulated that there had been no poisoning and the event had simply been
staged in order to damage Russia’s reputation. When using information fog it is
important to sketch emphatically the contradictions between different accounts
and to repeat stories that are in conflict with each other, thus the audience will
remain clueless while aware that something suspicious is going on and it is
worthwhile being extremely sceptical about any reports on the topic (Ventsel
et al. 2019). In such conditions, interpreters tend to proceed from the affective
recognition, or the so-called collective gut feeling, shaped in the echo chambers
of social media that connects unpleasant events and developments with a crim-
inal force (see Marmura 2014).
As was pointed out previously, this book first and foremost treats conspiracy
theories in the framework of strategic communication. A large part of the battle
for the “hearts and minds” of the audience is to a greater or lesser degree con-
nected with different aspects of identity creation. In the following subchapter we
concentrate on the identity-creation
functions of conspiracy theories that can be
used in order to achieve strategic aims.
The functions of identity creation in conspiracy

theories
It was pointed out in the subchapter “Information conflicts and information
warfare” that influencing activities focused on the cognitive level of the con-
temporary information war are usually based on the inclusion and exclusion
logic of identity creation. For the disseminators of strategic conspiracy theories,
the constructing of conflict situations in which a narrative that has been shaped
simultaneously attempts to offer possible solutions to conflict is of fundamental
importance. Such a conflict or problem is always constructed in the sense of
being dependent on the particular articulation processes. Following the theory of
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, identity discourse is understood here as an
outcome of the practice of articulation, which establishes a relation among ele-
ments in such a way that the identity of elements is modified as a result of the
articulation (Laclau, Mouffe 1985). In the context of social media, the
contestation of dominant discourses and identity creation is expressed via
accepted as well as unaccepted (misinformation, trolling, etc.) actions, and it is
predominantly associated with the demand for recognition of identification of
participants in communication (Dahlberg 2011, 861; Dahlgren 2006). It is
important to note that the field of application of the concept of discourse is not
only limited to writing or speech, but that it refers to any system of elements
where relations play a constitutive role.
Generally speaking, a conspiracy theory has been defined as an articulation of
an unpleasant event as being the result of a conspiracy. “Conspiracy theory is a
proposed explanation of some historical event (or events) in terms of the significant
casual agency of relatively small group of persons – conspirators – acting in
secret” (Keeley 1999, 116). These interpretative frames are often in conflict with
other ways of modelling the world. Conspiracy theories have become an
important device for the re-allocation of power between different actors and an
efficient element in socio-political
strategies (Yablokov 2015). This means that
conspiracy theories play a significant role in the articulation and legitimisation of
identities (Madisson 2016a). Conspiracy theories do not only give explanations to
why we are beset by tragic misfortunes, but also sketch (of course, with varying
degrees of explicitness) the level that explains how the event occurred and how it
affects us, i.e. the particular time -
space of actions, the relationship of the
conspirators with the existing institutions and the functioning principles of their
various manipulation techniques, etc. (Madisson 2014; see Armstrong 2009).
In the following we present the dominants of identity creation in the
conspiracy-theoretical discourse and its main socio-communicative functions.
The dominant may be defined as the focusing component of a meaningful semi-
otic unity: it rules, determines and transforms the remaining components. It is the
dominant which guarantees the integrity of the structure (Jakobson 1971a, 82). If
we analyse a conspiracy theory as a semiotic unit, we shall be able to distinguish
a dominant that will determine the general meaning of the conspiracy theory and
the function it fulfils.
Symbolic function of conspiracy theories of identity creation

As mentioned above, any formation of social identities necessarily involves
inclusion/exclusion relations and “associated discursive contestation, where
discourse is understood as a contingent and partial fixation of meaning that
constitutes and organizes social relations (including identities, objects, and
practices)” (Dahlberg 2011, 861). The communication of conspiracy theorists is
characterised by strongly polarised identity creation in which an antagonistic
opposition of “us” and “them” serves as an important dominant. The articulation
of such an identity based on an antagonistic opposition and the belief in its
relevance certainly vary, but this is a typical opposition characteristic of various
conspiracy theories (Ventsel 2016b). The information field of conspiracy the-
ories is usually united by the conviction that the greater part of contemporary
social processes are an immediate result of a malicious conspiracy (Madisson
2014) and that the world is being conquered by an avaricious and corrupt elite
(in most interpretations also perceived as implicitly malevolent) that operates in
secrecy. Its aim is to submit the whole world to its global authoritarian regime.
According to the English historian and political scientist Roger Griffin
conspiracy theorists consider the cultural homogenisation, globalising economy
and mass migration that concern the whole world to be an indicator of the
success and omnipresence of such conspiracy. In connection with this, not only
passive complaints about the decadence of the prevailing world order are
uttered, but often also ideas for a radical reform of the world system are articu-
lated (Griffin 2002, 49).
Conspiracy theories spreading today combine classic plot types of conspiracy
theories and antagonists: freemasons, political elites of any country, Jews,
Catholics, aliens. Antagonists may vary from politically extremist explanations
to pseudoscientific or spiritual fragments (Barkun 2003, 182–184). The
explosive growth of the accessibility and dissemination of information brought
about by hypermedia has only made the spectrum more varied (Dean 2002,
97–98; Fenster 2008, 160–161). History is not a chaotic process: there is no
accident, fate or contingency in history. In the words of the French sociologist
Julien Giry and Turkish historian Doğan Gürpınar, if everything has a unique
cause, everything is reducible to conspiracy theories and consequently some
totally contradictory situations must be seen as different manifestations of the
(same) conspiracy. The symbolic function of conspiracy theories suggests an
apparently coherent historical narration (Giry, Gürpına 2020) that constitutes the
world as two sides in a permanent conflict situation. Thus, one of the main
functions of conspiracy theories overlaps with a function of strategic
narratives – to offer an organising and meaningful narrative to the contingency
of history.
Conspiracy theories as mobilisers of communities

Another important function characteristic of the world models of conspiracy the-
ories is the mobilising function. Conspiracy theories reduce various negative
social developments and misfortunes to the active agency of Evil. Evil can and
should be fought against, either by revealing its minions or neutralising it in
another way. Who embodies the function of Evil is, in principle, contingent and
depends on the socio-political
situation (Madisson 2014). According to Svetlana
Boym, the dedicated creators of conspiracy theories have a heightened sense of
mission and have been expelled to subcultures unknown to the general public,
much like the conspirers themselves, yet they nevertheless attempt to thwart the
schemes of the conspirators (1999, 7). As conspiracy theories point out a
singular enemy responsible for everything evil, they otherwise fulfil a function of
mobilisation: they offer a means of defence to those who feel themselves to be
harmed (Giry, Gürpına 2020). What is important at this point is the sociological
observation that conspiracy theories are especially likely to be endorsed by those
who are convinced that their group is not valued or acknowledged enough by
others (Golec de Zavala et al. 2009; van Prooijen, Douglas 2018). Such feeling is
linked to an increased sensitivity to threats (Cichocka 2016; Golec de Zavala
et al. 2016).
In this context, we can conceptualise the conspiracy theory as a process of
meaning-making whose objective is “the transformation of a social relation
which constructs a subject in a relationship of subordination” (Laclau, Mouffe
1985, 153; see also Laclau 1990, 172; Marchart 2007, Ch. 2), and the conflict
contained in conspiracy theories is directly presented as being of public
consequence (Howarth, Glynos 2007, 115). Professional conspiracy theorists
or political entrepreneurs in conspiracy theories (Campion -
Vincent 2015;
Giry 2015), are likely to see conspiracy theories as a way to subvert the polit-
ical field and its agenda directly or indirectly. In other words, conspiracy
theorists compete with the established political elites by mobilising some
resources outside of the traditional political field that they can use within it
(Giry, Gürpına 2020).
Conspiracy theories as sources of communion cohesion

In connection with identity formation, the discourse of conspiracy theories dis-
plays its specific function confirming social ties. The semantic value of informa-
tion transmitted by conspiracy theories is relatively minimal. Even if there
should be new bits of information (new antagonist and new events), they will be
fitted into an already existing interpretation framework that is directed by an
understanding that behind all misdeeds and misfortunes lurks the plotting of one
and the same malevolent group operating in secrecy. There is, in principle, no
major difference if the main force behind the plot is supported by Jews; black,
Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people; or radical Islamists, as they are all in
the service of the Big Evil – American financial elites. However, this lack of
new semantic value in conspiracy theories is compensated for by their strong
potential for creating communal ties that is particularly evident in social media
communication.
Many studies approaching the contemporary public information and
discussion culture have noted that information practices dominating in social
media are characterised by acceleration, saturation and a strong affective loaded-
ness. An exponentially growing number of texts are converging in peoples’
news streams and magnifying a feeling of connectedness and involvement, and
the shared experiencing of texts has become an ever more important parameter
in gaining users’ attention (see Andrejevic 2013; Grusin 2010; Harsin 2014,
2015; Miller 2008; Prøitz 2017). Such communication is characterised by quick
and brief text creation that to a great extent is based on repetition and amplifying
shared emotions; and does not presuppose thorough discussions and logical
argumentation. We treat such communication by disseminators of conspiracy
theorists in the framework of the phatic function of language suggested by the
linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson (1976).
According to Jakobson, the predominance of the phatic function in
communication may be expressed in a lavish exchange of ritual formulas and
whole dialogues whose only aim is to maintain communication. The phatic
function is directed at the contact, “a physical channel and psychological
connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to
enter and stay in communication” (Jakobson 1976, 113). Jakobson was mostly
engaged with examples from linguistics. At the same time he was of the opinion
that “this pragmatic approach to language must lead mutatis mutandis to an
analogous study of the other semiotic systems: with which of these or other
functions are they endowed, in what combinations and in what hierarchical
order?” (Jakobson 1971b, 703). Thus examples of communication with a phatic
dominant can also include audio-visual texts used by conspiracy theorists, whose
information value has become lost, but which serve to maintain the feeling of
communion: secret signs, formulas that have lost their meaning, number
combinations, acronyms or fragments of particular texts (e.g. song lyrics,
aphorisms, phrases exchanged in an offline-context and marking group
belonging, etc., known to insiders). These kind of signals, phatic posts and other
small, micro-symbols indicate the recognition of one’s interlocutor’s presence
and validation of them as a potential communicative partner (Radovanovic,
Ragnedda 2012, 12). To a broader audience, the messages of conspiracy theorists
thus often seem incoherent, while the target group familiar with particular codes
is able to exchange private messages via comparatively public channels,
e.g. social media environments, blogs, newspapers’ comments sections, etc.
(Siibak 2012; see also Madisson, Ventsel 2018).
In such communication the meaning of words is nearly irrelevant. The
expressions are rather used in the function of confirming social ties, which can
be expressed in, e.g., establishing an intimate atmosphere conducive of social
connection. The information exchanged in the course of phatic communication
is indexical rather than referential, it reflects the (in)acceptance of the
communication partner and attributes a certain status to them (Laver 1975, 336).
Thus, the above-mentioned
private signs of conspiracy theorists have turned into
phatic signs in the course of being used. In many cases, phatic communication
presumes recognition, intimacy and sociability from the participants, that
constitute founding blocks of communions. On the other hand, the connection
itself becomes more significant, the words more redundant (Miller 2008, 395).
In summary, the figure of the conspirator makes it possible for conspiracy
theorists to give explanations to social contradictions and deviations from (ideal)
social life as well as create a vision of a world whose meaning is coherent. At
the same time, conspiracy theories allow for mobilising the communion and
shape its self-image. A successful strategy should be able to communicate these
functions effectively to an audience.
The semiotic approach to conspiracy narratives

This chapter concentrates on mapping various academic studies of conspiracy
theories. We present an original semiotic approach to conspiracy theories that is
based on the logic of discrete and non-discrete meaning-making, united by the
notion of the code text, that derives from semiotics of culture. The code text
allows us to explain the specific tendencies of meaning-making that dominate in
conspiracy theories.
Studying the mode of modelling conspiracy theories from the

point of view of culture research
From the semiotic perspective, it is noteworthy that although a conspiracy
theory can appear in different contexts and be transmitted via various channels,
it nevertheless remains recognisable as a conspiracy theory – as a text sustaining
specific relations of meaning. The spectrum of conspiracy theories is extremely
broad. They are mediated by media of various kinds, for example verbal speech,
the printed word, diverse pictorial means of expression (drawings, diagrams,
photos), videos, and contemporary interactive and hybrid textual compositions
combining all the above. Existing research on conspiracy theories has thus con-
sidered them to be characteristic of political rhetoric, especially its populist
forms (Pipes 1999; Bergmann 2018; Yablokov 2018), but conspiracy theories
are also seen as a lingua franca of alternative and counter cultures (Knight 2002;
Vincent 2006), and a sustaining structure of popular psychology texts, for
example self -
help books that encourage people to quit a life designed by
someone else and finally become themselves (Melley 2002). Other aspects that
researchers have focused on are vernacular conspiracy theories (see Campion-
Vincent 2005; Astapova 2017) and artistic texts mediating conspiracy theories –
films (Donovan 2011) and novels (Wisnicki 2007).
Also, other qualitative approaches have treated conspiracy theories as a par-
ticular type of discourse emerging in various contexts or a mode of modelling
creating specific connections. Our emphases are shared by research from the
fields of cultural studies and critical theory, with work by Jack Bratich (2004,
2008), Clare Birchall (2006), Mark Fenster (2008) and Dean Ballinger (2011) as
prominent examples. All these studies see popular media as one of the key
factors in contemporary conspiracy culture and highlight the fact that in the past
decades conspiracy theories have become commodified and turned into a
constituent part of mass media on course to becoming increasingly more like
infotainment. Thus, they should not be attributed to peripheral subcultures and
“losers” only.2 Similarly, with several studies of conspiracy cultures conducted
within culture research (Birchall 2006; Aupers 2012; Fenster 2008) we admit
that in principle conspiracies are possible (there are separate paragraphs
concerning these in criminal law, for instance regarding seizing power or organ-
ised criminal activities) and history has witnessed conspiracies (e.g. the events
revealed in the Watergate affair in 1972, the planning of Operation Northwoods
in 1962). In a sense, the deliberate dissemination of disinformation based on
conspiracy theories that occurs on social media is also a conspiracy being
brought to life through conspiracy theories that in a conscious, hidden and
biased manner influence the masses’ perception of the situation. Still, it should
be underscored that in open societies, the occurrence of large-scale deliberate
conspiracies potentially harmful to many citizens, such as the programme of
eradication of the white race, deliberate spreading of disease by poisonous
vaccines and unleashing of infections etc., is very unlikely and it is difficult to
hide events such as these from the public for a significant length of time.
For studies focusing on the conspiracy discourse, the references and corres-
pondence to reality of particular versions of conspiracy theories are not particu-
larly relevant. Rather, the focus is on the rhetorical and argumentative lines
repeating in conspiracy theories that create an aura of secrecy, articulate the
positions of the oppressors and the oppressed (Birchall 2006; Leone 2017) and
fix a so-called
contagious pattern of associations that directs the interpreters
towards discovering ever new conspiracy layers (Fenster 2008; Madisson
2016b). The works of Bratich and Birchall (see also Dean 2002; Fiske 1994)
concentrate on the counterhegemonic potentiality of conspiracy discourse.
Namely, they have been clarifying the situations in which the interpretative
framework of conspiracy theories cultivates critical attitudes towards traditional
authorities and their canons of objectivity. Bratich (2008, 187) and Birchall
(2006, 62) point out that conspiracy theories provide a language for articulating
and highlighting the problem of social, political and economic inequalities. This
book draws on the comments referenced above first and foremost in cases in
which we analyse the vernacular discourse of knowledge that opposes the main-
stream. However, our aim is to demonstrate the plurality of functions of
conspiracy theories, among others also its applicability as a strategic tool of the
dominant regime.
Dean Ballinger’s doctoral dissertation (Ballinger 2011) focuses on the
specificity of the digital conspiracy discourse (see also Knight 2008; Soukup
2008) and the identity creation dominants of online conspiracy theorists.
Ballinger explains how online conspiracy theorists are mapping their conspiracy
investigation by relying on the discourse of cyber democracy. He contends that
conspiracy theorists understand mainstream media as a sphere of conspiratorial
propaganda, disinformation and/or mind control (Ballinger 2011, 65).
Ballinger’s analysis demonstrates how the positive self -
image of a radical
citizen journalist allows the placement of conspiracy theorists “outside the
traditional structures of mainstream media and accentuate the radical and
romantic impulses that are innate to the conspiracist mindset […]” (Ballinger
2011, 73). Our approach relies on Ballinger’s insights about the potential of
conspiracy theories in creating a positive self-description
of their disseminators.
We also draw on his remarks on the adaptation of conspiracy theories to web
discourse, but also develop this direction of research further, for Ballinger’s
dissertation appeared at the start of the present decade and did not cover the
affordances of social media and tendencies in communication.
The monograph by Mark Fenster (2008) thoroughly discusses the mani-
festation of conspiracy theory as a specific way of modelling in political rhetoric
as well as in various fictional texts. Fenster weaves into his thorough treatment
works by several classics of semiotics, e.g. Roland Barthes, Algirdas J. Greimas
and Joseph Courtés, Charles Sanders Peirce etc. Similarly to us, Fenster
conceptualises the peculiarities of the interpretive practices of conspiracy the-
ories. Drawing on Umberto Eco’s (1990) framework of hermetic semiosis he
aptly explains the tendency of conspiracy theorists “to seize and fetishize indi-
vidual signs in order to place them within vast interpretive structures” (Fenster
2008, 13). The conspiracy theorists’ interpretation processes are directed by the
presumption that there exist extremely significant missing links or comprom-
ising traces that prove the existence of the conspiracy itself. Whenever they dis-
cover a piece of such “evidence”, an enthusiastic search for analogous evidence
is launched, in the course of which they carefully examine media content in
order to find interpretative keys that would disclose their hidden meanings to the
wider audience. Conspiracy theorists may treat various elements of public media
discourse, e.g. illustrations, number-combinations, slips of the tongue etc. as
anchors that enable them to fix the chain of analogies (Leone et al. 2020).
The explanations Fenster gives to the conspiracy theory as a text type are
significant from the point of view of this book as well (also see Birchall 2006;
Butter 2014). According to Fenster, the interpretation of some events as part of
a conspiracy requires a temporal-causal chain, while it is irrelevant whether the
event influenced by the conspirators is discovered among past or future experi-
ences. Presuming that a key role in social events is played by the activities of
conspirators, interpreters keep actively looking for evidence of the conspiracy.
A particular event will become significant if the interpreters can connect it with
earlier and later conspiracy acts in a broader conspiracy narrative (Fenster
2008, 100–106). In developing our framework, we rely on Fenster’s remarks on
the central role of temporal -
causal or discrete connections in organising
conspiracy representations, but we offer a model that explains the associative
or non-discrete organising components of conspiracy theories. To be more
precise, we are offering a model based on the framework of the code text that
explains the co-functioning of two different dominants in text creation. In addi-
tion to this, our approach gives new insights into explaining the meaning
potentials of conspiracy narratives in the context of strategic communication.
The model of meaning-making on the basis of the code text

of conspiracy theories
In our earlier work we have been developing a cultural semiotic model (see
Madisson 2014; Madisson 2016b; Ventsel 2016a) that makes it possible to
explicate the invariant mechanisms of meaning-making
that are common to all
conspiracy narratives. Conspiracy narratives are made specific by their particu-
larly strong modelling capacity that allows them easily to embrace in their
explanations events from different points of time and space and weave into a
synthetic whole symbols and sources that seem totally incompatible at first sight.
Apparently, such an enormous modelling capacity is a reason why conspiracy
theories have become especially valued in these contemporary times of informa-
tion overload – they offer a shortcut to strong meanings that can be easily
perceived. Conspiracy theories speak of secret plots, hiding, villains and
conspiration patterns connecting various tragic events. Although such compon-
ents are repeated from one conspiracy theory to another and are thus already
familiar to the interpreters, they can still catch attention if intriguing hints
pertinent to the moment are newly woven into them. Earlier we have been
employing the semiotic model of conspiracy theories first and foremost in ana-
lysing far-right
online communication and identity creation (Madisson, Ventsel
2016a, 2016b, 2018), but in this book we wish to show its broader potential in
disseminating various strategic messages and nudging the context necessary for
directing the readers’ interpretative paths.
It seems expedient to conceptualise conspiracy theories proceeding from the
frame of the code text by Juri Lotman (1988), so it is possible to give an
explanation to the peculiar meaning-making
of conspiracy narratives that unites
both an associative as well as a verbal-discrete component. Lotman has defined
the code text as a textual system that originates from the collective memory of a
particular community. He describes it as a specific meaning-making template or
an interlink that, instead of being an abstract collection of rules for constructing
a text, is a textual system with a rigid syntactic order. The different signs of a
code text can be divided into various sub-structures,
but despite this the code
text remains unambiguous “for itself”: “from the standpoint of its own level, the
sign is something invested not only with a unity of expression but also with a
unity of content” (Lotman 1988b, 35; see Madisson 2014, 292; Madisson 2016a,
201). A conspiracy theory behaves like a code text that tells the story about the
Evil lurking behind particular events, while its constituent parts, such as the
articulation of the specificity of the enemy, the connections of particular evid-
ence of conspiracy with certain events, outlines of the victims, etc., can embrace
various paradigms (Madisson 2014, 293). The universal message or code text of
conspiracy theory is: this (whatever unpleasant event) is a conspiracy, i.e. the
realisation of a malevolent plot of a covert grouping (Madisson 2014, 294). This
set of relations is highly adaptive and can be filled with situation-specific content
(Madisson 2014, 294; Melley 2002, 59).
Discrete and non-discrete logic of code-textual

meaning-making
It is important to note that the code-text
of conspiracy theories involves both dis-
crete as well as non-discrete
principle of signification. The former is related to
the fact that the articulation of relations of cause and effect, chronology and
logic is an important organising core in conspiracy narratives (Madisson
2014, 290). It can even be claimed that the code text of conspiracy theories
favours over -
deterministic models of causation that do not leave space for
fortuitous chance and coincidence, but view all socially meaningful events as
connected to one another by a conspiracy (Madisson 2014, 297). In addition to
outlining strict relations of cause and effect, discrete logic also is concerned with
representing a complex conspiracy system. Narratives speaking of wide-ranging
and long -
lasting conspiracies, i.e. super conspiracies (e.g. NWO), outline a
hierarchical and complex conspiracy pyramid that manipulates different aspects
of communal life (see Madisson 2016). For instance, there is a relatively wide-
spread idea that, in order to establish their absolute power and hinder all critical
thought and resistance, sub-branches of the conspiracy system have, on the one
hand, been specialising in influencing the information sphere, which means they
have infiltrated the education system starting with kindergartens up to univer-
sities and that they control the media. On the other hand, conspirators are active
in the physical weakening of the population, which is why they spread diseases,
produce poisonous vaccines, contaminate food, cause natural disasters, etc.
A special characteristic of the code text of conspiracy theory is that the
sketching of discrete meaning relations is always submitted to non-discrete logic
of signification that is associative and based on analogies. All in all, the non-
discrete modelling that serves as the basis of conspiracy theories means that
interpreters identify signs of conspiracies in the case of a particular event or
piece of information. It is an interpretative tendency that we defined as hermetic
semiosis in the previous subchapter, following Eco and Fenster. In narratives
talking about systemic conspiracies drawing parallels and seeing patterns serves
as an important principle of creating connections. Still, it is important to notice
that it is not a metaphoric relation of sameness, but that conspiracy theories actu-
ally presume that the same forces are behind all unpleasant events, that keep
leaving similar traces of their activities.
Shaping of meaning relations in conspiracy theories is organised by the idea
of large-scale concealment and a malevolent group as a force triggering all kinds
of change, which already exists in the memory of the interpretative community.
A contemporary example of interpretative community could be social media
groups that are gathering around common thematic and ideological foci, in which
spokespersons, shared values and communication norms, as well as a specific
discursive code become established. In Eco’s terms, they develop a shared base
vocabulary in the course of continuous communication, we can recognise the
rhetorical and stylistic codes of insiders and they also form a common memory
repertoire that embraces typical agents and standard scripts connected with these
(see the subchapter “The Model Reader and the image of the audience”).
Interpretative communities sharing conspiracy theories develop a permutation of
so-called
typical elements and key figures of conspiracy explanations which are
syncretically combined when suspicious events occur (Barkun 2003, 183;
Madisson 2016a, 196). For instance, such phrases as Deep state, NWO, Cultural
Marxists, ZOG, The Bilderberg Group often serve as triggers that unleash
specific conspiracy scenarios in the interpretative community’s communal
memory and the association chains connected with these. To summarise the
above, it can be concluded that the code text based meaning -
making of
conspiracy theories is somewhat redundant – the interpretative community gener-
ates messages whose main content (that all tragic developments are connected
with a conspiracy in one way or another) is known to them already. The main
aim of such messages is rather the reduction of the unknown to known plots and
the guarantee of cohesion of the community and a positive feedback loop, so that
it largely fulfils the phatic function that is mobilising the community. One
important aspect of conspiracy communication is that not only the information
fragments and “events that are perceived as a result of conspiracy become more
meaningful but also the conspiracy itself will become more confirmed and signi-
ficant because of frequent interpretations” (Madisson 2016a, 205).
Another important aspect of the non-discrete logic of conspiracy narratives
is binary modelling of the world, as there is a tendency to divide it into agents
of Good and Evil. The more terrible the consequences of any particular event
are, the more brutal and inhuman must be the conspirators who intentionally
caused it. It should be emphasised that conspiracy narratives represent
conspirators as active agents with clear purpose – they do not damage the well-
being of large groups of people by chance or unintentionally, but as a result of
deliberate and extremely purposeful action. Lotman has pointed out that binary
thinking does not even consider the relative equality of the concerned parties.
Even if acknowledging such equality may not mean admitting the opponent’s
right to the truth, it would at least mean admitting its right to existence
(Lotman 2007, 26). As a rule, conspiracy theories sketch a conflict in which the
opponent is perceived as corrupt and immoral so that entering a dialogue or
reaching a compromise with them is in principle excluded. Thus, the logic
of conspiracy theories sees the elimination of the conspiracy (and at times
also the conspirators) as the only positive solution. Representing such an
ultimately corrupt opposing force also provides a perfect background for
positive self-descriptions or self-positioning as the moral victim who is hated
by an immensely powerful enemy that operates in secrecy. The strategy of
constructing conflict proceeding from binary modelling will be treated in more
detail in the following part of the book.
Presuming the immensely powerful will or, to be more exact, the immanent
malevolence that causes an insolvable conflict between the conspirators and
those that revealed it, is the main centre of the code text of conspiracy theories
that subsumes to itself the discrete logic of signification. In other words, the code
text of conspiracy theories generates modelling that is based on a specific
causality that can be reduced to intentionality. Being convinced of the sinister
will of conspirators, functions as a powerful principle and is perceived as the
driving force of history taken as a whole (Fenster 2008, 103; Hofstadter 1967,
29). As demonstrated above, this does not mean that conspiracy theories neglect
the logic of the physical, historical and social causalities that are related with
particular events. Quite the opposite – the conditions in which a particular event
happened are often depicted in an incredibly detailed way. Madisson suggests
that the reason why conspirators are perceived as extremely threatening is that
interpreters presume that they have the capacity to manipulate all kinds of
causality for serving their evil intentions, and they hide it in so advanced a way
that most people would never notice it. Thus, conspiracy narrative “acknow-
ledges the diversity of various phenomena/relations but, at the same time, it
assumes that different events are motivated by evil as the ultimate and all-
embracing cause. As various dimensions of reality are perceived as parts of the
same system of evil, the attributes that are essential for distinguishing such struc-
tures are vague” (Madisson 2016a, 202).
This chapter demonstrated the specific creation of connections of conspiracy
theories and the main emphases emerging in studying them proceeding from
culture research and semiotics. All in all, it can be noted that the code text
resulting from the communal memory of the conspiracy theory’s interpretative
community inspires the creation of conspiracy narratives that include
explanations as to how, as well as why, tragic events and developments have
occurred. The following chapters will show how the specific meaning creation in
conspiracy theories can be employed in strategic communication in order to
articulate and amplify particular conflicts.
Notes
1 In the context of information influence activities, Thomas Elkjær Nissen explains a
sock puppet as, “a fake identity created to promote someone or something through
blogs, wikis, forums or social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Sock
puppets are often created to improve the status of some entity or to promote a par-
ticular viewpoint that is expected to be helpful to that entity.” (Nissen 2015: 87).
2 Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent are famous for the statement that conspiracy
theories tend to resonate when groups are suffering from loss, weakness or disunity
(see Uscinski, Parent 2014).
Part II
Semiotic analysis of
strategic Soros-themed
conspiracy narratives
3 Strategic Soros-themed
conspiracy narratives in
politics, marketing and
alternative knowledge
The first part of the book treated the semiotic conflict from the point of view of
the strategic narrative and proposed a semiotic discussion of the conspiracy nar-
rative. The second part points at concrete textual devices through which conflicts
and participants in conflicts – their protagonists and antagonists – can be shaped
in strategic conspiracy narratives seen as special cases of the strategic narrative.
In our opinion, the nature of the audiences forming around conspiracy narratives
mostly depends on the specificity of modelling the conflict and its prevailing
meaning-making mechanisms. In the first half of this chapter we complement
the model of the conspiracy narrative with treating the topic (Eco 2005). This
will enable us to understand better how the code-textual
meaning-making, that
serves as the basis of conspiracy narratives, is directed by conflict as the specific
centre of organising interpretations. In the second half of the chapter, we provide
examples of conspiracy narratives from the fields of politics, alternative know-
ledge and marketing, and analyse how the character of conflict constitutes the
relationships between the characters and events featuring in them.
Strategic construction of conflict in conspiracy

narrative
One of the main functions of the strategic narrative is to offer the audience a
frame for structuring the past, present and future of conflicts (Nissen 2015, 45).
Such a set of relations will lead the audience towards various snippets of text or
narrative, which is why the shapers of strategic narratives have to take into
account the existing narratives and other factors directing the interpretative
atmosphere (see subchapter “The Model Reader and the image of the audience”).
In the context of researching social media communication it appears important
that, in the model offered by Eco, there is no assumption that the interpretative
process should go through all the stages in a particular order. Interpretation may
also occur as an explosion or in long “leaps”. The reader has a certain hypothesis
that brings forth an interpretative explosion (Eco 2005, 75). The shaper of the
strategic narrative first has to create the hypothesis in the reader.
It is conflict constructed as the centre of the code text of conspiracy narratives
that has the function of triggering the reader’s interpretation hypothesis. As was
52 Soros-themed conspiracy narratives
pointed out at the end of the previous chapter, the code text of conspiracy narrat-
ives establishes the existence of a network of malicious conspirators. Conspiracy
narratives represent enormously influential actors who in their actions proceed
from the Evil or amorality that is in their nature. Naturally, the mode of articu-
lating such motifs varies from one conspiracy narrative to another, but
predominantly they all contain an implicit vision of conspirators aiming to
subdue the people in the world to their own will to as great an extent as possible.
In the context of strategic communication, it becomes important how the conflict
has been constructed in creating the Model Reader and how it functions in
meaning-making.
Conflict as the topic

From the perspective of meaning-making conflict functions as the centre – the
topic – of the conspiracy narrative. Determining such a topic is a cooperative
(pragmatic) step that directs the reader towards differentiating between the
semantic properties of the text (Eco 2005, 108–109). In this sense, the topic
differs from the fabula that represents the events of a tale as a chronological and
causal sequence and simultaneously constitutes a part of the text’s message.
According to Eco (2005, 95), the fabula is connected with the semantic structure
of the tale, while the topic can first and foremost be treated as a pragmatic
instrument that supports the reader’s interpretation process. Thus, the topic need
not necessarily have an explicit textual expression, but the interpreter creates it
in the process of his or her reception of the text as a direction leading his or her
path of interpretation. Such a direction that leads the process of interpretation is
formed in the interplay of the text and the cultural competence of the reader
interpreting it; thus, it need not always be a conscious and calculated choice on
part of the interpreter. One of the main functions of the topic is delimiting or, as
it were, disciplining the interpretation process, but it also functions as a guide of
smaller text parts and discursive structures (Eco 2005, 95), as the latter “need to
be actualised in the light of the hypothesis made regarding the topic or the
topics” (Eco 2005, 94). It is important to stress the dynamic, relational nature of
the topic as there are “sentence topics and discourse topics that disappear when
there is a transition to the abstraction of the text’s ‘dominat theme’ ” (Eco
2005, 95).
For strategic communication to be successful, the narrative’s author has to
create a Model Reader whose textual devices push the interpreter towards
creating a direction or hypothesis supporting the intentions of the actor/author.
Treating conflicts as a topic helps us explain how to direct strategically the code-
textual meaning-making
that serves as the basis of conspiracy narratives or how
such a direction or hypothesis can be created in the interpreter. In addition to a
fundamental conflict, conspiracy narratives also contain a series of other
conflicts of more local importance – their subtopics. Thus, the conflict of the
global NWO conspiracy narrative is formed of a sequence of subconflicts the
shaping of which largely depends on the socio-cultural background where they
Strategic Soros-themed conspiracies 53
are articulated. These subconflicts can be reconstructed on the basis of a
rhetorical-stylistic code in which, e.g., Soros’s Jewish heritage makes it possible
to employ ethnic stereotypes in representing the conflict; at the same time, the
conflict can be encoded on the basis of an ideological code that emphasises
Soros’s actions as an initiator of projects that advocate a liberal world view.
Thus one of the main tasks of semiotic analysis of strategic communication
is to find out how the Model Reader is being led towards reconstructing the
topic, for it is largely on the basis of the topic that an interpreter either amplifies
some semantic properties of existing units of meaning or, to the contrary, tones
them down. In either case the level of interpretative cohesion is established in
the course of such action. Below, we differentiate between two types of
constructing conflicts – an antithetical and an agonistic one. These direct
different aspects of forming the narrative and help interpreters create coherence,
while the disseminators have to take them into account in the course of their
communicative action.
Antithetical and agonistic modelling of conflict

As we pointed out in the subchapter “The ontology of the semiotic conflict”,
from the perspective of semiotics the specificity of conflict is determined by the
nature of the boundary or translation mechanism. The boundary is the most
important functional and structural position of semiotic space that determines
the nature of its meaning mechanism, translating external messages into an
internal language and vice versa (Lotman 2005, 208–209). As boundaries
function as the creators, organisers and bearers of meanings they are also
attributes of power (Schöpflin 2010, 65). Boundaries help identities preserve
their nature and are a key aspect in giving explanations to the myth-symbol
complex created and re-created by each community in their self-determination
(Schöpflin 2010, 66). Thus, the boundary characterising the conflict is the main
mechanism through which the unity of the self and the other can be constructed
and deconstructed in descriptions. Drawing of the boundary becomes important
also in constructing the characters and events represented in conspiracy narrat-
ives. Cultural semiotics differentiates between two oppositions of semiotic
organisation: culture–anti-culture,
and culture–non-culture.
In both cases the
translation function of the boundary shapes the semiotic unit (e.g. culture, text,
in this case conspiracy narrative) in a way that is unique to it.
The conflict that is characterised by the opposition of culture–anti-culture
is
built upon the principle of mirror projection. It reflects the construction of
culture and is a part of it, i.e. culture of the own is inconceivable without its
antipode (Lepik 2007). From the point of view of the culture of the own, anti-
culture is considered a highly organised structure that endangers culture.

According to Lotman and Uspenskij, a tendency arises to interpret all cultures
that oppose the pre-given correct culture as unified incorrect systems. Anti-
culture is perceived as a culture in the negative (Lotman, Uspenskij 1978).
Antithetical modelling becomes apparent vividly in a process of naming in
which the names of objects reflects their nature. Thus, conspiracy theories
converging around a religious conflict often directly label the conspirators as the
Antichrist; in conspiracy theories connected with migration the alien component
are called migrants, refugees of convenience or economic refugees (Madisson,
Ventsel 2016a; Leone et al. 2020, 50), etc.
In the subchapter “The model of meaning-making on the basis of the code
text of conspiracy theories”, we explained how in conspiracy theories the tend-
ency towards demonising the opposing powers becomes manifested as mirror-
symmetrical binary modelling. In the case of right-wing conspiracy theories, for
example, the mirror projection is manifested in the use of the discursive device
of Othered by the Other. It represents the majority group (indigenous hetero-
sexual males) as threatened and suppressed by minority groups (gays, feminists,
childless couples, immigrants) (see Atton 2006; Madisson, Ventsel 2016b).
“Often the projection precedes the mirror-projection; in other words, first, our
problems are ascribed to them, and then a mirror-projective antithesis is created
that opposes their problems to the 0-feature, that is, the lack of problems in our
structure” (Kasekamp et al. 2019, 51, see Lepik 2007). For instance, an analysis
of texts published by the Estonian populist right -
wing media outlet
Uued Uudised showed that these paint a black-and-white “picture of systematic
and malicious subordination of traditional family values and gender roles
carried out by minority groups (sexual minorities and feminists that deliberately
spread misinformation) and certain left-wing intellectuals (cultural Marxists)”
(Kasekamp et al. 2019, 53). Such rhetoric makes it possible to reverse typical
accusations against right-wing extremists to hit their opponents and thus under-
mine the latter’s authority and, by extension, also the criticism directed against
themselves.
The anti-cultural model of self-description is first and foremost addressed at
auto-communication or the self-organisation of the semiotic unit that presup-
poses a system closed in on itself and avoiding external influences. According to
this model, the spreading of knowledge outside the system of the self can only
be understood as conquering what is incorrect (Lotman, Uspenskij 1978, 220;
Leone et al. 2020, 51). In the self-descriptions
of conspiracy theorists, there is
expressed an extreme desire for revelations of the activities of conspirators and
to foil their nefarious plans. Signs disproving the existence of conspiracies are
interpreted in a mirror-projective
manner as signs of successful camouflage
activities on part of the conspirators: “this is what conspirators want the public
to believe”. Everything that is wrong from the system’s internal point of view
will not become peripheral and forgotten, but will turn into anti-texts (Lotman
et al. 2013, 62) – texts that in an extreme case are meant for destruction. If the
conspiracy theorists do not succeed in converting signs refuting the conspiracy’s
existence into ones that uphold it, these are ignored or declared to be false.
Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe, this opposition can be called an antagonistic
situation in which antagonistic opponents do not share any common ground and
a confrontation of essentialist forms of identifications or non-negotiable moral
values occurs (Laclau, Mouffe 1985).
The culture–non-culture opposition, however, shapes the conflict and its
parties based on a different principle that can be called an agonistic situation,
proceeding from Mouffe (2005). In case of an agonistic opposition, the “we/
they” relation between conflicting parties is not so radical as it was in case of
the antagonistic one. The “alien”, “non-culture” are more like “adversaries”,
not enemies. Both sides belong to the same field of the socio-political arena,
sharing a common symbolic space with certain rules within which the conflict
takes place (ibid., 30). From the perspective of cultural semiotics, the outlining
of the characteristic of being correct or incorrect does not point at an essential
property of a semiotic unit but is connected with whether rules of forming
semiotic units are followed or not. In such a type of information organisation
there is no predestined and rigid structural correspondence between the lan-
guages of description and the objects described (Lotman, Uspenskij 1975) and
the rules via which the world is being semiotically interpreted are themselves
objects of refashioning. For instance, these rules can be the visual codes of
representing the conspirators, the various discourses of describing the para-
lysing effects of their actions on society, etc. Thus, the conspirators’ activities
directed against, e.g., traditional Christian values may be seen motivated by
socio-political aims, for instance the wish to promote the supremacy of LGBT
values.
In case of conspiracy theories such non-discrete description of the enemy is
also supported by the fact that the secrecy of the conspirators’ activities plays an
important role in the code text. The boundary between the own and the alien
parties of the opposition is but vaguely marked here and the depiction of the
characteristics of either party is largely based on non-discrete coding. It can be
claimed that such a source of danger that is described in a largely non-discrete
manner is mediated to a greater or lesser degree by all conspiracy theories that
see the conspirators’ malevolence as the force that unleashes horrible events. The
conspirators’ malevolence is occasionally described as so inhuman that it cannot
be fully comprehended. Something inexplicable, unorganised, unstructured and
unpredictable is seen in the structures of evil (Madisson 2014, 282–283), which
is why it appears to be difficult to describe it precisely.
In real conspiracy narratives, both types of modelling the conflict can be
present, but as the analysis below will show, one or the other can be seen to
prevail in different fields.
The conspiracy narrative and the problem of the worlds of

the target audience
In this book we are not observing the modelling of the conflict in conspiracy the-
ories as just an interesting theoretical line of thought, but we are discussing it
first and foremost from the perspective of strategic communication. Thus, we
may ask how differentiating between these two models of conflict can be useful
in a more thorough study of the strategic aims of conspiracy theories and their
targeted addressees.
On the one hand, in conspiracy narratives the antithetical or agonistic model-
ling of conflicts points at a storyworld represented and communicated by the
author of the conspiracy narrative in course of his or her discursive action.
According to David Herman (2009, 106–107) storyworlds are “mental
representations enabling interpreters to frame inferences about the situations,
characters, and occurrences either explicitly mentioned in or implied by a nar-
rative text or discourse. As such, storyworlds are mental models of the situations
and events being recounted – of who did what to and with whom, when, where,
why, and in what manner.” A storyworld will begin to shape the meaning given
by the interpreters to the narrative’s characters and their relationships as well as
events. On the other hand, the conflict represented in the narrative has to take the
expectations of the targeted reader into consideration and, in principle, has to be
compatible with the premises that an empirical reader might hold. Thus, the
question arises about the relations between the Model Reader’s world depicted
in the conspiracy narrative and the real world of the targeted yet empirical reader
that Eco calls the “reference world” in Lector in Fabula. In which ways are a
world’s structures translatable so that the intentions of the author of the strategic
narrative might be fulfilled: the empirical readers be influenced so that they open
their interpretation paths according to the strategy inserted into the Model
Reader.
The world depicted in conspiracy narrative is in itself a cultural construction,
but, according to Eco, so is also the empirical readers’ real world or the refer-
ence world according to which they assess the verifiability of the worlds
depicted in conspiracy theories. In the subchapter “The ontology of the semiotic
conflict” we pointed at a cultural semiotic and discourse-theoretical perspective
that in principle overlaps with the constructivist approach offered by Eco.
Acknowledging of the cultural constructedness of reality here does not point at
the idealist declaration of the non-existence of the “real” world. Eco treats the
reader’s real world as a cultural construction first and foremost in the frame-
work of the theory of text cooperation. Comparing the activities and events
occurring in the narrative “with how things are [in the real world of the
empirical reader – author’s comment – M-L.M and A.V], we are actually
representing to ourselves the things that are the way they are in the form of a
cultural, delimited, temporary and ad hoc construction” (Eco 2005, 140). This is
valid for all the constituent parts of the reference world of the empirical reader,
such as the lexicon, encyclopedia, scenarios (that were pointed out in the
subchapter “Information conflicts and strategic narratives”). The reader’s topical
reference world thus points at any world in which characters assess and judge
the worlds represented in the narrative, while both are actually socio-cultural

constructions.
Postulating the reference world as culturally constructed by the reader will
help us avoid judging the dangerousness of conspiracy theories and the toxicity
characteristic of conspiracy theorists, or describing the so-called wholesome and
rational interpretative practices that offer an alternative to conspiracy theories.
Giving an unequivocally negative evaluation to conspiracy theories and
connecting them with extremism, illness, hysteria, misinformation or crippled
epistemology, etc., is characteristic of several discussions (see Hofstadter 1967;
Pipes 1999; Sunstein, Vermeule 2009; Singer, Brooking 2018). The present ana-
lytical framework does not aim at ascertaining the psychological issues or
unconscious urges of the people shaping or projecting conspiracy theories.1
Concentrating on the perilousness of conspiracy theories will not allow for a suf-
ficiently nuanced understanding of this phenomenon, as thus their remarkable
presence in the social and cultural mainstream will, as a rule, remain unnoticed,
as will their empowering potential for identity creation and play. We primarily
aspire to study the potentialities of strategically formed text cooperation.
Coming back to conflict as a topic directing meaning-making, the text can
presume topics or explicitly contain them, for instance, in the shape of “titles,
subtitles or key phrases” (Eco 2005, 99). Still, at times the topic has to be sought
after. Usually, however, a certain number of transparent keywords are repeated
in the text that make it easier for the reader to construct the topic (Eco 2005, 98).
The general character of conflict as a topic determines the way in which the
properties and activities of a narrative’s characters will be shaped. The strategic
success of a narrative will largely depend on how aptly the narrative’s creator
has anticipated the reference world of the audience, the typical meaning-making
tendencies prevailing in it, or, to put it more exactly, the logic of constructing
the own as well as the alien elements of discourse that can follow the model of
the antithesis or the agonistic conflict. The following subchapter will demon-
strate how the conflict is reflected in representations of Soros-themed
conspirators.
George Soros – the Grand Old Scapegoat of

contemporary conspiracy narratives
“A cultural Marxist” and “a liberal”, a successor of the Elders of Zion and a
rootless globalist, a puppet master of the Moslem invasion and a fighter for the
rights of the minorities – these are just some of the contradictory labels that
George Soros has received with his actions. Soros undoubtedly is one of the
favourite antiheroes of contemporary conspiracy theories. The scope of the
villainous-ness attributed to him can be measured on the global scale, yet he
always acquires a touch of a peculiarly local colour in particular representations.
Just like the Pizzagate conspiracy theories mentioned previously, the theories
targeting Soros have become notorious in recent times, for individuals
influenced by these theories have conducted real attacks in order to eliminate the
conspiracy. Thus, in October 2018, Cesar Sayoc sent a package containing pipe
bomb to Soros by post and mailed such parcels also to other politicians and
celebrities who had been criticising Donald Trump, for instance to Barack
Obama and Hilary Clinton, among others.
Scholars studying conspiracy theories have even started to speak of the
myth or legend of Soros. This is why the conspiracy theories concerning him
are particularly well suited to serve as examples here for in each particular
communication situation the shaper of a conspiracy narrative has to take into
consideration the interpretative community’s specific cultural context. First,
we shall provide an overview of the wider background of the “Soros-themed
conspiracy theories” and the formation of the Soros myth. The following
subchapter presents a concise survey of the most important events appearing in
the Soros-themed conspiracy theories. This is necessary to be able to proceed
to analysing concrete textual strategic devices in the succeeding chapters.
George Soros and his becoming a conspiracy legend

Monitoring of disinformation (see EUvsDisInformation, Propastop;2 Helmus
et al. 2018), as well as academic studies (Colăcel, Pintilescu 2017; Kalmar et al.
2018; Krekó, Enyedi 2018; McLaughlin, Trilupaityte 2012) have noted the stra-
tegic dissemination of conspiracy theories that demonise the philanthropist of
Hungarian origin. For instance, this demonisation can be done in order to vilify
ideological opponents and to strengthen one’s own positive image, but also just
for the sake of catching or keeping the audience’s attention. Naturally, ava-
lanches of conspiracy theories painting Soros as a villain are unleashed on social
media also on their own, as it were, that is without strategic interventions, but
we agree with Timothy Melley that several clear-cut cases are discernible in
which Soros is referred to with the aim of achieving a discrediting effect, par-
ticularly in the second half of the 2010s (Bondarenko 2017). It is remarkable
that there are very different strategic actors who represent Soros as responsible
for all kinds of unpleasantness, ranging from Russian disinformation sites
oriented to internal as well as external audiences, the right-wing populist forces
in several Central and Eastern European states to the US Republicans, to the
Facebook marketing team. Academic discourse has adopted the term: the Soros
myth (Kalmar et al. 2018) or legend (Colăcel, Pintilescu 2017), which indicates
that the elderly billionaire is described as an antihero of superhuman power and
malevolence, occasionally as a straight -out
caricature of a villain whose
dastardly, yet meticulously planned and systematically executed, deeds are the
talk of peripheral meme sites and social media threads, as well as slogans in
election campaigns. The following subchapter briefly introduces Soros’s life and
his becoming one of the most popular antiheroes of conspiracy theories.
The Western world knows George Soros as a US philanthropist, publicist and
investor of Hungarian Jewish origin. He was born in Budapest in a German-
Jewish family on 12 August 1930. His birth name was Schwartz, changed into
Soros by his parents to escape anti-Semitic persecution. He managed to survive
both Nazi and Communist dictatorships and emigrated to England in 1947,
where he studied philosophy at the London School of Economics. Soros
embarked on a successful career in finance and, in 1956, he moved to America
where he specialised in European stocks. In the 1990s, Soros became famous as
“the man who broke the Bank of England” as, on Black Wednesday
(16 September 1992), he bet against the British pound and profited what was
estimated to have been over 1 billion dollars (McLaughlin, Trilupaityte 2012,
432). Soros started his philanthropist activities in Apartheid-era South Africa in
1979, creating stipends for black South Africans to study at the University of
Cape Town. In the mid-1980s he started financing foundations advancing citizen
education and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, the best-known among
these is the international grantmaking network Open Society Foundations
(OSF). In his birth country, Hungary, he made major investments in order to
found the Central European University (CEU) and also supported many stu-
dents’ studies abroad. Among others, he also supported an ardent future
opponent of his, as he financed the short-term
studies of the Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán at the University of Oxford. In addition to investments
reaching billions, Soros has been advancing a liberal democratic world view as a
publicist, concentrating on the topics of minority rights, the transparency of
power and the advancement of citizen society (see Krekó, Enyedi 2018).
The events in the Soros-themed

conspiracy theory
Today, Soros has become the “umbrella enemy”, the puppet master, allegedly
pulling the strings of the biased mainstream media, the corrupt educational
system, the European Union that undermines traditional values and nation
states and non-profit associations, etc., that advocate all possible kinds of minor-
ities (Krekó, Enyedi 2018, 48; see Colăcel, Pintilescu 2017). The Soros legend
mixes the ideas of NWO, a general anti-elitism as well as anti-Semitic tropes
deriving from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and conspiracy theories con-
nected with the Rothschilds (see Kalmar et al. 2018). Ivan Kalmar and his
co-authors have identified that contemporary conspiracy theories connected
with Soros contain both explicit anti-Semitism that might have been borrowed
from Hitler’s rhetoric, as well as implicit, deliberately hidden anti-Semitism
that
is understandable only to a particular segment of the audience and functions in
the encoded manner of a dog whistle, as it were. An example of the latter could
be the use of the echoes symbol ((())) in alt-right web communication. “This
symbol is used in situations where a poster wishes to insinuate or point out that
a person or term is either Jewish or referring to Jews” (Kalmar et al. 2018, 331).
The forces that avoid Nazi analogies, e.g. mainstream right-wing populists,
represent Soros as primarily the puppet master of the globalist movement whose
further aim is to gain maximum power using the leverage of the deep state
diluting the white, Christian nature of various nation states through immigration
and Islamisation (see Vogel et al. 2018).
The Soros myth is a telling example of the contemporary networking
conspiracy culture – intriguing conspiracy plots tied to a particular person have
become known globally, while being promoted by popular conspiracy sites and
star mediators of conspiracy theories (e.g. Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Roseanne
Barr). At the same time it is important to note that even if actors who are active
in different parts of the world and bear different political aims disseminate
similar or even overlapping anti-Soros conspiracy theories or the so-called
global legend of Soros, the interpretations connected with this still often
emerge as specific of the culture or audience in question. Neil McLaughlin and
Skaidra Trilupaityte conducted a comparative study of the Soros legend in
Russia, Lithuania and the US, an important conclusion of which was that
internationally spreading conspiracy theories are, as a rule, interpreted
proceeding from the cultural frames rooted in local politics and collective
memory (2012, 432).
Below, we shall sketch briefly some of the basic events and so-called nar-
rative anchoring points that are commonly highlighted in Soros -
themed
conspiracy theories. Both event and system conspiracy narratives can be found
among those connected with Soros (see Barkun 2003). The former point at the
billionaire as the malevolent cause of particular (easily localisable) events; the
latter depict him as responsible for broader social developments, e.g. the ideas of
multiculturalism infiltrating the mainstream. In the mid-1980s, or the period in
which Soros started his philanthropic activities in Eastern Europe, the KGB
started to disseminate conspiracy theories accusing him of espionage in favour
of the US and subversive activities directed against the USSR. These theories
viewed Soros and the foundations he was financing as means of brainwashing
and promulgating Americanism and globalism (Kaufman 2002, 12; McLaughlin,
Trilupaityte 2012, 437). Conspiracy narratives originating in Russia have also
been depicting Soros as the hidden stage manager of the coloured revolutions
that took place in Eastern Europe in the 2000s. A further aim of such action is
supposedly the submitting of the countries that were part of the former
Yugoslavia, as well as Georgia and Ukraine, to the dictate of the West (prim-
arily the US). Russia’s foreign-language
(that is, addressed at a foreign audi-
ence) information and influencing channel Sputnik was one of the first sources
to start connecting Soros with the apparently secret organisation of the migration
crisis that shook Europe starting from the 2010s. The idea was disseminated that
the crisis was called forth artificially for the sake of the Islamisation of Europe
and a weakening, or downright eliminating, of the local culture (Kalmar et al.
2018, 330). The conspiracy theories addressed at Russia’s internal audience
represent Soros’s aim as undermining of the Orthodox religion and the organisa-
tion of life proceeding from it, and the general unleashing of a chaos and
immorality that would paralyse society. They even go as far as to suggest that
Soros is the Antichrist or a power in the latter’s service (American Antichrist
and Soros … 2019).
In conspiracy theories spreading in Catholic Eastern European countries,
such as Lithuania and Poland, Soros and the organisations funded through his
foundations are also depicted as undermining traditional Christian values
(including gender roles, family values, etc.). There is a rather widespread motif
that, under the cover of promoting citizen society and human rights, Soros is
actually propagating homosexuality, abortions and drugs (see McLaughlin,
Trilupaityte 2012, 440). Also, in Romania and Slovakia, Soros has been con-
nected with the undermining of traditional gender roles; in addition, he is seen to
be guilty of fanning anti-government
protests and hiring people to take part in
demonstrations. He has been depicted as the organiser of the anti-corruption
demonstrations that started in Romania in 2015 (see Colăcel, Pintilescu 2017)
and of the wave of anti-government protests in 2018 (see Mesežnikov 2019).
The dissemination of conspiracy theories strategically smearing Soros is par-
ticularly forceful in his birth country of Hungary. Similar to the conspiracy the-
ories spreading in Russia, Soros is first and foremost depicted as an epitome of
globalism and unfair capitalism as well as being responsible for its ills –
poverty and inequality. The Hungarian political scientists Peter Krekó and Zsolt
Enyedi have noted that conspiracy theories targeting Soros and the Central
European University (CEU) founded by him, started to be spread in Hungary in
2015–2016 in the context of Europe’s refugee crisis. The government led by
Fidesz3 has spent more than 100 million euros (of public funds) to convince
Hungarians that Soros’s aim is to bring into Europe more than a million
Moslem immigrants from Asia and Africa who would imperil the local culture
and way of life (Krekó, Enyedi 2018, 45). The non-profit associations financed
by Soros, as well as the CEU, are seen as dangerous organisations through
which he consolidates his power of influence.
Conspiracy theories similar to the above are also spreading in Estonia where
they are mostly popularised by alt-right and populist forces. Such narratives
underscore that the billionaire’s purposeful actions have unleashed various
conflicts and crises, starting from Soros promoting the coloured revolutions, up
to him organising the European refugee crisis and Central American migrant
caravans, as well as fomenting cultural Marxist brainwashing that will lead to a
general moral decline. Quite often Soros is pointed at as one of the main
instigators of the NWO conspiracy system, a top globalist who is approaching
his aim of achieving maximum power via undermining nation states and the
moral and intellectual degeneration of their citizens. Typically of system
conspiracy theories, the dominant media outlets are seen as a propaganda mech-
anism of the conspirators, while social media is perceived as an unregulated
information sphere that is, accordingly, more difficult to manipulate.
In America, conspiracy theories connected to Soros started spreading in the
2000s when the billionaire was openly critical of decisions made by President
Bush in connection with the war in Iraq. Such theories were mostly
disseminated by radical Republicans and these theories involved establishing a
liberal extremist world order in which there would be no borders between
nations, while hedonism and amorality of the highest degree would reign as
concerns sexuality, drugs and euthanasia, as Soros’s main aims (McLaughlin,
Trilupaityte 2012). During Obama’s presidency Soros was blamed for colluding
with the President in weakening the economy of the US and establishing a
socialist regime (McLaughlin, Trilupaityte 2012, 435). In connection with
Donald Trump’s election campaign and his period in office, the anti-Soros
conspiracy theories have been intensifying and their explicitly anti-Semitic and
Islamophobic versions are vigorously spreading in alt-right networks (Kalmar
et al. 2018). Among other things, Soros is accused of paying for fake protests in
support of feminism (e.g. the 2017 Women’s March) and science, spreading
false information directed against the Republicans, advocating homosexuality
and establishing a deep state that hinders transparent governance. Similar to the
conspiracy theories spreading in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, Soros’s
role in initiating the immigration crises is emphasised also in the USA, both in
the context of the European refugee crisis as well as the Latin American
immigration caravans.
In sum it could be stated that Soros’s Jewish background, his enviable
wealth, his philanthropic activities spinning several continents that support
liberal leftist values which have been continuing for decades, as well as a relat-
ively forceful presence in the public debates in the US and Eastern Europe, have
made him one of the most important anti-heroes
in contemporary conspiracy
theories.
The strategic devices of the Soros-themed conspiracy

narratives
This chapter aims at illustrating the model of the semiotic construction of stra-
tegic conspiracy narratives with an analysis of several conspiracy narratives con-
nected with George Soros. We would like to give examples of topical
conspiracy theories to illustrate textual strategies used by the disseminators of
strategic conspiracy narratives in order to create and address their Model Reader
or target audience, and show which encoding devices are being used to construct
the conflict of the narrative and its constituent parties, or the opposition between
us and them. We also wish to explain in the following how the code text of the
conspiracy theory functions as a powerful centre that directs meaning-making
and can make even seemingly separate fragments of information meaningful for
an audience well versed in the base narrative and vocabulary of the Soros-
themed conspiracy theory.
The study of strategic messages from the point of view of

semiotics
The question of attributing intentionality is one of the most complex problems
in studying strategic communication on social media. From the perspective of
our model, however, this is not a question of primary importance. The strategic
or goal-oriented nature of a message has been determined first and foremost by
the construction of the message itself that has to take into consideration the
specificity of the audience, and not the recognisability of the message’s
concrete constructor. With the aim of our work in mind it is not decisive
whether we attribute the authorship, in the sense of being the primary source, to
a creator of the message or whether this is considered the level of projection or
dissemination, for our goal is to demonstrate textual devices through which the
Model Author who has been created discursively, “justifies the actions and
shapes the meanings of conflicts in public sphere and influence the audience
behaviour in a way desired” (O’Loughlin et al. 2017, 50). If the researcher
manages to detect unity in the aims of different narratives, both the levels of
formation as well as of projection will fulfil the same function in influencing the
audience. The levels merge together in the Model Author who can adopt
various guises, e.g. the Government’s press representative, an expert, an
influencer on social media, but whose unity can still be constructed via the aims
and the agenda being disseminated through the narratives. Is it really important
here which source was the first to mention the conspiracy theories? What is
more, often strategic actors (e.g. the Hungarian government led by Orbán) will
pick up a conspiracy theory already in circulation and make it into a constituent
part of their own strategic communication. Who is the first strategic author in
such a case?
One of the preconditions for constructing the Model Author is that in the
asymmetric strategic communication on social media, a strategic actor cannot
start constructing and disseminating narratives that are in conflict with his or her
real aims, e.g. Orbán cannot advance a public narrative in which he would
accuse the European Union of spreading Soros-themed conspiracy theories. As
it is difficult for the creator to control the further spread of narratives on social
media, the contradictions in the narratives referred to could bring along
undesired communicative results for Orbán as a strategic actor, as he would
partly be legitimising Soros’s agenda.
Neither are we analysing the reception level nor taking a stance on the
success of the textual strategies used in conspiracy narratives as concerns
manipulation. For this purpose, qualitative audience research should be
conducted, which remains outside the focus of this book. However, in analysing
our examples we can indicate which strategic aims and communicative functions
a device could bear for an audience that shares certain cultural codes and prag-
matic standards. What is more, this admission is connected with a constitutive
characteristic of the humanities. As stated by Boris Uspenskij, a leading figure
of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, “Nothing whatsoever can be proven
in humanities that study human culture. We can only explain one phenomenon
or another, while one and the same phenomenon can be explained in manners
that are in principle different. The degree of convincingness of one or another
explanation is determined by relating of the phenomena, that is, the measure to
which one or another explanation would allow us to interpret other phenomena
contingent with the one observed” (Uspenskij 2013, 23). The main contribution
of our semiotic treatment thus is the revealing of particular textual strategies
employed in constructing the Model Reader and explicating their success
potential. The examples given in the analysis have been chosen with this aim in
mind and do not cover the full plethora of devices characteristic of Soros-
themed conspiracy narratives.
We are focusing on three separate thematic fields of the strategic narrative
that nevertheless are remarkably interwoven. First, there are political narratives
whose main purpose is to form a political agenda, to undermine the opponent’s
positions or image, and to construct a political community. As was pointed out
in the subchapter “The functions of identity creation in conspiracy theories”, by
“political”, we first and foremost mean the logics of the signification processes
in social relationships through which attempts are made to solve or shape social
oppositions and conflicts. Here, conspiracy narratives mostly fulfil the symbolic
function of identity creation.
Second, there are conspiracy theories that embody alternative knowledge that
question the discourse via institutionalised discourses that are (re)produced by
these institutions (e.g. the dominant system of education). Such dominant
discourses attempt to make the way in which things are discussed natural and
thus the power relationship of these discourses is based on silent authority.
Conspiracy theorists often see their mission as undermining the norms of polit-
ical correctness propagated by mainstream media, the education system and the
state institutions (Madisson 2016b), while they are also trying to offer altern-
ative knowledge discourses in return. Proceeding from Foucault, the latter can
be conceptualised as subjugated knowledge. The French thinker takes
subjugated knowledge to appear in historical contents that have been
disqualified in power games as formally unsystematised, non-conceptual,
insufficiently elaborated, naïve, located low down in hierarchy, beneath the
required level of specialist knowledge or scientificity (Foucault 1980, 82). At
the same time, this subjugated knowledge is not general, common-sense know-
ledge; on the contrary, it is particular, local, differential knowledge which is
never unanimous and which owes its force only to the harshness with which it is
opposed by everything surrounding it (Foucault 1980, 82). As the determination
of the dominant discourse greatly depends on the context with which it is being
compared, in the present case it is the perspective of the conspiracy theorists’
positive self -
description that is important. Often, conspiracy theorists see
themselves as true enlightenment figures, as they usually understand main-
stream media as a sphere of conspiratorial propaganda, disinformation and/or
mind control “and that their conspiracist beliefs are literally revolutionary in
their political and epistemological implications” (Ballinger 2011, 73; see also
Hristov 2019).
Third, we zoom in on conspiracy narratives used for marketing purposes that
serve the function of a general catching of attention and infotainment, as well as
the advancement of concrete personal brands. In addition, we analyse the
application of conspiracy theories in PR, concentrating on an example in which
an attempt was made to use strategic dissemination of conspiracy theories to
delegitimise criticism directed against a large corporation.
Conspiracy theories connected with Soros embrace all these fields and often
a conspiracy narrative and its internal textual devices can bear a number of
different functions. For instance, conspiracy theorists see achieving political
supremacy as the main aim of Soros’s actions, while his foundations are pointed
at as a mechanism to that end via which the billionaire “naturalises” liberal
democratic views in the system of education. Thus, the boundaries between the
thematic fields of conspiracy narratives are relative and which function will
become predominant is dependent on the particular communication situation
and the adopted aim. The examples chosen have been collected from different
sources: we use reports compiled by portals fighting disinformation and
academic studies which include articles by other scholars, as well as our own
earlier qualitative studies.
Political conspiracy narrative: formation of the figure of

external enemy
This subchapter focuses first on examples of political conspiracy theories con-
nected with Soros in which the aim of constructing a common external enemy is
the legimitisation of one’s own foreign political agenda and transformation of a
home conflict into a foreign political topic. Here, we observe how pro-Russia
narratives create connections of alliance in the context of events occurring in
Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. After that we analyse conspiracy narratives con-
nected with Soros that primarily aim at undermining the political elite or
delegitimising the political opposition and whose other, more concrete aim is
the shaping and mobilising of a targeted audience. Naturally, the examples
given can fulfil all the functions but for the sake of clarity we have differentiated
them in our analysis.
We start our analysis with four conspiracy narratives that are aimed at
different target audiences. Mostly, our examples derive from the website of the
portal EUvsDisInformation4 that is dedicated to exposing disinformation dir-
ected against the European Union emanating from Russia. It gives examples of
dozens of conspiracy theories disseminated by RT, Sputnik and other Russian
media channels that construct the malevolent activities of the US and Soros as
the main conflict, yet each subconflict takes into consideration the concrete
political situation and cultural background. We start by quoting the Russian
political scientist Araik Stepanjan, who belongs to the Russian Academy’s sci-
entific council dealing with geopolitical problems and frequently appears on the
Russian television channels Rossija 1 and Rossija 2.5
The goal of the US is to create chaos, so that the Orthodox would kill one
another – Ukrainians would kill Ukrainians, Georgians would kill Georgians,
they are also working in Armenia. It is the Antichrist that came into our
home. It is the network of Soros, which does not care about nations, reli-
gions, God or the devil – they are sowing chaos in post-Soviet space.
This may be the most comprehensive example of Soros’s heinous actions, but
a similar conspiracy narrative can be found on different media channels
financed by the Russian state. An article published by the RT on 5 July 2019,
“The government bears full responsibility: The Soros Foundation urging
Tbilisi authorities to fight against the Russian Federation’s ‘hybrid war’
against Georgia” points at the activities of the Soros foundation as the main
escalator of protests against Russia.6 Among the foundation’s activities in
2019, the article mentions other projects, costing hundreds of thousands of
dollars, whose goal is to counter “Russian disinformation” and the negative
reconceptualisation of the Soviet past (Gureeva, Lužnikova 2019). This
conspiracy theory contains intertextual references to other, similar conspiracy
theories that hold George Soros responsible for secretly organising and
sponsoring anti-government protest actions in several post-Soviet states. The
use of inverted commas (“”) attributes the status of ridiculous statements to
“Russian disinformation” and Russia’s “hybrid war” against Georgia. The use
of inverted commas is a device that was employed already by Soviet press
when it was necessary to direct the readers’ attention to the legitimacy of the
opponent’s claims (see Papernyi 1996).
We provide a couple of additional examples about the Soros -
themed
conspiracy theories spreading in the post-Soviet
space, an aim of which is to
construct an external enemy. The RT programme “CrossTalk Bullhorns: Crazy
world” with Dmitry Babich, John Laughland, and Alex Christoforou on 13 May
2019 spoke, regarding the connections between Ukraine’s new president
Volodymyr Zelensky and Soros, that the President and numerous members of
his team are stooges of George Soros and the Liberals (CrossTalk … 2019). The
Italian-language Sputnik, that disseminates a similar, in principle pro-Kremlin,
agenda continued the narrative and claimed at the beginning of July 2019 that
George Soros destabilises states in order to provoke civil wars like Euromaidan
in the Ukraine (Statello 2018). In the case of both examples linked with the
Ukraine, Soros is represented as the main puppet master whose influence on the
new president could escalate the political climate within Ukraine into a war.
An article from Sputnik Armenia (Dispute between … 2019) tells us that the
Soros Foundation is plotting the destruction of Armenia. In addition, the Soros
Foundation is organising confrontations in Armenia as Soros’s accomplices
encourage the Armenians to come out against the people of Artsakh (Nagorno-
Karabakh): “They want civil war and blood.”
Dominant textual strategies

In the following we will observe the main textual devices that have been used
in these examples to construct the Model Reader. In these cases, the conflict
has been built with inferences from one type of ordinary scenarios – war scen-
arios. This determines the choice and meaning of the basic vocabulary and a
certain framework of action for the participants in the narrative. The events
that took place in Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia in 2018–2019 are framed in a
war scenario and a Model Reader is created who activates and directs the
empirical reader towards attributing meaning to today’s conflicts in the light of
previous ones. Earlier experiences of civil war in these countries (“Ukrainians
would kill Ukrainians, Georgians would kill Georgians”, “provoke civil wars
like Euromaidan in Ukraine”)7 as well as conflicts with neighbouring countries
(“They want the Armenians to come out against the people of Artsakh
(Nagorno-Karabakh)”)8 are recalled. A war scenario also determines the activ-
ities of the characters belonging to Soros’s network: intelligence networks are
hinted at who operate under cover and serve the interests of foreign states.
Secret subversion agents are implied that seek to undermine traditional values.
The disseminators of messages perceived as fake information are presented as
information warriors who spread anti-Russia attitudes and distort the picture of
a mutual past when Georgia used to belong to the Soviet Union. Then, the
Model Reader is guided to creating connections with the narratives of
rewriting history.
Such conspiracy theories underline the ongoing desire on part of Western
media to minimise Russia’s cultural but, first of all, political role in history. This
sequence of conspiracy theories also includes theories about historians bribed by
the West who will not recognise the leading role of the Soviet Union in
defeating Hitler’s Germany; as well as those concerning scholars who suggest
that the Baltic States did not voluntarily join the Soviet Union but were occupied
in 1940, etc. In connection with the popular TV series Chernobyl (2019),
conspiracy theories have emerged as to the real reasons for the catastrophe
involving the infiltration of CIA agents in the personnel of the nuclear power
plant and subversive action on their part. The basic plot of rewriting history
mentioned above could be considered one of the most widespread theories of an
anti-Russian conspiracy on Russian media (Rebane 2018).
One of the strategic aims of the use of the war scenario is the creation of a
situation of military tension under conditions in which there is no actual war.
According to Lev Gudkov, Russian sociologist and director of the analytical
Levada Centre, in case of war the main aims of discursive activities of
adversaries consist of the demonisation of a concrete enemy and mobilisation of
people to fight (Gudkov 2005, 14). Such a war framework tends to be built upon
a narrative strategy based on continual modelling in Lotman’s sense, in which
the causal relationships between particular events are not disclosed, but only
indicated as analogies. Rather, the creating of relationships occurs on the basis
of external similarities. On the level of discourse, one of the possibilities of
activating such continuous creation of relationships is the code text of
conspiracy discourse that represents the large-scale
conspiratorial actions of “the
figure of the enemy” – in this particular case, Soros. “The figure of the enemy”
is characterised by ideological and dogmatic construction and irrationality. It is a
product of propaganda used to demonise a political and ideological enemy, with
the purpose of legitimating its advocate’s own pretensions of power
(Buchbender 1989, 18). The author of a strategic narrative has to use stereotypes
and images of threat that can characterise the figure of an enemy of the target
audience. What is involved in this particular case includes hints at a war scen-
ario, concrete experiences of war the audience may have experienced in the
course of history, etc. The Soros-themed conspiracy narrative provides unified
explanations to subconflicts or subtopics that otherwise appear as separate and
guides the Model Reader towards making connections between the subconflicts,
which makes Soros everyone’s omnipotent mutual enemy.
The war scenario is based on antithetical meaning-making that clearly divides
the conflict into two opposing parties divided by an uncrossable boundary and is
supported by other strategies of rhetorical and stylistic hyper-coding connected
with war. Thus, parallels are drawn between Soros’s activities and occupation,
the results of his villainous deeds are represented as bloody and destabilising, in
line with war, etc. Inferences from intertextual scenarios activate cultural texts
in the target audience that present Soros’s actions in the framework of a biblical
contestation between Good and Evil, in which Soros appears as “Antichrist that
came into our home” (see above for Araik Stepanjan’s speech). Intertextual
scenarios overlap with ideological targeting that, according to Eco, will take into
consideration the probable ideological views of the empirical reader (Eco
2005, 92). In these examples the ideological references of the Model Reader are
connected to a conservative, (Orthodox) world view that cherishes traditional
family values which are represented as endangered. According to the scholar of
conspiracy theories Mark Fenster, contemporary popular eschatology is
characterised by a tendency to divide reality into an antithesis of good and evil,
which is superimposed upon an historical narrative that attempts to make sense
of the natural via the supernatural. The world is experienced as a setting for
secret and dangerous events where danger to Christian beliefs and values being
undermined keeps lurking continually (Fenster 2008, 228).
Functions
Dissemination of the conspiracy narrative that is constructed on the basis of the
ordinary war scenario, religious intertextual scenarios, and ideological
hypercodings bears several interconnected functions. First, it helps to shape the
targeted audience and the horizon of interpretation prevailing there, which is
characterised by an interpretation frame that models the world in a black and
white manner. Creating an interpretative community contains references to
certain historical events (in this case, hints at war events) that start to guide the
reader’s further interpretations and the logic of creating a possible chain of
events in the capacity of subtopics. The code-textual
logic of conspiracy theories
helps the strategic actor create a Model Reader who has a unified enemy in
Soros. Recognising Soros as the cause of different events and subconflicts makes
it possible to treat the readers who identify with these events as a potentially
unified targeted audience, or one of the political-strategic characteristics of such
a narrative is the expansion of the target audience.
Second, from the perspective of strategic communication it is equally
important to mark the position of us that makes it possible for the author of the
narrative, in addition to targeting the audience, to achieve goals related to the
political agenda. The actions and aims of the Model Author, i.e. the discursive
position of us, need not always be explicit in strategic narrative as this may
diminish the credibility of the forwarded information and create a feeling of
being manipulated in the audience. Thus, the justified question arises as to how it
is possible to construct a unified Model Author, a strategic actor, proceeding
from all these examples? Taking into consideration that the Model Author
appears as a result of the text’s interpretative cooperation, we as researchers will
be able to detect signs pointing at the strategic goals of the narratives on the level
of discourse. In discourses this is indicated, on the one hand, by the actions taken
by us in the solving of the conflict. The Sputnik Armenia article saw banning of
the foundations as a key to conflict solving: “The foundation workers and people
cooperating with them are foreign agents. Therefore, the foundation’s office
in Armenia must be closed. Their activities should be prohibited” (Dispute
between … 2019). Such counteractions suggested as solutions to subconflicts can
help the researcher to construct the Model Author and his or her political aims to
which the audience’s support is sought with the help of narratives. We can see
that, in addition to constructing the external enemy, one of the narrative’s aims is
directed at the delegitimisation of internal political opponents: the unrest may be
initiated externally, but its actualisation is being helped by Soros’s minions.
Another possibility is to derive the goals, using antithetical mirror-projective
logic: Soros’s villainous plans go counter to the position of us or the Model
Author. In a situation where the strategic actor cannot openly reveal his or her
goals such an indirect reading can offer a key to detecting the text’s real goals
and the position of the possible real actor (see also Ventsel et al. 2019). Although
in constructing the Model Reader the specific socio-cultural background of the
target audience is taken into account, a surprising unity emerges in the
narrative’s main agenda in case of our examples: all of these connect Soros with
organising pro -
Western demonstrations and question the legitimacy of such
meetings. At times there are direct indications of this: “the Soros Foundation
serves foreign interests in Armenia” points at Soros as the arch-enemy. As the
mutual enemy is taking shape, so is its opposite part – the common us.
According to the logic of antithetical reading, an enemy of Soros’s should be our
friend. Thus, Russia, against whom Soros is also waging war in Georgia (“Soros
foundation called for Tbilisi’s [i.e. Georgian authorities – authors’ comment A.V,
M -
L.M] opposition to Russia’s ‘hybrid war’ against Georgia” (Gureeva,
Lužnikova 2019)), can clearly be positioned as belonging to the us represented
in the Model Author. There are also other signs that allow us to see Russia’s
foreign political agenda behind these examples. In the Armenian case, referring
to Nagorno-Karabakh functions as an indirect hint at Russian foreign politics
whose support has helped Armenia to maintain an autonomous enclave with an
Armenian population within Azerbaijan.
With such a frame of analysis we are able to detect a certain unity in different
aims that are being sought via these narratives. A common aim makes it possible
to construct a Model Author behind these texts for, as we identified in the
subchapter “Information conflicts and strategic narratives”, the Model Author is
formed in strategic communication through the unity of the aims set by the nar-
ratives. These must not be in conflict with one another. In this case the indirect
signs used in reflecting the events in Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia point at
Russia as a strategic actor.
Political conspiracy narrative: opposition to the elite

In exemplifying the textual strategies of anti-elitist
conspiracy narratives related
with Soros, we mostly rely on analysing conspiracy theories circulating in
right -
wing populist Estonian media. The Soros -
themed conspiracy theories
circulating in former post-Soviet countries are remarkably different from one
another. Thus, McLaughlin and Trilupaityte (2012, 439) indicate in an article
mapping the Soros-themed
conspiracy theories, that in Lithuania the heated
attacks on Soros and his foundation were ultimately not about the Jewish
billionaire, but mainly stood out as attempts to undermine local political and
intellectual figures by linking them to the notorious donor. The conspiracy the-
ories suggest that under cover of supporting the civil society Soros helped
the old establishment settle in high positions in the new conditions of the
re-independent Lithuania (Radžvilas 2008). So, the main conflict here has been
encoded as an ideological battle between ex-communists
and non-communists,

while it is interesting that Soros’s name is linked to the aspirations of those
formerly in power. Differently from Lithuania, in the Estonian context it is not
former communists who have been marked as Soros’s supporters, and there are
virtually no suggestions of a religious ideological hypercoding that in the Baltic
context can be found in Lithuania (McLaughlin, Trilupaityte 2012). Still, both
Estonian as well as Lithuanian conspiracy theories almost never point at Soros
as an organiser of real uprisings and nodes of military conflict that could be
pointed at in the Ukrainian, Georgian and Armenian contexts.
The malevolent actions belonging to the fabula of the main Soros-themed
conspiracy theories spreading in Estonia depict Soros and his minions as bent on
destroying the political organisation of life that is based on the notion of the
nation state (Rahvusriikide lammutaja … 2019). Soros’s manipulations are first
and foremost connected with the influence of the politics of the European Union
and fanning various subconflicts. The figure of Soros as the anti-hero reached
Estonia more noticeably in 2015 when a discourse arose depicting him as the
source of the migration crisis that had hit Europe and, according to the
conspiracy theorists, had been called forth deliberately with the aim of
destroying nation states. Uued Uudised, the main organ of the extreme right-
wing Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE)9 constructs the conflict
initiated by Soros in the following way (Kui Trump Soros … 2018):
Some days ago, the Voice of Europe wrote about the Soros Express or the
migration crisis financed by the scandalous billionaire and destroyer of
nation states George Soros which is wholly artificial. Namely, both the
Balkan and the Mediterranean migration routes have been set in motion
deliberately, while a Central American route has been added to these as well
that is intended for putting pressure on Donald Trump’s administration.
In the conspiracy narratives concerning Estonia, Soros’s minions mostly include

the local political establishment that has been suggested to include active parti-
cipants in institutionalised politics, opinion leaders who mostly represent liberal
democratic views, as well as the educational system. Soros’s purported
manipulations have been nicely summarised in the blog Rahvuslane that is
popular with the Estonian alt-right
and, on 12 May 2018, shared a piece by Tiit
Madisson, a dissident and conspiracy theorist well known in Estonia, titled
“Jewish ‘revolutionaries’ refashioning the world”,
In 1998 the political cream of Estonia, whose fawning upon the powerful of
this world was nigh unfathomable, in the person of President (Lennart Meri)
awarded George Soros with the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana,
apparently for furthering democracy. In case of Soros, however, this is
expressed as violent merging of nations, destroying of classic human morals
and national cultures, eradicating humanity and a natural atmosphere for life
and natural human relationships, and other activities detrimental to the
nation state.
(Tiit Madisson 2018)
Dominating textual strategies

The main conflict incited by Soros is constructed by the Estonian extreme right
audience primarily in the framework of political and nationalist ideological
hypercoding. This greatly determines the nature of the basic lexicon (actions,
actors) building the discourse and other ways of encoding. The narrative of
Soros as the destroyer and annihilator of nation states is connected with actions
instigated by him and his minions that aid the mixing of nationalities and the
accompanying downfall of nation states (the migration crisis in Europe and
America).
The phrase “the Soros Express” is used to describe the migration streams
purportedly caused by Soros, and functions as a specific rhetorical-stylistic code
in the target audience (Ungari hoiatab … 2018). “The Soros Express” refers to
the migration streams that have been deliberately set in motion and that Soros is
using to catch media attention, provoke national governments and stir conflicts.
It is also emphasised that in public the dastardly Jewish billionaire presents his
manipulations achieved with the help of migrants as activities spurred on by
humanist considerations. In the opinion of conspiracy theorists, the real aim of
such influencing activities is to escalate the conflict to a degree in which states
would abandon their right to defend their borders against migrants who wish to
enter the country. From the perspective of text creation strategies, the migration
crisis called into life by Soros functions as a discursive subtopic, a subconflict. It
guides the target audience towards treating Soros’s actions as part of the bigger
plan to destroy nation states as such.
The above-quoted excerpts, particularly that by Tiit Madisson, demonstrate
that the figure of the enemy has been constructed on the basis of an antithetically
modelled conflict: Soros’s actions are described in a binary mirror projection as
activities endangering “the natural”, i.e. the only order possible. “Classic morals”,
“a natural atmosphere for living” and “nation state” are encoded rhetorically as
concepts on the same level, which results in attributing the characteristic of
“naturalness” to the concept of “nation state”. Thus, Soros’s supposed battle
against nation states is also a battle against the humans’ natural socio-political
way of life. Intertextual encoding connects Soros with Jewish revolutionaries,
which in the Estonian cultural sphere primarily points at connotations with the
Bolshevik world revolution that bears a clearly negative meaning in the public
space.
Functions
In the case of these examples it is important on the strategic level that readers
should become used to the explanatory model that sees the local (political)
elite of Estonia, which purportedly supports Soros’s agenda and has been
bribed by him, as a destructive force that represents a danger to Estonians as
well as to Estonia as a nation state. This became obvious before the parlia-
mentary elections of 2019: “Soros’s troll factory aka the Open Estonia
Foundation has started meddling in the elections for the Riigikogu, attempts
to dictate election topics and to influence the election results by libelling
those forces that defend national and traditional values” (Rahvusriikide
lammutaja … 2019).
In addition to sketching the figure of the enemy, the analysed examples also
contain clear-cut hints at a world that helps the researchers detect the possible
strategic aims present in the examples. It appeared above that, on the one hand,
the position of us is characterised by an agenda of the nation state corresponding
to “the natural order of things” that Soros’s malignant actions attempt to destroy.
Via an antithetical reading the researcher can in principle derive the
characteristics of both parties. We have been describing this when also studying
other Estonian alt-right
conspiracy theories that present their values through
binary oppositions as moral, natural, rational and traditional, while the oppon-
ents are described as amoral, unnatural, irrational and loose forces led by
unbridled hedonism, selfishness and a desire to do evil (see Madisson, Ventsel
2016a, 333; Madisson 2016a).
From time to time concrete steps are proposed that should be taken against
Soros’s actions, i.e. serve as means to solve the conflict: “The first step would be
to make clear to the European public how, why and what exactly the open
society funds and Soros are doing so that the attempts to turn his destructive
fantasy into a political consensus or normality for the masses could be hindered
in course of an informed debate” (George Soros … 2016). Concrete proposals,
and countermeasures against Soros’s actions that are being referred to in the nar-
ratives, also function as references to the boundaries of the position and identity
of us.
On the other hand, the position of the Model Author can be detected from
the “fellow sufferers” – our allies are the US led by Donald Trump and,
within Europe, first and foremost Orbán’s Hungary whose political value
world is similar to ours. We learn from the alternative media channel
Objektiiv, which is popular with the Estonian national conservative and even
extreme right circles, that Soros “keeps visiting Brussels to bargain for a
punishment for Orbán” (Soros saalib Brüsseli vahet … 2018) and from the
Tiit Madisson article “This activity [sanction against Hungary – authors’
comment M-L.M, A.V] is unfortunately supported also by Estonia’s power
elite, a loyal poodle of the leaders of the European Union” (Tiit Madisson
2018). We can see that two opposing sides are taking shape: on the one side
there is Soros, the European Union, the local Estonian elite; and on the other
side there are local right-wing populist political forces and (ultra)nationally-
minded target audiences as well as Hungary, Orbán and Trump who are being
added together as victims of Soros’s malicious actions by the conspiracy
theory’s code text.
Political conspiracy narrative: opposing ideological

adversaries
Finally, we analyse political conspiracy narratives related to Soros with the
help of which the political forces in power attempt to legitimise their power
ambitions and undermine the political agenda of their opponents. The example
of Hungary was already introduced at the beginning of the previous
subchapter. Presumably, Hungary is the country in which Soros’s image has
been at the centre of political life for the longest period of time, in the most
varied ways and also in the most intensive manner (Krekó, Enyedi 2018, 46).
At times he has been used in strategic communication very successfully.
According to a poll conducted in Hungary in 2018, 51 per cent of respondents
believed that the migration crisis of 2015 had been initiated by Soros and
his stooges (Hungary: Europe’s champion … 2018). Also, those opposing
Orbán believed that Soros wanted to conquer Europe with the help of
Moslems (ibid.).
In the following we shall mostly concentrate on the example of Hungary as,
since 2015, in that country “the government has spent more than 100 million
euros to convince voters that a hidden network led by George Soros” exists
(Krekó, Enyedi 2018, 45). A textbook example of how party-political
interests
are being channeled into a cultural opposition between the own and the alien is
the “Stop Soros” package initiated by the Orbán government that attempts to
pass its agenda as a manifestation of the will of the people. On 13 February
2018, Zsolt Semjén, the Deputy Prime Minister of Hungary, filed a package of
bills on behalf of the government which consisted of three different bills:
(1) Bill T/19776 on the permits for organisations supporting migration; (2) Bill
T/19774 on the immigration restraint order; and (3) Bill T/19775 on the
immigration funding fee (Boros 2018). All three were concerned with fighting
migration and their goal was to restrict the activities of various NGOs whose
stance on migration politics differed from that of the government. In the words
of the Hungarian political analyst Tamás Boros “The government claims that all
attempts at helping migration constitute a national security risk and must be
countered accordingly. It considers all migration policies or activities that
contravene its own policy as dangerous, and regards George Soros as the main
financier of these threats” (2018).
The goal of the anti -
Soros campaign has been to promote what the Prime
Minister of Hungary Victor Orbán and the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and
Justice party Jarosaw Kaczyñski called a “cultural counter-revolution” in 2016
(Krekó, Enyedi 2018, 45). The name contains two text-strategic moves: on the
one hand, an attempt is made to present the anti-Soros campaign in the frame-
work of a cultural conflict; on the other hand, the activities are being legitimised
as revolutionary. In the former case the Model Reader is being guided to read
the politics of the Orbán government not as a campaign for the narrow private
interests of a single party, but as a fight for the preservation of the cultural
identity of each and every Hungarian. Historically, revolution has stood for a
fight against the regime in power. In this case, however, the fight against a polit-
ical regime is being transformed into a cultural revolution, in which the Fidesz
Party led by Orbán is entering a crusade against the cultural establishment that
has been allegedly infiltrating different Hungarian institutions and poisoning
Hungarian “hearts and minds” during previous decades. Pointing at a revolution
amplifies the scope of Orbán’s political agenda even more: the revolution is not
happening because of a party’s private interests but is being represented as
something embracing the whole society and thus manifesting the will of the
people. Revolutionary events are mostly depicted as an activity on the grassroots
level of ordinary citizens and not as actions initiated from above, which is why
Orbán is represented as an authentic representative of the Hungarian people.
With this textual strategy the Model Reader is guided onto an interpretative
path that represents the opponents of the cultural revolution as forces also
opposed to the will of the people. Thus, Figyelő, a Christian-conservative
Hungarian business magazine, published a list of more than 200 people (mainly
academics and human-rights activists) whom it called “mercenaries” hired by
Soros (Krekó, Enyedi 2018, 46). Soros’s minions are depicted as bribable,
i.e. the self-image of the Model Author is getting an opponent in the image of an
enemy whose actions are motivated by monetary calculations. A similar opinion
can be read on Orbán’s official website that describes Soros as “ ‘an American
financial speculator’ whose ‘power, size, and weight’ was greater than that of all
of Hungary, and who was ‘ruining the lives of millions of European people with
his financial speculations’ ” (Kalmar et al. 2018, 4). Even more obviously, Orbán
creates a connection between the avarice of Soros’s supporters and an ordinary
criminal scenario in one of his radio interviews: “These activists who support
immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling
network” (Gergely 2015). Adding a code of criminality to the Model Reader is a
strategic move in order to expand the limits the of the interpretative community.
It directs the doubtful part of the audience for whom Orbán’s anti-Soros actions
lack legitimacy as a fight for culture towards interpreting Soros’s activities in the
light of a code of criminality and illegality.
Constructing such a cultural conflict that embraces the whole of society
allows Orbán to use intertextual encodings based on different historical analogies
when he is constructing his own Model Reader. In a speech given during this
election campaign 2018, one of the aims of which was to collect support to the
“stop Soros package”, Orbán created connections between Soros’s manipulations
and key events in Hungarian history: “We sent home the [Ottoman] sultan with
his army, the Habsburg kaiser with his raiders and the Soviets with their
comrades”, “Now we will send home Uncle George” (Conspiracy theories
about … 2018). Orbán’s rhetoric shapes a Model Reader who is familiar with
important intertextual references to Hungarian history (the invasion of the
Ottoman Empire, the Habsburgs, the Soviets) and is able to identify with those.
In addition, vocabulary is used that is familiar to the older generation: “Uncle
George” refers to America, primarily as a globalist economic superpower that
sabotages a world order based on sovereignty and undermines cultural plurality.
The historical analogies that are largely based on war scenarios and boost
national pride depict today’s fight against Soros as an epic war for the national
and cultural survival and sovereignty of Hungarians.
The conflict constituting the “counter-cultural revolution” is constructed
most directly as a “clash of civilisations” between the patriotic defenders of a
traditional Christian nation and “international forces” that want to repopulate
Europe with Africans. Andras Aradszki, a Hungarian politician and member of
the National Assembly for Érd and a Member of the Parliament delivered an
address in the Parliament of Hungary on 9 October 2017 titled, “The Christian
duty to fight against the Satan/Soros Plan” (Novak 2017). From the perspective
of constructing the Model Author it is important that a connection be made
between Hungarian identity and a Christian intertextual code that makes it pos-
sible to place the struggle into a world historical perspective and see in the
events of the moment manifestations of a conflict that transcends civilisations.
At the same time, it is indicated that the enemy is first and foremost an intruder,
an external danger who is to be countered by internal forces: “We will fight
against the Soros empire” (ibid.; see also Conspiracy theories about … 2018).
The mobilising call to fight against the Soros empire sets the latter side by side
with such powerful intruders as the Ottoman, Habsburg and Soviet empires.
Yet similarly to the historical empires, also Soros has its agents who are pulling
the threads within Hungary and implementing anti-Hungarian policies (NGOs,
the CEU).
As an additional strategy of the ideological encoding of the Model Reader,
the covert use of an anti-Semitic
discourse can be pointed at in Orbán’s rhetoric.
For instance, the “stop Soros” package campaign was accompanied by bill-
boards all over the country saying, “We shall not let Soros have the last laugh.”
Deborah Lipstadt, Professor of Holocaust history at Emory University has said
that “No one [explicitly] says Soros is a Jew, but there are groups on the right
for whom these [symbols] are a wink-wink, nod-nod
dog whistle” (Weaver,
Hopkins 2018; see also Kalmar et al. 2018). Such encoding is particularly signi-
ficant for an audience who is aware of the trope of the “Laughing Jew”
appearing in the Hitler-era Nazi rhetoric. In this way, “Orbán was able to
position himself close enough to the voters of the extreme right, but not so close
as to lose the mainstream respectability that, even in Hungary, excludes open
and deliberate antisemitism” (Kalmar et al. 2018, 5).10
Functions
The main strategic aims of the narratives shaped by Orbán’s supporters include
shaping a conflict that would channel party-political differences of opinion into
an opposition of cultural identity between Hungarians and their opponents who
are manipulated by Soros. On the one hand, it can be said that the fight against
Soros as a person does not serve as the main aim of the strategic narratives
because Soros does not participate directly in a Hungarian internal political
election campaign. However, connections with Soros and his supposed plans
that endanger the cultural and historical heritage of Hungary make it possible to
delegitimise the forces that oppose Orbán’s political agenda and justify his own
particular activities that serve as attempts to solve the conflict (e.g. prohibiting
of NGOs, passing an anti-migration act, etc.). On the other hand, first and fore-
most considering the textual strategic aims, the discourse shapes a Model
Author (supporters of Orbán and his agenda) that unites in itself events
important from the perspective of the national narrative. This makes it possible
to expand the potential interpretative community as the Model Reader is led
towards identifying not so much with Orbán and his Fidesz Party but rather
with events and actors important from the perspective of communal cultural
memory.
On the level of discourse the code-textual logic of such conspiracy narrative
allows viewing different discrete activities as justified constituent parts of a
larger whole. The “Stop Soros” package, that was first and foremost directed at
silencing the forces opposing Orbán’s politics, was rhetorically constructed as a
revolutionary and nationalistic protest of Hungarians against Soros’s criminal
machinations that bring about cultural destruction. The narrative of an
endangered nation that has found a central place in Orbán’s rhetoric will make it
possible to legitimise means taken to hinder the opponents’ actions even in the
future, as the code-textual logic of the Soros-themed conspiracy theory allows
classification under its label of different actions that can be shown as
endangering the Hungarian cultural identity.
As was already said at the beginning of this analysis, conspiracy narratives
can bear different functions and the issue here is rather the domination of a
function. This is so also in the case in which the main target audience of
Orbán’s rhetoric is domestic. Yet the larger the segment of the potential target
audience that can be discursively addressed with the help of the Model Reader,
the more wide-reaching should be the represented conflict with which the audi-
ence should be able to identify. Thus, the fight for Christian values makes it
possible to create connections with other political forces using similar rhetoric
in both internal as well as foreign politics. For many anti-EU forces, Orbán’s
Hungary serves as a model due to its anti-Brussels rhetoric. This is why the
forming of such a camp clearly is one of the aims of the strategic author, as it
makes it possible to get positive feedback to its actions from international actors
who emphasise similar values.
Conspiracy narrative of alternative knowledge: representing

a decadent conspiracy system
How is the dominant Western world view to be delegitimised? How to under-
mine the understanding of the “natural order” of things and basic humanist
values? These are questions that we shall attempt to answer by showing the role
of the Soros-themed conspiracy narratives in constructing conflicts of world
views. Also, the previous chapter that directly focused on the narratives of
events and identities that undermine the image of political opponents talked
about the war of civilisations and the purported unnaturalness of the value
systems cultivated by Soros. This part primarily concentrates on discourses in
which the specific conflict of world views, the events constituting the narrative
and the parties involved do not stand out in so strong relief. This is understand-
able for the theme of these strategic narratives is a dominating system of media
and education, that supposedly promotes liberal leftist ideology, as a whole. The
conspiracy theories concentrating on knowledge represent their own value
system as knowledge that is being subjected to the system of the mainstream,
while the reason for such marginalisation and relegation to the periphery is seen
in Soros’s actions. Another difference in political conspiracy narratives in many
ways derives from the previous point – their targeted audience is relatively
diffuse. Constructing a conflict as the main mechanism for creating a strategic
interpretative community is represented in a more latent manner, which is why
the boundaries between the own and the alien appear as less clearly drawn
discursively. Based on examples from Estonian and Hungarian right-wing popu-
list media discourse, we demonstrate the logic of the narrative of a global
conspiracy system and of the latent conflict characteristic of the latter.
Narratives that are centred around the idea of malignant propagation of
dangerous and unnatural ideologies in the education system and the media can
undoubtedly be described as the type of system narratives that were discussed in
subchapter “The semiotic approach to conspiracy narratives”. Their timeline
reaches back beyond decades and they embrace complex series of events as well
as multiple actors, ranging from individuals seen as embodiments of evil (Soros,
Hillary Clinton, Pope Francis) and local institutions (particular individuals,
media outlets, banks) up to large international organisations (the EU, the UN,
Amnesty International). It is important to emphasise that such narratives
speaking of a decadent global conspiracy system represent an influential struc-
ture of evil that is successfully permeating the social fabric and is hierarchical;
it is presumed that many socially influential persons and structures serve the
aims of the conspirators. At the same time, it is also presumed that the bottom
layers of the conspiracy pyramid participate in the pernicious system without
being aware of this. Such explanations see knowledge that obscures people’s
critical thinking and blurs the so-called natural values as an indispensable lever
in perpetuating the conspiracy. Thus, the circle is closed as it reaches univer-
sities, media outlets and Soros-supported NGOs, for ironically it seems that the
disseminators of conspiracy narratives have internalised the basic claim of
poststructuralist philosophy – power belongs to those who say what constitutes
knowledge – and see universities and media outlets as central mechanisms in the
machinery of global conspiracy.
Right-wing populist media spheres consider the Frankfurt School’s Jewish
theoreticians of society and culture led by Herbert Marcuse as the main
architects of the “false knowledge” spreading in today’s universities and main-
stream media. Below, some extracts are given from an article by Tiit Madisson,
one of the most notorious political conspiracy theorists in Estonia, that
appeared in Rahvuslik Teataja, a publication advocating ultranationalist ideo-
logy. In our estimation, these concisely sum up the systemic narrative of cul-
tural Marxism being a decadent ideology that is expressed (usually in less
harsh terms) in many right-wing populist media channels (see Ekman 2016;
Kasekamp et al. 2019).
In 1960–1970 many Western universities turned into strongholds of leftist

ideology and brainwashing centres that disseminate their ideological views
on a “new progressive” way of life, all possible “rights” that are
resoundingly classified with human rights (such as having sex with the leg
of a stool or a car’s exhaust pipe).
[…] According to Marcuse’s new revolutionary theory the new revolu-
tionary class is not the proletarians as proposed by his fellow ethnic Marx,
but all kinds of ethnic and sexual minorities: the sexual perverts belonging
to the LGBT group (that now has received a new, condensated and
expanded meaning: LGGBOTTTIQQAAP in which also those into
shagging the dead and animals have found their rightful place), the gender
neutral set, the extreme left, feminists, those who label themselves
antifascists, all possible “refugees” of different races, Islamists, etc. with
whose help it is hoped to destroy the societies that are still based on the
existing culture, tradition, family and the church.
(Tiit Madisson 2018)
These quotations vividly demonstrate the global perspective characteristic of a

system narrative and the logic of the all-inclusive
explanation. To summarise the
author’s ideas, it can be claimed that malevolent and subtle dissemination of a
perverted ideology occurs in Western universities, and, by extension, in society
as a whole, first and foremost under the aegis of defending minority rights and
that this has already achieved a relaxation of the natural and traditional norms of
morality so that societies are endangered by all possible minorities gaining
power over the majority.
Yet how does all this concern Soros? In Tiit Madisson’s words, Soros and
“other Jewish bankers” have “set the destruction of nation states and building a
multicultural world order as the aim of their activities” (Tiit Madisson 2018).
The author indicates in his piece that as early as the 1980s, Soros created a
network of Open Societies, which includes the Open Estonia Foundation that
was established in 1990 and whose aim is not to support higher education, as is
generally presumed, but “understanding of the new and ‘correct’ ideology and
its dissemination”, and its ultimate aim is “subversion of the nation states”. In
addition to this, Soros and his minions have “founded also other subversive net-
works such as Doctors without Borders and Save the Children” (ibid.).
A conspiracy narrative drawing on a similar motif yet expanding its circle of
malignant actors with a global reach up to the leader of the Catholic church can
be met in a translation of a Breitbart article published in Uued Uudised, the
organ of the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (Vatikani diil … 2018). It
bears a telling title: “Vatican’s deal with globalists and Soros supporters: A gay
agenda and talk of multiculturalism in return for silence surrounding
paedophilia”. The gist of its contents appears in the following: “Breitbart ana-
lyses the latest child abuse scandals of the Catholic church. In the light of this it
may become slightly more understandable why the present Pope so ardently
praises mass immigration and homosexuality” (ibid). It is remarkable that the
sources of danger pointed at in these materials (migrants, Jewish scholars,
universities, sexual minorities, etc.) are not perceived as specific active agents,
but rather as puppets whom the conspirators need in order to realise their
malevolent plans of eradicating traditional values and nation states. Thus, these
groups and individuals are mentioned as threatening the normal way of life and
value climate, but the main guilt and the fully earned status of the puppet master
or the grey eminence is attributed to a narrow circle, whom the conspiracy the-
ories call top globalists, the One World Government or the ZOG (Zionist
Occupation Government). It is among this set that the right-wing populist
conspiracy theories place George Soros.
The main proof that the Jewish billionaire is personally contributing to the
dissemination of malignant false knowledge is found in the initiatives funded by
the Open Society Foundation that support minority groups and citizen initiatives
perceived as threatening by right-wing populists. In addition to this, the Central
European University, that has received considerable funding from Soros, prom-
inently figures in such explanations as its Gender Studies programme is seen as
a powerhouse of undermining traditional family values and morality space. It
was largely due to the conspiracy associations that had become established in
the public information space and the pressure from the Hungarian government
that the CEU had to transfer a major part of its lectures to Vienna in 2018 (see
also Kalmar et al. 2018). The Hungarian government, however, has expressed
the opinion that, in principle, the move to Vienna will not change anything: “Up
to now Central European University has operated here, it does so now, and we
think that it will continue to do so in the future. The relocation to Vienna of the
issuing body for its American degrees is simply part of a political ploy” (Walker
2018). It is presumed that the spreading of dangerous ideologies through secret
networks and brainwashing will be continued there as such an influencing
mechanism has been very effectively established by Soros. In this sense, Soros
does not represent an ordinary party-political opponent, he is, to use the words
of the Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács, an insidious political
player. “He’s using his very excessive network of so-called
civil organizations,
NGOs, to influence in political power. This is a different kind of democracy
from what we believe in” (Hume 2018).
An understanding of Soros as a puppet master subtly influencing the sphere
of education has been “translated” into the Estonian context as well. An article
published in the right-wing
populist online media outlet Objektiiv (Maksimov
2019) claims that Estonia’s institutions of higher education, particularly the
humanities and social studies scholars of Tallinn University, constitute a
dangerous propaganda machinery that “enforces its liberal globalist agenda with
the help of eager key persons and projects”. To corroborate the corruption of
Tallinn University, or “Soros’s Party school”, the piece indicates that several of
its Rectors “have been closely connected with the Soros Foundation” and that
Estonian universities have been heavily relying on financing from the Open
Estonia Foundation during the past 25 years. The author also judges Estonia’s
Minister of Education as corrupt as she is “an alumna of Central European
University that has close ties with Soros’s foundations” (ibid).
Also, mainstream media (e.g. professional media enterprises, public media
channels) are seen as a sphere of brainwashing conducted by Soros and his sup-
porters in right-wing
populist conspiracy theories. In the Estonian right-wing
populist information space, Soros’s speech at the World Economic Forum in
January 2019 gained quite extensive attention. The speech criticised Facebook
and Google for their monopolist status and declining of responsibility for the
negative results of their activities. An article that appeared in Uued Uudised
expressed the opinion that Soros attacked Facebook because of the realisation
that it is turning into a discussion forum that offers an alternative to the biased
information space of himself and other globalists and that this was frightening
him: “After the takeover of Western liberal media by leftist liberal forces it is
social media that has largely taken over the role of traditional media and is often
guiding resistance to globalism. Apparently, this is what the elderly billionaire
who considers himself the centre of the world is afraid of” (Davosis
netihiiglaste … 2018). The idea that mainstream media is biased and submitted
to a decadent elite seems to be so strongly established in the interpretative com-
munity well versed in system conspiracy theories that it is often referred to as
common sense that requires no additional proof, while references to the corrupt
media occur very frequently.

The system narrative of the Soros-led global conspiracy is full of references to
the NWO. These appear in the basic lexicon, e.g. in the abundant use of such
phrases as (top) globalists, Soros supporters, cultural Marxists, brainwashing,
etc. Such keywords have a fairly vague reference, due to which they can be
used widely and thus they emerge as popular and seem familiar also to
interpreters who are only superficially aware of right-wing populist conspiracy
theories. The phrases are connected to a clearly pernicious group or their
malignant actions and, particularly in the texts in which they appear side by
side with such acronyms as NWO or ZOG, can activate the code text of
conspiracy theory that merges events and agents that seem to be totally separate
for an outside observer into a unified explanation (Madisson 2016b, 201). It is
remarkable that combinations of such basic vocabulary guide the Model Reader
well-
versed in conspiracy theories towards interpretations involving
conspiracies, even in cases when the text in question does not explicitly discuss
the heinous deeds of secret groups. The specific vocabulary characteristic of
conspiracy theories triggers strong associations with conspiracies for members
of the interpretative community.
This has immediate connections with intertextual scenarios that have become
crystallised in such basic vocabulary. The NWO conspiracy theories became
known in the 1990s when Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order (1991)
was published and its descriptions of a global system of evil and the power
mechanism of the conspirators moved on both to the fundamentalist anti -
establishment information space (e.g. radical
-
conservative Christians, the
extreme right, the radical left) (see Fenster 2008) as well as to various texts of
popular culture (e.g. the television series The X-Files (1993–2002), the film
Conspiracy Theory (1997) (Barkun 2003), see Chapter 4 on relating popular
musicians with associations with the Illuminati). Today’s rightwing populist
conspiracy theories refer to these texts as well as secondary texts referencing
them (e.g. YouTube videos, writings by Alex Jones or Estonia’s best-known
conspiracy theorists Jüri Lina and Tiit Madisson). As these texts serve as a
pattern, the conspiracy theories we have analysed often contain the ordinary
scenario of brainwashing that more broadly refers to the ideas of mind control
which presume a complex machinery based on informational and psychological
influencing that is capable of paralysing humans’ critical thought and, in extreme
cases, depriving them of any agency (see Melley 2002).
The syncretistic system narrative connects extremely varied actors and
interest groups who are perceived as dangerous but uses relatively clear-cut
tactics of ideological hypercoding to legitimise them. In the case of the
examples we analyse, one of the tropes that emerges as strategic encoding is
that of anti-Semitism that connects Jews who have been active in different time
periods and different walks of life (Marxist academics, bankers, Soros’s
foundations) with obscure global manipulations and moral decline in general.
The trope of the corrupt nature of Jews and their secret infiltration of the elite
has far-reaching historical roots and can be seen throughout history, e.g. in
Hitler’s National Socialist slogans. In our earlier work (see Madisson, Ventsel
2018) we have observed its flourishing in Estonia’s extreme-right information
space.
In addition to conspiring with use, a forceful, and occasionally downright
vulgar, rhetorical-stylistic
code of sexual taboos has relatively frequently been
employed to delegitimise groups who are perceived as opponents from the per-
spective of the extreme right world view. Various minority groups, immigrants
and universities as proponents of cultural Marxist ideology are often repres-
ented in the same chains of meaning as child abusers, necrophiliacs,
zoophiliacs, etc. As this is a fairly universal code inciting cultural censure, it
easily catches the audience’s attention and initiates a meaning transfer also to
other actors who are presented as connected with the conspiracy. Particularly
often, such sexual taboos will be presented side by side with homosexuality, an
outlining of a cause -
and
-
effect relationship between an increased social
acceptance of the LGBT community and the growth of manifestations of all
kinds of sexual perversities and the moral decline of the Western world.
Depicting horrible sexual taboos allows for unequivocal illustration of the ser-
iousness of the moral decline.
In the case of the material we analysed, an anti-communist code also emerged
that is strongly rooted in both Estonian as well as Hungarian national discourse
of memory and identity. For instance, in the Estonian context, communism is
clearly related to occupation, deportations, communist party dictatorship,
Russification, censorship, etc. and thus functions as a powerful generator of neg-
ative associations. Extreme right conspiracy theories do not spell it out that
Soros and the funds and universities in his sphere of influence act like
communists, but signifiers pointing at communism are often used to describe
them: minorities and supporters of a liberal leftist world view are seen as “cul-
tural Marxist” and “the revolutionary class”, while Tallinn University is “Soros’s
party school”.
The plurality of the codes described above points at a specificity of the
system narrative. Although the Model Reader is being guided towards
constructing the conflict with the help of antithetical logic, for instance by
attributing the top globalists active in the upper layer of the conspiracy pyramid
inhumanly malevolent or even Satanist aims via using the code of sexual taboos
(cf. the theory of Pizzagate and Hillary Clinton’s purported engagement with a
secret network of Satanists and pedophiles), the conflict between value worlds is
but rarely expressed as particular events caused by Soros and his stooges. The
systemic sabotage on part of the Jewish billionaire and other top globalists is
represented as extremely hideous and dangerous, but it is going on in an
extremely hidden way through influencing the education and media systems.
The conflict on which these conspiracy theories are based can be characterised
as being open, agonistic, yet structurally antithetical, as it is presumed that most
of the people who have been brainwashed by the Soros set are not aware that
they are being influenced by conspirators. A wide-reaching collage is created of
explanatory elements (actors, basic vocabulary, ordinary scenarios) that are
multi-faceted and all-encompassing
(what can be left out from a world view?).
They make it possible to create a Model Reader who is capable of spontaneously
activating so -
called standard modelling schemes (e.g. brainwashing, the
conspirators’ subtle infiltration of the elite) in different interpretative situations
and seeing the big picture of a conspiracy.
Functions
In contrast to political conspiracy narratives, the system narratives telling of
malignant manipulation of basic values and social norms do not have as their
main aim shaping the perception of the situation and interpretations connected
with particular events. Nevertheless, they fulfil an important strategic function
that is connected with creating a favourable interpretative context for the
receiver of the messages, that keeps the code text of conspiracy theory in com-
munal memory and creates cohesion between different subnarratives. As was
outlined in the theoretical part of our book, meaning-making that is based on
conspiracy theories is characterised by an extremely high modelling capacity
that allows seemingly separate actors and events to be joined together in an
explanatory whole and see repeating conspiration patterns behind social
developments that are perceived as unpleasant. Such an integrative function was
vividly expressed in narratives representing a malevolent dominant system of
knowledge. Presuming a far-reaching conspiracy of the left-wing elite led by
Soros makes it possible to add into a complex explanation all the agents
perceived as dangerous from the point of view an extreme-right world view.
Thus, in an all-embracing brainwashing narrative, groups with very different
socio-cultural and ideological profiles mingle: professors of Western univer-
sities, sexual minorities, feminists, Islamists, migrants who have arrived in
Europe as a result of the migration crisis, and anti-fascists. The conspiracy
theory made it possible to pass a strongly negative moral judgement on all of
them; in one way or another they were seen as collaborating with an inhumanly
malevolent elite.
Keeping such narratives in circulation fulfils the function of fixing and
freshening of the connections in the communal memory of the interpretative
community. Listing other heinous deeds of globalists, Soros supporters or cul-
tural Marxists or adding another reference to the corrupt nature of the NWO
system, is not likely to offer the Model Reader aware of conspiracy theories
much thrill and joy of discovery, but it is a most effective way of creating a
common permutation of typical plot elements and key actors that the members
of the interpretative community support between themselves and employ
without further explanation in their in-group
interactions. If the sender of stra-
tegic messages is able to naturalise certain plot turns and characters in the
interpretative community, he or she will be able to use them in creating the
desired associations when planning his or her future messages. On the one hand,
repeating the NWO system conspiracy theory and linking it with different
topical political events and actors makes them more significant via the
conspiracy (they are not simply problematic actors, but agents of a system of
evil), yet on the other hand it increases the significance of the conspiracy
theory – it becomes more and more obvious due to its frequent appearance.
A conspiracy narrative speaking of the decadence of the dominant knowledge
regime presumes, and at the same time constructs, a Model Reader who is
negatively and sceptically disposed towards the mainstream and rather prefers
social media and other alternative sources. The Model Author lets him -or
herself appear as critical and insightful, someone who establishes an alternative
knowledge that is immune to the conspirators’ manipulations. The Model
Author forcefully opposes the elite and institutions connected with so-called
traditional knowledge (universities, professional press, the Pope) and identifies
him-or herself as a vernacular authority that has risen from the ranks of the so-
called thinking people. Perception of such knowledge and attitudes as arising
from the grassroots level functions as a criterion of trustworthiness, their value
is expressed not so much in the quality of the claims and the demonstrations, but
first and foremost in opposing the mainstream that is suppressing our right-wing
populist knowledge. It is remarkable that the Model Author expresses the power
position in grip of decadent forces, but at the same time it stresses the vitality of
the alternative sphere and its ever -
growing social role (Soros is afraid and
therefore critical of social media).
Conspiracy narrative of marketing: using associations with

Soros in PR
As we pointed out in the beginning of this chapter, the three thematic fields of
conspiracy narratives chosen by us are intermingled and in the first analytical
chapter we discussed the case of Orbán’s poster campaign in which conspiracy
theories targeting Soros were disseminated with the aim of political marketing.
One of the best-known
examples of using the myth of the Jewish billionaire in
corporate marketing derives from autumn 2018. Then it became apparent that
Facebook, an extremely influential technology giant, had been commissioning
contributions from the political consultancy and PR firm Definers, which had a
Republican background, that disseminated unsupported claims that Soros was
stirring ungrounded dissatisfaction with the enterprise and even organising an
anti-Facebook movement (Wong 2018b). At the beginning of 2018, Facebook
suffered extensive loss of reputation in connection with the Cambridge
Analytica data scandal in which it became apparent that the personal data of
millions of individuals was gathered from Facebook profiles without their users’
consent and used for political advertising purposes. As Facebook’s stock
price was falling and the company faced a consumer backlash, it took rather
desperate steps to improve its reputation (Frenkel et al. 2018). Hints at Soros’s
vague behind-the-scenes directions fitted into the context of the PR action as the
billionaire had been publicly critical of Facebook, and because theories con-
nected with him were globally so popular that the mere mentioning of Soros’s
name would immediately provoke conspiracy associations in a rather broad
audience.

Through the PR activities of Definers, a conflict proceeding from antithetical
logic was created that represented Facebook as the victim of an unfair and
systemic hidden slander campaign. Soros, however, appeared in the ordinary
scenario of the puppet master typically connected with him: namely obscure
financing schemes and non-profit organisations were hinted at, through which he
is supposed to enforce his malignant power ambitions. In the Definers’ campaign,
these groups were, for example, Freedom from Facebook and Color of Change
(see Wong 2018b). Repeating of such meaning-making based on the code text of
this conspiracy theory in the case of themes connected with Soros is particularly
combustible as it creates a certain equivalence between the narrating situation
and earlier cases in which secret manipulations have been hinted at in connection
with him. For a target audience who is aware of the basic events of the Soros-
themed conspiracy theories (e.g. dissemination of cultural Marxist propaganda in
educational establishments, urging mass immigration, organising fake protests,
etc.), such concrete suggestions appear to be mutually corroborating one another.
Characteristically of the antithetical conflict type, such mirror projection becomes
an important shaper of connections that represents the spheres of influence both
of the own and the adversary as powerful, while the former is perceived as an
embodiment of fairness and the latter that of corruption. The conspiracy theories
discussed on the one hand amplify the idea that Soros’s machinations are per-
petually behind questions concerning communal life, while, on the other hand,
they suggest that Facebook is suffering from persecution by an extremely
dangerous and influential adversary. As in these conspiracy narratives the damage
caused by Soros’s secret machinations is represented as being of a short duration
and relatively easily localised, such stories do not so much demonstrate the easy
manipulability of the Internet giant as they add to the certainty of Facebook being
an extremely weighty enterprise both socially as well as politically. The logic of
conspiracy theories as a rule does not connect a powerful supervillain with acting
against small-scale
adversaries but sees Soros’s activity as directed against the
most effective targets in a clear and calibrated manner.
When, in the autumn of 2018, the media started to demand that Zuckerberg
should comment on such anti-Semitic PR activities, he claimed: “I didn’t know of
Facebook ties to firm that attacked George Soros” (Wong 2018c). The Internet
giant quickly ended cooperation with Definers, and this is probably one of the
reasons why the references to Soros were not developed into versatile subconflicts
and subtopics. As an important rhetorical encoding, it can be suggested that the
Model Author poses as a force that sets a high value to the qualities of being sci-
entific and proof-based. Namely, both Facebook and Definers presented reaching
the hidden traces of Soros as resulting from opposition research. Such encoding
is directed at the Model Reader for whom references to science add authority
and weight to claims. As a rule, such references activate connotations with
thoroughness, neutrality and controllability of knowledge and move such content
from the discursive sphere of speculations, opinions and political debates of the
day. In summer 2018, Definers shared with media a research document linking
Soros with a broad anti-Facebook movement (Frenkel et al. 2018). Definers
suggested that the media should also conduct a more thorough study of the links
between Soros’s family and the movements that were members of Freedom from
Facebook, such as Color of Change, as well as a progressive group founded by
Soros’s son (Frenkel et al. 2018, Wong 2018b). As was mentioned above, such
sowing of suspicion and mentioning of connections, while the construction of
more thorough links was left to the receiver of information, is fairly typical of
today’s conspiracy narratives. Strategic narrators invite their Model Readers (in
this case, journalists) to conduct independent research work. Simultaneously, they
give them firm directions as regards the results that might be reached as result of
such search for connections and following of the code text present in the com-
munal memory – to the revelation of yet another machination of the Jewish
billionaire and his stooges.
Conspiracy narrative of marketing: deliberate connection of

branded products with conspiracies
In order to illustrate the phenomenon of employing conspiracy theories in
marketing more broadly, we decided to make a little detour from the narratives
connected with Soros. Namely, we have not yet come across examples of PR
strategists making connections between the products or brands they are advert-
ising and conspiracy associations related to Soros. At the same time, such use of
conspiracy theories is a noticeable trend in today’s attention economy; for
instance, in 2018 the humorous advertising campaign of Denver Airport that
was saturated with hints at conspiracies caused much excitement and public
reactions (see Williams 2018; Wolfson 2018). Conspiracy theories are usually
intriguing and evoke a mysterious atmosphere that attracts the audience’s
heightened attention, and often also their willingness to participate actively
in the process of exposing the conspiracy. The marketing component of messages
that have been spiced with thrilling conspiracy details reaches the addressees
through an interpretation game and helps to attach a certain dose of “coolness”
to the products that are being advertised. It is important to note that before
unleashing marketing conspiracy narratives the coolhunters of PR companies
search the social media groups and forums that mediate the most preposterous
conspiracy theories and rumours and, on this basis, distil both the emerging
trends for the plot twists and the freshest sensational actors (Karlova, Fisher
2013, 13). In the next phase, conspiracy narratives are created that blend par-
ticular brands and recognisable conspiracy codes, and at times also codes that
are cryptic for broader audiences that make it possible to achieve an effect of
maximum novelty and intrigue. We are treating the latter as a special case of
stylistic encoding that aims to cultivate thrill and mystery. Thereafter, these are
emitted onto platforms of various participant media. Such marketing content can
parody a conspiracy theory and generate a feeling of humour and superiority in
media consumers. However, the tactic of shocking or frightening the audience
that maintains a permanent atmosphere of interest and tension can also be
chosen.
Conspiracy narratives have been applied rather vigorously in promoting the
personal brands of such stars connected with the American music industry
such as Madonna, Jay Z, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kanye West and
others (Stæhr 2014). Such discourse achieved peak popularity in the middle of
2010, flourishing primarily on social media (Facebook, YouTube) under the
umbrella label of Illuminati Gossip. The music videos, song lyrics, public
appearances and social media profiles are full of basic vocabulary of Illuminati
and NWO conspiracy theories, such as the all -seeing
eye; pyramids and
triangles; pentagrams; occasional references to Satan as being in league with
the conspirators, e.g. a goat’s head and horns; and numeric symbols connected
with Satan such as 666, 13. Sometimes also the visual codes of reptile theories
(vertical pupils, lacking white of the eye, peculiar (rough, flaky) skin texture,
glowing, lack of mimics, etc.) are introduced. Many conspiracy codes have
been borrowed from Christian demonology and they create intertextual
connections with both historical as well as contemporary representations of
Satan, as well as such works of the popular conspiracy theorist David Icke as
The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World (1999) and Infinite
Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion (2005), or other videos of
pop stars that contain strong references to conspiracies. Such conspiracy codes
presume a Model Reader who is willing to do interpretative detective work.
For such a reader, hints at conspiracy theories can be a source of much
excitement and speculations: e.g. considering if the stars are mutually con-
nected by the conspiracy and form a secret network, as well as the temptation
to follow the traces of conspiracy together with the other “initiated”, as it were,
and share the newest findings of signs of conspiracy.

The marketing discourse evoking associations with the Illuminati creates a
Model Reader whose interpretative activities are guided by the active search for,
and discovery of, signs of conspiracy. It is important that these signs occur
constantly and with a sufficient frequency so that a desire might emerge in the
audience to study them independently and attempt to find more of them. As was
mentioned above, one of the characteristics of the meaning -
making in
conspiracy theories is unrestricted meaning-making
or strong enthusiasm for
interpretations whose most important component is the presumption that the
interpreter has access to certain signs left behind by a conspiracy. For instance,
Lady Gaga’s fans who have recognised obvious hints at Satan and the Illuminati
in her songs have started to look for them in her interviews, lapses of the tongue,
playing her music backwards, numerology connected with her performances and
dates of life, etc.; that is, in places where the senders of strategic marketing
messages have not been able to plant them. So, it is comparatively typical that
the “evidence” of a conspiracy is considered all the more valuable, the more
hidden or indirect it is.
The Model Author who appeals to references at the Illuminati is well versed
in the main plots of conspiracy theories and the trending themes, presuming
also knowledge and appreciation of popular conspiracy codes on the part of the
audience. The latter includes the basic conflict between Good and Evil and the
presumption that a large number of people allow a conspiracy network to rule
over them due to their cluelessness and ignorance, and to broaden their evil
grip. Hollywood films as well as the video game industry have naturalised an
ordinary scenario of the conspiracy theorist hero that creates an opposition of
forces that are corrupt through and through and may even be in league with
Satan, with a few protagonists who can see through the former’s manipulations.
Pop stars are represented as in service of the top levels of conspiracy pyramids;
occasionally, conspiracy narratives bring out brainwashing, or corrupting the
audience with their amoral messages and evoking an interest in dark forces as
their main task. The ordinary scenario also prescribes that those exposing
conspiracies are initially ridiculed and labelled as paranoid but, in the end, they
manage to find sufficient evidence and open the eyes of the public or foil the
villainous manipulations in another way.
On the other hand, it is important to note that in conspiracy theories con-
nected with pop stars the strategically constructed conflict is based on a model
that is in principle different from that which can be seen in the case of
conspiracy theories concerned with the realm of politics that were explained in
an earlier subchapter. These described conspirators as essentially evil puppet
masters who should be eradicated from society together with their conspiracy,
while the Illuminati Gossip represents potential conspirators in a more
ambivalent and even more positive light. The stars do not use such a strategy of
self-branding in order to become hated anti-heroes
but in order to attract atten-
tion and blend a share of power and mystery into their image. Conspiracy narrat-
ives that are strategically disseminated do not, as a rule, depict pop stars as
unambiguously evil villains, but they are positioned as, in a way, victims of the
puppet masters who may have an important role in implementing the wicked
plans, but are not their primary initiators. Through the celebrities, the connection
with conspiracy occasionally turns into a downright glamorous depravity. For
instance, it has been noted that teenage fans consciously imitate the hand signs
containing references to pop star conspiracies (such as forming triangles with
thumbs and index fingers) and other such visual codes in communicating
with their peers (Stæhr 2014), as they can so demonstrate a certain unitedness
with their idols, while, in addition to this, such connections with conspiracies
seem provocative and forbidden, which signifies coolness in the eyes of many
teenagers. Such conspiracy narratives attempt to activate a Model Reader for
whom pop stars are not merely icons of a superficial media industry but serve as
important links to a secret power network controlling the world.
In addition to this, the image creation of stars is accompanied by a constant
questioning of the existence of the conspiracy. As is characteristic of
conspiracy theories spreading in contemporary web environments, articles in
tabloid newspapers and the stars’ marketing messages invite the interpreters to
revise the “evidence” and draw their own conclusions as refers to the secret
network. As regards conspiracy theories concerning pop stars, strategic
ambivalence is often advocated – a certain as-if position in which it remains
open whether the conspiracy really exists or whether it is merely a part of the
fictional character world. Perceiving such an ambivalent boundary between the,
as-it-were,
I-position of the narrator and the enacted character perspective is an
ordinary part of the interpretative experience of the audience growing up
among the micro-celebrities of social media (Abidin 2018). For instance, the
storytelling of practices of YouTubers involves, as a typical device, that the
performers develop several “characters” or “actors” from whose points of view
they deliver their messages. Occasionally, transitions between characters and
the I-voice of the micro-celebrity are clearly marked, yet at times they are not.
A strategy employed by pop stars who use conspiracy theories for self -
promotion is making conspiracy references more ambiguous by producing a
flood of conspiracy signs. Thus, they constantly, and at times jocularly, use
the code of the all-seeing eye in their public appearances or social media post-
ings or make continuous references to the intertextual NWO scenario. An audi-
ence aware of the code text of the conspiracy theory may find such public
activity widely reflected in tabloids suspicious, as a basic component of the
code text of conspiracy narratives – secrecy – is strongly compromised in such
representations.
Functions
Examples introduced in this chapter demonstrated that strategic conspiracy the-
ories spread with marketing purposes can fulfil various functions, while often a
broader creation of the image of us has merged with more particular
communicative aims. The Soros hints launched in the PR collaboration of
Facebook and Definers served the classic rhetorical aim – projecting a set of
problems on a single scapegoat. The main function of such communication was
to activate conspiracy stereotypes connected with Soros and delegitimise
criticism of Facebook made by this allegedly wicked person. There was an
attempt to create a feeling of doubt and confusion that would corroborate that
something suspicious was afoot in the financing of counter-Facebook
movements, so that even if no concrete evidence could be produced, it was still
worth approaching the theme through a sceptical filter. The narratives
disseminated by Definers also involved the subnarrative of attributing the image
of a positive, unjustly persecuted active agent to Facebook.
The main aim of the marketing discourse cultivating associations with the
pop star conspiracy is to cultivate in the audience a general excitement and
interpretative enthusiasm in connection with certain personal brands. Virally
spreading conspiracy threads has a high value in the contemporary attention
economy, as they are equally useful to click -hungry
tabloids as well as to
stars who need a permanent presence in the media spectacle to maintain
their popularity. Audience attention is admittedly a limited resource and, as
was demonstrated above, the partly funny, yet partly extremely alarming,
infotainment-style conspiracy theories that involve famous (anti-)heroes
efficiently attract that attention. A secondary function of such conspiracy theories
is creating a heroic self-description in the target audience. As the conspirators
are depicted as acting hidden from the audience, those aware of conspiracy the-
ories can position themselves as a privileged perceptive minority in the know.
The marketing discourse saturated with references to conspiracies offers the
target audience the possibilities of a certain flattering of the ego in addition to
excitement – doing what teenagers would want to do anyway, that is, consuming
popular culture they can also contribute to playfully exposing hidden/forbidden
knowledge and invite others to open their eyes. What is undoubtedly important
about the marketing strategy relying on conspiracy theories is the aspect of com-
munity creation: members of an active audience like to share the results of their
interpretative detective work with others. Belonging to a wicked secret network
of stars can be a fascinating shared subject and can serve as the foundation of a
specific niche of fandom.
Notes
1 A psychoanalytical approach to text generation in semiotics has been offered by Julia
Kristeva (1969) who differentiates between the genotext and the fenotext and Roland
Barthes (1980) who discusses the differentiation between the concepts of the work
and the text.
2 Propastop is a blog of volunteers from the Estonian Defence League. It uses media
monitoring and data analysis for comprehending disinformation campaigns that target
Estonia. Propastop’s goal is to increase public awareness of the Kremlin’s
disinformation campaigns and promote critical media literacy.
3 Fidesz, or the Hungarian Civic Alliance, has been the main political party in power in
Hungary starting from 2010, and has been led by the current Prime Minister Viktor
Orbán through those years. The party is known for its anti-immigration, Eurosceptical
and populist right-wing politics.
4 EUvsDisinfo is the flagship project of the European External Action Service’s East
StratCom Task Force. It was established in 2015 to better forecast, address and
respond to the Russian Federation’s ongoing disinformation campaigns affecting the
European Union, its Member States, and countries in the shared neighbourhood.
5 The quotation is a loose translation from a television programme 60 Minutes on the
channel Rossiya 1 (21 June 2019), where he was an invited guest as an expert on the
politics of the Middle East and the Caucasus (24:10–24:39).
6 Protests in Georgia started on the night of 21 June; discontent in Georgia was pro-
voked by the visit of a Russian delegation to Tbilisi to participate in the Inter-
Parliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy.
7 Starting from 2014, hostilities are continuing in Ukraine between the separatist parts
of Eastern Ukraine (Lugatsk, Donetsk) and the central power led from Kiev. For
Ukraine and the West, one of the parties represented in the conflict is Russia who
provides support to the separatists. Russia has been denying its activities there, which
is why pro-Kremlin information channels represent the conflict as a civil war.
Georgia saw a civil war in 1991–1994.
8 What is hinted at is the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between the Azerbaijani and
the Armenians living in South Caucasus. The conflict, with long-lasting historical and
cultural roots, escalated during the perestroika years in the Soviet Union (1987–1988)
and burst out in hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1991–1994 for the
control of Nagorno-Karabakh and some surrounding regions. Today, the Republic of
Artsakh (that declared independence on 2 September 1991) is a disputed territory in
Nagorno-Karabakh and a continuous source of conflict in the relations between
Azerbaijan and Armenia, as after the ceasefire in the war of Nagorno-Karabakh the
Armenian-majority Republic of Artsakh controls a part of the Azerbaijani territory.
9 The Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) is a national-conservative and
right-wing populist political party in Estonia. Since 2013, the leader of the party has
been Mart Helme (Estonian Minister for the Interior starting from 29 April 2019),
among its leading figures is also his son Martin Helme (Minister of Finance starting
from 29 April 2019).
10 In Romanian political rhetoric, the governing party has also employed Soros-themed
conspiracy theories to undermine the reputation of its opponents. First and foremost,
he has been accused of financing various demonstrations. The accusation that Soros
paid for the protests against Donald Trump, after the latter had won the US presi-
dency, only adds to the picture of the so-called bleak future of Eastern European
nations in the age of globalisation. Possibly for the first time, a conspiracy theory that
originated in this part of the world became common knowledge in the West
(Nazaryan 2017). Likewise, Soros serves as the embodiment of both Jewish and
Hungarian conspiracy theories in Romanian far-right politics (Colăcel, Pintilescu
2017, 35).
4 The main meaning-making
mechanisms of strategic
The previous chapter concentrated on the dominant textual strategies via

which the Model Reader and the Model Author of conspiracy narratives are
created. The function of textual strategies is to establish particular
interpretative links in the audience via which readers can be directed towards
goals that are being aspired to, using the narrative. Often such strategic
communication functions through shaping the interpretative community’s col-
lective identity or undermining its opponents’ legitimacy. In the following we
shall concentrate on the discursive devices that help some conspiracy theories
to have a greater potential to affect the interpreters’ interpretations and values,
as they attract attention and achieve viral spread.
Conspiracy theories as a trigger of affective

communication
Several authors have pointed out that social media has become the main place
of spreading and discussing conspiracy theories (Ballinger 2011, 3; Bergmann
2018, 154). One of the reasons for such a tendency consists in the socio-
technical affordances of social media that allows for the formation of audiences
on an unprecedented temporal (very fast), spatial (geographically dispersed)
and affective (strong, mobilising sentiment) scale (Tiidenberg, Siibak 2018, 4).
Due to the affordances, some ways of behaviour or application are more
convenient and obvious, and thus likelier to occur on social media than others
(Tiidenberg 2017, 21). The popularity of reactions and functions of copying
and sharing is connected with the discussion space on social media becoming
less reliant on argument and more affect-based, while amplification of the
feelings of being connected and involved as well as experiencing texts together
have an unprecedented role. As indicated in the subchapter “Affective narrating
practices and affective communities”, an expression of affective communal
experience is particularly likely to occur on social media in times of crises,
catastrophes and conflicts, that is, in cases in which social media is used to
express collective concern and irritation (Papacharissi 2014). As the code -
textual centre of conspiracy theory is based on an unsolvable conflict and the
presence of a malevolent actor, strategic conspiracy narratives are often
Meaning-making of conspiracy narratives 93
constructed upon textual devices that provoke affective reactions, such as fear
and irritation.
Scholars of strategic narratives Alister Miskimmon and Ben O’Loughlin
(2019, 274) point out that affective loaded-ness
is to be considered in the ana-
lysis of narratives, as the feelings of actors constitute an important component of
storyworlds, they have an important role in shaping the interpreters’ perception
of the situation and their decisions regarding behaviour. At the same time, it is
admitted that the mechanisms of this kind of meaning-making need more aca-
demic study in the context of strategic narratives (Miskimmon et al. 2017, 317).
Our approach suggests that the metalanguage of cultural semiotics can be fruit-
fully applied not only to the content of “what” is articulated, but also to “how” it
is articulated.
What is affective semiosis?

According to cultural theorist Lawrence Grossberg, affect “is articulated and
disarticulated — there are affective lines of articulation and affective lines of
flight— through social struggles over its structure” (1992, 82). It means that
affect is closely related with meaning-making
processes.
Semiotic cultural psychologists Sergio Salvatore and Maria F. Freda describe
the semiotic standpoint that “looks at affect not merely as a reactive embodied
activation but as the use of this activation as a basic form of meaning, that is as
the first interpretant motivated in the interpreter’s mind, in turn triggering further
interpreting signs. For this reason, affect is to be considered in terms of process
rather than of state – affect then, as affective semiosis (2011, 122). According to
semiotic cultural psychologist Jaan Valsiner, who relies primarily on Peirce’s
tradition of semiotics, first introduced the term affective semiosis, “Affect
(affective phenomena) is here defined as the common descriptive term that
subsumes both feelings (as felt by the person) and emotions (as those are
expressed, recognized, and described in language terms)” (Valsiner, 2007). It
means these are collectively shared and collectively constructed. Feelings are
inherently ambiguous while emotions are discrete (point-like) categories that are
accessible for labelling, discursive operations, and abstraction/generalisation.
They are “differentiated, articulated and hierarchically integrated” (Branco,
Valsiner 2010, 243).
This kind of affective meaning-making expresses a collective intuitive recog-
nition that some elements or signs of a strategic narrative are highly relevant, but
the interpreter does not divide them into different logical-discrete
structures.
These signs firstly evoke an emotional reaction in the audience, the feeling of
primary – either positive or negative – identification. Conspiracy theories,
especially in social media communication, often do not explicitly outline the
relations between various subnarratives of conspiracies referred to, but rather
function as open-ended (and sometimes even controversial) sets of stories (see
the subchapter “Studying conspiracy theories spreading on the Internet”). The
interpreter can navigate through various plot fragments and draw his/her own
conclusions about causalities (Knight 2008, Soukup 2008). Those kinds of
discourses are often driven by affective meaning-making that is based on a rough
and approximate type of relations. In order to guide the interpretation paths of
the targeted audience in a direction suitable for the creator of the narrative, the
Model Reader constructed in a strategic conspiracy narrative has to contain
signs, text excerpts, visuals, etc. that carry an emotional load for the audience (in
more detail, see the subchapter “Dominant textual strategies of transmedia story-
telling”). These trigger affective semiosis that guides the reader towards making
associative links between various subnarratives and plot fragments. It is
important to note that this kind of affective dimension is particularly strong in
the case of topics that resonate with the negative emotions of the audience,
especially if they coincide with loss of happiness (Ahmed 2010) or “fears and
anxieties about the future” (Grusin 2010, 46).
Dominant textual strategies of affective semiosis

Several strategic conspiracy narratives represented in the previous chapter were
constructed with a dominant that triggers affective semiosis. On the one hand,
this is to be expected, as conspiracy theories rely on a conflict at their centre,
that can be represented as existentially more or less destructive. It is particularly
true in the conflicts in conspiracy narratives of political and alternative know-
ledge that have been constructed as an antithesis between us and them and in
which the adversaries are depicted as actually endangering the existence of
conspiracy theorists. As regards textual strategies, these conspiracy narratives
relied on the basic structure of the conspiracy narrative in which Soros and his
minions were depicted as organisers of real military conflicts. The Estonian
radical right-wing news and opinion portal Uued Uudised writes:
The further we move into the East, the more evil Soros’s intentions become.
In Ukraine his establishments considerably contributed to the revolutions of
2004 and 2014 and thus to political instability. […] Leaked e-mail messages
demonstrate that Soros has been issuing direct orders to the new
government of Ukraine. […] Also elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe
we can see Soros and the Open Society Institute provoking unrest and
instigating wars. They openly participated in Georgia’s Revolution of the
Roses in 2003 as well as in Serbia’s “Bulldozer revolution” in 2000.
(George Soros … 2016)
One of functions of the use of the war scenario is discursive provocation of

feelings of danger. Thus, the audience can activate war-linked meanings in a
situation that lacks real characteristics of (empirical) war. As pointed out by the
theoretician of fear Frank Furedi, the values, attitudes and expectations of the
community provide a cultural context to the expression of personal fears (2019,
13), which means, all in all, that the strategic success of affect-based
communication depends on which cultural devices can be used as a source of
inspiration (Furedi 2019, 163). In the above example, such a cultural device
appears in the form of textual strategical analogies with countries (Ukraine,
Georgia) in which real bloody conflicts have taken place that have been widely
reported in Estonian media. The aim of the strategic author is to trigger affective
semiosis based on emotional attitudes of the audience via signs the audience
considers as sensitive.
From a semiotic point of view, the connection between affective semiosis and
the discourse of fear can be explained by the suggestion of semiotician of
culture Mihhail Lotman, according to whom, from the perspective of semiotics,
fear can be treated as a reaction to sign-mediated
danger (2007, 208). This
means that fear is not just a reaction to a particular event or object itself, but an
interpretation of various anticipatory signs or phenomena as terrifying and
dangerous (ibid.). In the case of successful strategic communication one of the
forces triggering creation of connections in the audience is the context of fear
shaped by the war scenario. Such creation of connections is based on affective
semiosis in which signs pointing at conspiracy (e.g. secret correspondence
between Soros and the new government of Ukraine) are perceived by the audi-
ence as signs of a potential devastating war. Signs triggering affective semiosis
are used to guide the Model Reader towards interpreting signs and subplots
presented in the narrative as evidence of the existence of the Soros plot, “as the
first interpretant motivated in the interpreter’s mind, in turn triggering further
interpreting signs” (Salvatore, Freda 2011, 122). The article in Uued Uudised
(George Soros … 2016) referred to above is connected with an analogous future
scenario of a war catastrophe and Soros’s many other enterprises, such as
initiating migration streams, supporting various non-profit organisations, etc.
Conspiracy narratives of alternative knowledge analysed in this book
constructed conflicts primarily as a clash of world views or civilisations whose
results were depicted as fatal for the community threatened by the conspirators.
Soros’s direct guilt and malevolence was seen not in triggering particular
military conflicts, but in the covert destabilisation of societies, “destroying
nation states, constructing a multicultural world order and establishing the New
World Order” (Tiit Madisson 2018). Undermining such value systems and
discursive mediation of the emotion of fear is often connected with moral
norms. The so-called moralisation of fears enables the strategic actors to present
the problems and dangers symbolically, lending properties of morals to prob-
lems that could otherwise be considered rather insignificant practical things
(Furedi 2019, 140). The analysis presented in the previous chapter showed that
the opponent’s (liberal) ideology was represented as moral (sexual) abnormality,
as references to paedophilia, zoophilia, fratricide, etc. were employed to give
expression to fear and provoke emotional resonance and affective reactions in
the audience. Such references with their relatively fixed emotional and value-
related meanings should trigger affective semiosis in the Model Reader, first
calling forth in the audience a negative emotional reaction, a certain
interpretative background that will also guide the readers’ future interpretative
paths. The same moralising device appears in the conspiracy narratives that
started to spread in the autumn of 2019, in which Soros was accused of the
devious and malevolent exploitation of Greta Thunberg, who was portrayed as
merely a child suffering from Asperger syndrome (Grey Ellis 2019).
On the other hand, as indicated by several authors, affective semiosis can also
be triggered by the opposite of fear – a connection with happiness (Ahmed
2010). These usually appear together; discursively they are represented either
more or less explicitly. In narratives of ideological conflict analysed in the
previous chapter, the potential trigger of affective semiosis in the Model Reader
could be found in a discourse that represented an idealised and harmonious
picture of the world. In several examples, in addition to listing Soros’s activities,
the characteristics of such a world that corresponds to the so-called natural order
of things according to conspiracy theorists are listed, e.g. an understanding of
the state as monoethnic, heterosexual, containing reverence of patriarchal values
and so -
called Christian family traditions, large families of children, etc.
According to cultural theorist Skip Willman, “conspiracy theories presuppose a
fallen society, whose failure constitutes itself as a harmonious whole and must
be explained; the conspiratorial narrative resurrects the possibility of society
even as it traces its demise through the agency of hidden forces” (2000, 28). For
the conspiracy theorists, the figure of the enemy (conspirator) signifies a sharp
gap between their ideological representation of a harmonious society – the state
of happiness – and the actual experience of society, which cannot be grasped
within their cognitive frames in other ways. Agents or enemies from the outside
(conspirators) “enable conspiracy theorists to explain social conflicts and devi-
ations from ideal communal life and are thus needed for creating a meaningfully
coherent world” (Ventsel 2016a, 317). Thus, affective meaning-making also
functions as a reference to an ideal state of happiness that is represented as
endangered in conspiracy theories.
In articulating social fears, it should be noted that the semiosis of fear is
oriented towards looking for a sign expression necessary for communicating a
subjective feeling of fear. This is the reason why signification mechanisms of
fear are vague and ambivalent in their nature (M Lotman 2007, 151–152) or are
based on continuous meaning-making that generates homomorphic resemblance
and identification between different elements. Soros’s conspiracy theory as a
code text constructing the adversary, connects different goal-oriented activities
between which a researcher could hardly find a rational part in common. What is
the connection between migration streams directed against the US, aiding the
opposition forces in Armenia, the Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg and Soros?
In the affective semiosis triggered in the Model Reader they are united by Soros
as a common enemy, whose hidden aims are perceived as equally frightening and
endangering the idea of happiness cherished by conspiracy theorists.
Function of affective semiosis

In strategic communication, affective semiosis fulfils several interconnected
aims. Many researchers have pointed out that an emphasis on fear is often used
as a tactic to draw attention to a problem in the superabundance of general
information on social media and to mobilise people into action (Altheide 2002;
Furedi 2019, 111; Nissen 2015; Marwick, Lewis 2017; Swimelar 2018). In this
context, fear also appears as an essential discursive means for legitimation of
political decisions (Wodak 2015). In the case of the Soros-themed conspiracy
narratives analysed in this book, we can see the functions manifested with
varying intensity. As a generalisation it can be claimed that what is dominant in
the conspiracy narratives of marketing is the attention -
grabbing function
together with entertainment-flavoured sharing and the joy of further advancing
development of the stories. In conspiracy narratives with the dominant of
presenting a political adversary or a conflict of world views, textual strategies
connected with fear and the transience of happiness, function as triggers of
affective semiosis in which attention grabbing and the creating of cohesion
between the interpretation paths of the Model Reader are strongly connected
with identity creation in targeted interpretative communities.
From the point of view of identity creation, affective semiosis fulfils the
function of phatic communication that is primarily expressed in confirming the
communion belonging of those engaged in communication (see the subchapter
“Conspiracy theories as sources of communion cohesion”). In many ways,
phatic communication functions due to the repeating of signs and subplots most
significant from the point of view of the value worlds of the interpretative com-
munity. The informative novelty of such signs is of secondary importance for
the audience, as they are already known and will not be questioned, but their use
reasserts the dimension shared by the community. Such affective signs that
invite quick identification can be either negatively loaded, i.e. we are against
them (hints at child abuse), or bear a positive load, i.e. we are for them (hints at
an established understanding of an ideal monoethnic nation state).
On the other hand, affective semiosis can be employed in shaping com-
munities. Here we can speak of a novel logic of community formation which
results, first, in the instability and temporary nature of social media groups, and
second, in the reduction of complex socio-political
issues to a stark yes/no
alternative. These new forms of community (see “affective public” in
Papacharissi 2014) are characterised by connective action – based on large-scale
self-organised, personal content sharing, fluid and weak-tied networks – as
opposed to collective action, which is defined by formal organisational control,
stronger commitment and collective identity framing (Bennett, Segerberg 2012).
In conspiracy narratives such polarisation is manifested in the case of the
antithetical conflict type, in which the Model Reader in principle recognises only
“yes/no” answers in their primary interpretation of the world. As we indicated in
the subchapter “Antithetical and agonistic modelling of conflict”, such meaning-
making is characteristic of a self-enclosed
system that avoids external influences
(Lotman, Uspenskij 1978, 220). In this context, deliberation and solving of the
conflict through dialogue and argumentation becomes increasingly more
difficult, being replaced by affective reactions that signal either “for” or
“against”. A strategic aim of employing signs triggering affective semiosis is to
offer a primary opportunity of identification based on the audience’s emotional
reactions, which are characterised by connective action-based networks. If such
primary affective audiences have been created, this can be used later to achieve
more strategic aims. This presumes the generation of more nuanced stories that
contain clearer perspectives for the future and action programmes for the audi-
ence (see the following subchapter “Transmedial strategic conspiracy narrat-
ives”) in which connective action-based networks are shaped into collective
action-based networks.
Transmedial strategic conspiracy narratives

One of the central challenges in studying strategic narratives is taking into con-
sideration today’s hybrid media ecology and its meaning-making trends. Stra-
tegic storytelling occurs simultaneously across different platforms and various
official spokespersons, social media influencers as well as ordinary users who
interact with these stories, make their more or less conscious contributions into
the mediation of the narrative. If strategic communication “is marked today by a
proliferation of visual, viral content, it is not enough to make assumptions about
what idea or narrative it conveys or what it means to policy elites or publics”
(Miskimmon et al. 2017, 14). The aim of this subchapter is to offer a brief
summary of the remarks made in earlier academic research about strategic story-
telling practices embracing different modalities and platforms, and to explain
how meaning-making based on the code text of conspiracy theory becomes
adapted to such a mode of storytelling. In the second half of the subchapter we
explain the logic of the functioning of textual devices used in transmedial story-
telling proceeding from the frameworks of cultural semiotics and give some
examples to illustrate how the Soros -themed
conspiracy narrative has been
spreading in different parts of the Estonian right -
wing populist information
space, which nevertheless are interconnected via references.
Strategic transmedia storytelling and call for immersive

experience
Studies that concentrate on multimodal strategic narratives mostly spreading on
social media that actively involve the audience have often found that such
narrating practices can best be conceptualised as transmedial (Freeman 2016;
von Stackelberg, Jones 2014; Monaci 2017; Wiggins 2017) or cross-medial
storytelling1 (Nissen 2015; Jenkins 2011). As a rule, such work proceeds from
the definition by Jenkins according to which transmedial storytelling is under-
stood as a “process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed
systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a
unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes
its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” Although in
comparison with transmedia projects produced by the contemporary entertain-
ment industry (e.g. the development of the Batman storyworld as mediated by
content created in comics, film, series, animation and social media fanfiction),
the unfolding of non-fictional transmedia narratives is considerably more
dispersed and unpredictable, it still shares a large communal part in its main
textual strategies and discursive effects (Freeman 2016, 95). Transmedia narrat-
ives are considered very effective in disseminating strategic messages, as they
often blend topical information, entertainment and story points furthering the
agenda of a particular actor, which is why the audience consuming them does
not feel that they are being induced to believe someone’s message, but rather the
unfolding of such a story is perceived as an exciting, captivating experience
(von Stackelberg, Jones 2014, 61).
Studies focusing on transmedia storytelling emphasise that for storytelling to
be successful there must be sufficient redundancy between story entries and
information fragments presented on different platforms for the audience to be
able to interconnect these, and for them to end up “eventually creating a
cohesive mental whole, a coherent storyworld” (Ojamaa, Torop 2015, 62).
Transmedia storytelling can only function when the same actor has poured
several bits of the story, each bit supporting one another, onto the Internet. In
order to achieve this, in entries of strategic transmedia narratives numerous
interconnecting thematic references and hyperlinks to content presented on other
platforms are used (Nissen 2015). An important role in achieving cohesion
between different entries is played by the consistent repetition of invariant ele-
ments of the narrative (e.g. the basic conflict, actors, the setting) (see Ojamaa,
Torop 2015, 62). Such repetitions can be comprehensive looks at earlier
representations or laconic and implicit hints that are restricted to mere
mentioning of characters and key events and phrases of the basic vocabulary
characteristic of some stories. Sara Monaci who has studied the transmedia stra-
tegic narratives of the Islamic state, has remarked that in creating cohesion, an
important role is played by repetition and redundancy on the story’s level of
expression, for instance, by constantly employing the same iconic visuals2 and
colour scheme, or the same (narrator’s) voice or background sounds (Monaci
2017, 2848). Also, cohesion is created by continually employed tropes and
intertextual references; for instance, the Islamic State integrated into its
messages verses from the Quran to add solemnity and authority to them (Monaci
2017, 2854–2855). In addition, creating narrative cohesion with the help of ele-
ments repeated in different performances, which iterate certain meaning
relationships in different sign systems, makes it possible to accept them effect-
ively and establish them in the communal memory of the interpretative com-
munity and thus increase their meaningfulness (Ojamaa, Torop 2015, 62).
Despite repetitions occurring on the levels of the story’s basic elements and
of rhetoric having a crucial function in transmedia narrations, it is at least as
important that narrative entries presented on different platforms should contain
new elements that enrich the storyworld (see e.g. Evans 2011, 27). In the case of
strategic narratives, such an innovative added value can be expressed as offering
a new emotional/aesthetic nuance of experience (e.g. visualisation of the action
or setting, emotional depiction of characters) or an additive comprehension of
the conflict (e.g. introducing a factor explaining the basic events) (see Monaci
2017, 2854). Narrative entries that offer new levels of insight and knowledge
about the storyworld help maintain interest on the part of members of the audi-
ence and thus guarantee their loyalty to the theme (Nissen 2015, 42).
Often one of the aims of the creators of strategic narratives is to create so
strong a resonance in the social media audience that its members will consent to
repeat its main strategic message in their own social media threads and so start
enriching its storyworld with their remarks and personal micro -
stories (see
Nissen 2015, Monaci 2017). Such meaning-making by users adds vitality and
vernacular authority to strategic narratives, which is one of the most important
criteria of credibility in social media communication. Thomas Elkjær Nissen has
indicated in connection with user-generated
content that although strategic nar-
ratives have been put into circulation on social media that have been constructed
according to systemic target group analysis, it is impossible for the strategic
actor or sender to keep the contribution of the active audience under control
(Nissen 2015, 41–42). However, the strategic disseminators of transmedia nar-
ratives employ certain devices in order to keep the audience-generated content
broadly from conflicting with the main meaning relations (the nature of
the groups of the victims and the perpetrators, the basic events of the conflict, the
future scenarios) that constitute the treatment of the conflict represented in the
strategic narrative, or versions containing major deviations, from obtaining a
dominant position in the interpretative community. Such instances of discord
can be dissolved to a degree by users who have obtained the status of opinion
leaders in interpretative communities, e.g. they can repeat the basic relationships
of the strategic narrative and question the compromising versions of the story
and their disseminators. A fairly typical practice is via flooding concrete
discussion environments (with the help of robot networks or sock puppets) with
contents repeating the strategic narrative (see the device structure and push,
Nissen 2015, 43).
In the case of the reception mediated by different platforms, authors and nar-
rative media, strong affective reactions, how engaging it is and playfulness are
often foregrounded. Senders of strategic narratives have to create messages
perceived as sufficiently exciting, intriguing and urgent for the receivers to
develop an enthusiasm for interpretation that might motivate them to move
between platforms and elaborate the mental map of their storyworld in the light
of additional information. Several authors (von Stackelberg, Jones 2014;
Wiggins 2017) have described the reception of effective transmedia narratives as
an immersive experience in which the storyworld holds such an interest for
interpreters that bits of information that can be linked with the narrative in any
manner are adopted quickly and in a way that is comparatively devoid of
criticism, and integrated creatively in the general meaning relations of the nar-
rative (see Murray 1997, 110). It is in connection with this circumstance that
transmedia narratives allow efficient merging of facts and fiction, real and fab-
ricated events, and hide lapses in logic, dissonance and information gaps that
would be considerably more noticeable in the case of a more linear style of
narration (cf. written narratives) (von Stackelberg, Jones 2014, 72; Monaci
2017, 2856; Wiggins 2017, 26). Immersive experience directs the interpreters
away from pondering about the reliability of the bits of information and
activates the approximate and associative creation of connections that is, as we
demonstrated in the subchapter “The model of meaning-making on the basis of
the code text of conspiracy theories”, extremely characteristic of semiosis that
keeps discovering conspiracies.
In order to arouse interest in the audience, keep the enthusiasm for
interpretation alive and trigger associative making of connections, specific
multimodal text communities and semantic triggers inviting so-to-say active
contributions to interpretation are often used. Before we move to particular
examples, we shall concisely explain the nature of such triggers and their logic
of functioning. To put it briefly, semantic triggers are textual constructions that
guide the interpreters towards creating meaning relationships that are not expli-
citly presented in the text, that is, drawing conclusions, making comparisons and
oppositions, generating hypotheses concerning the characters and the course of
events, etc. Their task is to stir the desire for immersive experience in the Model
Reader and, at the same time, to smother the processes of evaluating such rela-
tions critically and analytically (see Monaci 2017, 2842). Sara Monaci has
pointed out that in strategic transmedia narratives, triggers can be “either
symbolic items or explicit references [e.g. hyperlinks – authors comment,
M.-L.M, A.V] to other media contents dispersed in the story world. They invite
the user to explore all of the different available media, seeking further hints to
better understand the topics” (2017, 2848). Monaci (2017, 2849) suggests that
triggers guide the interpreter towards filling the semantic gaps in the storyworld
through hints received with the help of intertextual references, which makes
meaning transfer and the additive comprehension of the narrative possible.
Perceiving the semantic gaps creates a necessary precondition for the
functioning of meaning triggers, a situation of a certain meaning explosion in
which unpredictability and ambiguity reign, which invites the interpreters to
create order in the confusion of meanings on their own. Semantic triggers, gov-
erned by the strategic narrators, function as interpretative keys or anchors to
which Model Readers can attach their interpretation paths. Effective anchors
point at texts present in the memory of the interpretative community or that
cause a strong affective reaction which will determine the further interpretation
path or at least its tone. By using several reciprocally supportive triggers and
systematically pointing at the relations contained in the memory of the
interpretative community, it is possible to direct the Model Reader’s
interpretation process towards desired meanings (Monaci 2017, 2849).
In the subchapter “The model of meaning-making on the basis of the code
text of conspiracy theories”, we discussed more thoroughly the extremely
adaptivist meaning-making based on the code text of conspiracy theories, which
can bring together seemingly totally separate information fragments through the
conspirators’ ill will and misdeeds. It seems to us that transmedia narrating
allows for a particularly powerful language of expression in the case of strategic
conspiracy narratives as it makes it possible, due its immersive effect, to inform
the audience in detail about the conspiracy scenario, as well as increase its
meaningfulness and let even sceptical members of the interpretative community
become used to such explanation schemes. The familiarity of the conspiracy
theory is important, for constant repetition of such connections makes the code
text more natural and allows it to accumulate additional meanings
accompanying its manifestations in different contexts. Thus, it becomes ever
more likely that the interpreter will use these connections spontaneously in
future interpretative situations. We hold the opinion that transmedia campaigns
can amplify semiosis based on the code text of conspiracy theories and direct the
Model Reader towards ever new materials demonstrating the existence of the
conspiracy. Stories of a secret villainous group that are strategically
disseminated across several platforms can trigger an enthusiastic search for
hidden clues and missing links from all possible sources, see e.g. the case of
Pizzagate (see subchapter “The role of social media influencers in the shaping of
conflict”) and a cascade of sharing respective findings on social media.
Dominant textual strategies of transmedia storytelling

The following subchapter proceeds from the theories of cultural semiotics to
explain the central meaning-making devices of strategic transmedia conspiracy
narratives; we also illustrate these with some examples deriving from the
Estonian right-wing populist information space. We focus on the EKRE web
publication Uued Uudised and the web publication Objektiiv, an organ of the
Foundation for the Protection of Family and Tradition (SAPTK), as these are the
main Estonian-language channels in which transmedia storytelling is used to
transmit Soros -
themed conspiracy theories. These web publications are
undoubtedly important nodes in the right-wing populist information field of
Estonia. Due to sharing and copying of their content, readers of various forums,
social media groups and blogs are familiar with the materials published there in
addition to the right-wing base audience of these pages (see Kasekamp et al.
2019, 48). Also, the professional press often refers to stories published there.
Both Uued Uudised as well as Objektiiv construct their narratives mediated by
news and opinion pieces, radio programmes, video reportages and talk shows,
and both channels amplify the contents on their official social media channels.
The stories, told with the help of the different media, contain many repetitions of
content and rhetoric and involve multiple cross-references with texts that have
previously appeared on the same channel, as well as other publications that also
support right-
wing conservative ideology. Objektiiv and Uued Uudised also
share each other’s materials and their mutual cooperation has been underlined in
an interview by Urmas Espenberg, the former executive publisher of Uued
Uudised and member of the board of EKRE (see Saavik 2017, 25). Both channels
have published dozens of stories on Soros’s evil intentions and his hidden network
of influence via textual, visual, acoustic as well as audio-visual media. Recurrent
themes have been connecting Soros and his foundations with cultural Marxist
brainwashing and the Central European immigration caravan (see subchapters:
“Political conspiracy narrative: opposition to the elite” and “Conspiracy nar-
rative of alternative knowledge: representing a decadent conspiracy system”);
starting from autumn 2019, connections have been made with propaganda advo-
cating counteracting climate change and organising fake protests.
In order to achieve narrative coherence, Uued Uudised and Objektiiv employ
strategies described in several previous chapters. Presenting invariant
connections of the Soros-themed
conspiracy narrative (Soros as the main puppet
master of the globalist network of evil and destroyer of nation states and
traditional family and gender roles) through various columns and spokespersons
can be identified as one of the basic devices used on these channels. Thus,
connections of the strategic conspiracy narrative become fixed, yet at the same
time the codes and points of view through which they are represented are varied.
For instance, conspiracy narratives representing Soros as the scapegoat resurface
at times in opinion pieces (Tõnisson 2018, 2019; Arro 2019), where they are
represented as the result of the personal interpretation and analysis by a par-
ticular author, editorials in which they are presented as informed positions of the
publication’s editors (Eesti 200 … 2018; Jürgen Rooste … 2019; Trump tuleb …
2017) or EKRE and the Foundation for the Protection of Family and Tradition,
and in the International column (Trumpi tagandamiskatse … 2019; Poola
proovib … 2019; Skandaalne Soros … 2019) where they are presented as
information from reputable sources (e.g. Breitbart, LifeSiteNews, InfoWars,
Voice of Europe) on events occurring in the world.
Cohesion is created between different narrative entries also via consistent basic
vocabulary and intertextual references. For instance, texts referring to Soros
repeatedly employ phrases such as globalism, Soros supporters, Soros Express,
cultural Marxism, deep state, NWO, brainwashing, homosexual propaganda. Such
phrases contain strong hints at conspiracies and, as a rule, they are not used
outside the extreme right -
wing discourse. At the same time, the experienced
members of the audiences of Objektiiv and Uued Uudised are quite likely to be
familiar with these and are reminded of the general framework of relations of the
conspiracy theory code text and concrete references at conspiracies made in
this connection. Both Uued Uudised and Objektiiv use a system of keywords,
categorising the articles, which also creates cohesion between different versions of
the same narrative, while the interpreter can even reach entries from several years
prior when clicking on promising keywords. The posts on the topic of Soros
contain such recurrent keywords as George Soros, immigration, Hungary, the
Open Estonia Foundation and fake citizen society. Ideological hypercoding is used
consistently to position groups who hold views opposed to the nationalist conser-
vative/extreme-right-wing world view as inherently dangerous; for this purpose,
war rhetoric, the anti-Semitic tropes, as well as connecting opponents with sexual
taboos and a generally lax morality, are used (see subchapter “Conspiracy nar-
rative of alternative knowledge: representing a decadent conspiracy system”).
In addition, the recurrent, and at times even periodic, appearance of EKRE
and SAPTK spokespeople and their performances, provides repetition and
creates cohesion. For instance, Uued Uudised shares a radio programme “Let’s
discuss the matter” (“Räägime asjast”) by the EKRE leader Mart Helme and the
leader of the party’s Parliament faction Martin Helme, and often makes written
summaries of the most important statements made in the programme. The pro-
gramme has at times touched upon the Soros conspiracy (“Räägime asjast” …
2019); still, it cannot be considered a recurring theme on the show. Neverthe-
less, conspiracy theories accusing the elite more generally frequently appear on
the show and so it creates a favourable context for spreading conspiracy narrat-
ives with strategic aims. Almost every week, Objektiiv transmits a behind-the-
desk talk show “In Focus” (“Fookuses”) with the SAPTK board members, that
primarily focuses on attacks against Christian moral norms and family values
allegedly taking place in the Estonian context, as well as on the purportedly
biased nature of the mainstream media and educational system (the general logic
of conspiracy narratives with this thematic focus was explained in the
subchapter “Conspiracy narrative of alternative knowledge: representing a deca-
dent conspiracy system”). From the point of view of creating narrative cohesion
it is also remarkable for the show repeats and amplifies the main story points of
the articles that have appeared on Objektiiv.
The creators of strategic narratives quite often employ (audio -
)visual
representations as interpreters process them quickly and visuals have a strong
affective effect. The scholar of visual rhetoric Anthony Blair (2004, 51) has
underscored that, differently from processing various verbal (particularly
written) messages, we are able to receive visual information effortlessly for a
short time and that visuals have a specific ability “to convey a narrative in a
short time”. The reception of visual texts is made specific also by the fact that
their processing does not so much depend on the will and deliberate choices of
the interpreter, but that they wield unmediated influence and call forth partly
subconscious reactions in many ways (Blair 2004, 51). A stimulus with an
affective load is more relevant for the interpreter and is processed more quickly
and more intensive attention is focused on it (von Stackelberg, Jones 2014, 63;
see Sunstein, Vermeule 2009, 216). It is because of this quality that visuals
function as effective keys or anchors of interpretation; they allow activation of a
certain predisposition and memory connections before experiencing other nar-
rative layers, which will direct the ensuing text processing to a major extent.
This will guide the Model Reader towards an intuitive attribution of a unified
meaning of the fragments of information received, as well as the narrative
uniting of these into a mental whole (Ventsel, Madisson 2017), which can be
expressed, for instance, in a snap judgement of the development as benevolent
or destruction-and chaos-related, and judging the relevant actors as agents of
Good or Evil.
As a rule, Soros-themed
conspiracy narratives are illustrated with four types
of visuals. Quite often, Soros’s portrait photos are used (George Soros … 2019;
Poola proovib … 2019; Skandaalne Soros … 2019), that focus on the
billionaire’s face and usually represent him in a public speaking situation with
microphones turned towards him, while the logo of an influential international
organisation, e.g. the European Union, can be seen in the background. Such
visuals trigger associations that support the image of Soros as an influential
agent who forcefully spreads his messages in corridors of power, and also con-
tributes to the identification of an omnipotent conspiracy system with Soros’s
person.
Visuals of the second type represent the masses of people whom Soros’s
instigations are reported to have set on the move. For instance, photos and
videos of protest marches for women’s or LGBT rights, or gatherings in the
name of media and citizen freedoms are fairly widespread (President Donald …
2018; Vaher 2019; Ungari valitsus … 2018), as are images of people who have
arrived in Europe or North America due to the migration crisis (Kui Trump …
2018; Rändekriis vahemerel … 2018; Ühe majanduspõgenikust … 2018).
Images and videos of protests focus on active and mobile masses of people who
proclaim their message with shouting and slogans. Migrants who have arrived
via the so-called Soros Express are usually shown in a passive position, e.g.
sitting. In both cases it is not particular individuals who are foregrounded, but
rather an impression of a homogenous mass of people. Neither are there
concrete references to Soros or organisations financed by him; such connections
are created only in the texts that are positioned next to the visuals. Thus, an
interpreter who is oriented at an immersive story experience has to generate the
respective juxtaposition between the images of masses of people and Soros’s
manipulations when interpreting particular visuals. When the Model Reader is
actively actualised in the interpreter, the added pictorial material will seem as
convincing evidence of the topicality of the conspiracy. Together with the
textual component, the pictorial materials referred to amplify a single main
message connected with Soros – that he and other top globalists share an ability
to subtly manipulate various groups and stir them to concrete actions, while par-
ticular groups (feminists, human rights activists, migrants, etc.), and individuals
constituting these, are not represented as independent active agents, but rather as
the conspirators’ puppets (see the subchapter “Conspiracy narrative of altern-
ative knowledge: representing a decadent conspiracy system”). In connection
with protest marches, the means of influencing on the part of Soros get
highlighted, such as cultural Marxist/liberal leftish brainwashing and sums
reportedly paid to the protesters for taking to the streets. Migrants are repres-
ented as particularly passive agents who blindly follow the call of Soros to come
to Europe and North America in search of a better life, and are turned into a
dangerous means in the grand plan of undermining nation states without being
aware of this themselves.
The third type of visuals represent the Fidesz posters that appeared in the
streets of Hungary in connection with the general elections of 2018. On the left-
hand side of the poster, there is a smiling portrait of Soros in black and white;
the right-hand side depicts the Hungarian flag, a Hungarian-language reference
in a small font to a poll conducted in 2017 that claimed that 99 per cent of
Hungarians were against illegal immigration, and under this in block capitals
“Ne hagyjuk hogy Soros nevessen a végén” [Don’t let Soros have the last
laugh]. It is remarkable that both Objektiiv and Uued Uudised have been
repeatedly sharing pictures of this poster for three whole years, not only a digital
version, but also photos of them in Hungarian public spaces; e.g. they can be
recognised as being located in the underground (Valitsus: Ungari … 2018),
close to parking lots (Ungaris toimub … 2017) or on bus stops (Rahvusriike
vaenav … 2018), etc. Objektiiv has also added captions contextualising the
posters, e.g. “An escalator in the Budapest Underground carrying Hungarians
past posters ordered by the Government that are warning them against Soros’s
machinations” and “Hungarian Government’s poster warning against the activ-
ities of George Soros”. Such visuals help to amplify the message presented in
the text that the ruling powers in Hungary are taking Soros’s machinations, as
well as the dangers proceeding from these, seriously and citizens should not
allow the elderly billionaire to enforce his manipulations as easily as he has
reportedly been able to previously. Such pictures confirm the image of Soros as
a dangerous adversary, and they also trigger a positive recognition in the Model
Reader that EKRE and SAPTK have strong Hungarian allies in their fight
against Soros supporters, globalists and leftist extremists.
The fourth type of visual is an image with a large stylised picture of Soros in
the foreground, while the background represents slogans against misogyny,
rainbow flags and people wearing the pink hats known from the Women’s
March in 2017. The visual is telling for several reasons: first, it has the status of
a certain iconic image in the context of Uued Uudised as it has repeatedly been
published with texts discussing Soros’s various secret plans (Sorose
rahastavad … 2018; Rahvusriikide lammutaja … 2019; Ungari annab … 2018)
(also the picture of the poster described in the previous paragraph and some
images depicting Soros in conference situations have been employed
repeatedly). Second, the stylised quality of the image of Soros and its strong
symbolic charge can be noticed against the visual background of Uued Uudised
that, as a rule, represents photographic realism. In comparison with the pro-
testers, the Soros figure in a black hooded cape appears to be large than life,
towering over the masses, and his forceful stare is directed at the viewer. Soros’s
clothing recalls the ritual robe known from popular culture that is fairly wide-
spread in the visual representations of the Illuminati. Such clothes are also used
to depict the Grim Reaper or Palpatine – a fictional character in the Star Wars.
The association with a dark, or even deadly, force is amplified by the black
fingernails of Soros’s outstretched hand, which appear as if they had been
scraping the earth. The texts represented together with these visuals speak of the
“Stop Soros” package of Hungarian bills; concrete planned punishment meas-
ures that are claimed to be into use against Soros’s alleged minions, and the
danger of the possibility that the “globalism and multiculturalism propaganda”
promoted by Soros might influence the results of the 2019 parliamentary
elections. Thus, none of these texts have any other direct links to the visuals
besides the fact that both represent Soros. Again, it is a situation that requires
active interpretative contribution from a Model Reader interested in a nuanced
experience of the storyworld. Such an image will call forth a stronger affective
resonance than the visuals described above and grip the interpreter’s attention. It
is likely to provoke a feeling of unease in the Model Reader and function as a
semantic trigger that unleashes associations between Soros and non -
human
powers of Evil. It will help to corroborate the non-discrete core of meaning of
the conspiracy theory’s code text, which, in brief, consists of recognising that
the conspirators deliberately engage in evil-doing
and cause suffering to large
numbers of people as they are inherently Evil, and thus all persons and
enterprises even remotely connected to them deserve unambiguous
condemnation due to their contact with such Evil.
Functions of transmedia storytelling

It has been noticed that non-functional transmedia narratives that are perceived
by their addressees as first and foremost representations pointing at, as it were,
real actors, settings and events, have a stronger potential to mobilise the audi-
ence to particular action and trigger active content-making than fictional stories
(Freeman 2016, 95). The function of transmedia storytelling is creating narrative
cohesion on the textual level, on the one hand, as well as fixing it in the memory
of interpretative community by repeating it in different sign systems. On the
other hand, its aim is to guide the interpretation paths of the targeted audience.
The Model Reader is awakened with various strategic textual devices – semantic
gaps, visual texts triggering affective semiosis, etc. The Model Reader should
actualise the interpretation paths supporting the strategic aims and make his or
her contribution based on interpretative collaboration, to legitimising a particular
political agenda or undermining the adversaries’ world view.
As under strategic narrative we mean targeted communication, it may seem
slightly paradoxical that it should be textual elements that cause a certain
discord, ambivalence or inaccuracies, or semantic gaps, that call forth
interpretative activity on part of the reader. We find that based on the conception
of Lotman’s effect of the trope it is possible to explicate the meaning-making
logic and demonstrate its functioning principles in the context of transmedial
storytelling of the conspiracy narrative. In summary, Lotman treats the effect of
the trope as a powerful mechanism of creating new meanings that is triggered
when, in a certain interpretative context, a relationship of correspondence is gen-
erated between two elements that have mutually incompatible meanings or, in
terms of cultural semiotics, are discretely and non-discretely encoded (Lotman
2000, 37; see also the subchapter “Discrete and non-discrete logic of code-
textual meaning-making”).
In the context of strategic conspiracy narratives, we can give the description
of temporal and logical-causal circumstances as examples of discrete elements,
and the outlining of the inhuman malevolence and horror of the suffering caused
by them as non-discrete ones (this can be done particularly effectively via videos
and pictures). A universal characteristic of the trope is that one of the elements
will always remain discrete and the other non-discrete,
while the chasm of their
mutual untranslatability based on principle will cause the need in the interpreter
to find an explanation level relating them to each other (Lotman 2000, 37–38).
The search for an explanation level fascinates the interpreter who cannot be
content with the flourishing of ambivalence and equivocation, a creative process
of generating correspondences is activated in him or her due to the desire for
narrative sense-making. Historical narration related to daily life is mostly based
on discrete creation of links; what is mediated is events that are connected into a
temporal-causal sequence, but when this is enriched by non-discrete elements
through the effect of the trope, a certain tendency of generating patterns and
unified meanings is added (Lotman 2006, 283). In the case of conspiracy narrat-
ives, such unified meaning is expressed in the recognition that many events
perceived as unpleasant, as well as broader social processes, are part of some-
thing larger than a mere sequence of unpleasant developments; that this is a con-
tinuous manifestation of the same Evil. Thus, visuals and semantic gaps make it
possible to turn discrete events connected with conspiracies affectively more
attractive; they often provide an important impulse for locating concrete
circumstances and actors on the axis of good–evil/morality–decadence as uni-
versal unified meaning. Also, it is possible to create relationships of correspond-
ence between contemporary events and a mythical past via strategically
constructed semantic gaps and triggers, and blend heroism and emotional
tension into the representation of the conflict between the own and the alien by
using powerful visuals and a dramatic sound language.
Notes
1 Crossmedia and transmedia are often used as parallel concepts in academic discourse
(Saldre, Torop 2012, 25); the former is mostly associated with studies of the marketing
and entertainment industry, while the latter more frequently appears in studies of art-
istic texts and the adaptation of concrete textual motifs. Semioticians of culture Maarja
Ojamaa and Peeter Torop emphasise that crossmedia allows them to establish a
narrower focus on studying receiver-centred and intentional communication strategies,
while the concept of transmedia makes it possible to treat the audience’s content cre-
ation and broader processes of cultural signification, including those connected with
cultural memory and dynamics of culture (Ojamaa 2015, 9; Ojamaa, Torop 2015, 11).
In our book we are using the term transmedia throughout as it has been widely
employed in studies dedicated to strategic narratives and as we are interested in both
strategic communication of the code text of conspiracy theory on different platforms
and their spontaneous emergence in the audience’s interpretative activities and content
creation.
2 An image becomes iconic if it frequently appears across media channels and audiences
associate it with a certain news event (Perlmutter 1998).
5 Conclusion and future directions
In the past decade, various online platforms, especially social media, have
developed into a central information and communication space in which the col-
lective meaning of conflicts is strategically constructed, and people’s decision-
making processes are influenced. Thus, in the context of the techniques of
informational influencing activities, analysis of the so-called soft manifestations
of power that are discursive and take into consideration the special
characteristics of social media have become ever more important: how to attract
attention? How to shape narratives that would address the audience on the back-
ground of a general abundance of information? How to construct texts so that
the targeted audience will share them and thus contribute to the dissemination of
strategic narratives?
Attribution, or challenges that are connected with detecting the author or
formulator of a particular narrative, has been pointed out as one of the signi-
ficant research problems in analysing strategic narratives circulating on the
Internet. The subchapter “Information conflicts and information warfare”
identified that the contemporary information war which embraces hybrid media
spheres, has led to important shifts in the meaning of war, as differentiation
between actions coordinated by state/non-state
institutions and those belonging
to the civil sphere of ordinary citizens is ever more difficult. Our study did not
focus on the attribution of the primary authorship of the narrative or the
detection of the central instance coordinating its dissemination, but we directed
our main attention at textual strategies through which the audience’s
interpretation paths are being guided on the discursive level. This approach pro-
ceeds from the premise that we can speak of a strategic narrative when it is pos-
sible to detect an aim presented in it. The unified aim can become manifested
both in narratives disseminated by state as well as non-state actors; thus we
made no clear differentiation between the level of the strategic author or the
formation level, and the level of dissemination of narratives or the projection
level.
In this book we mostly proceeded from the treatment of the strategic nar-
rative, and the theory and method of cultural semiotics. The book’s central focus
of analysis is the discursive shaping of a conflict between the own and the alien
in strategic narratives. We conceptualised the conflict as a gap between different
systems of meaning constructed and mediated in informational influencing
activities via different semiotic means. In Part II we analysed conspiracy narrat-
ives that represented the world-famous figure of George Soros as the main
puppet master of any number of conspiracies. On the level of discourse, the
Soros-themed conspiracy narrative functions as a code text that helps to embrace
social groups that at first glance seem to be totally separate, yet are represented
either as the billionaire’s minions or victims of the conspiracy organised by him.
In order to guide the audience’s interpretation process, the Model Reader, or the
ideal receiver, as it were, is shaped in the narratives by the author or
disseminator of strategic narratives. The role of Model Reader is to actualises
the codes and intertextual references that have been strategically planned into
narratives in order to guide the audience’s interpretation process. In the
examples we have analysed, the Model Reader’s interpretation paths were most
clearly guided by the topic – the conflict – between Soros and those suffering
due to his actions. Its antithetical-antagonistic or agonistic character in many
ways determined the textual strategies employed in constructing the conspiracy
narrative.
In the analysis section of the book, we exemplified the textual strategies
through which it is possible to construct narrative unity. One of the main textual
strategic devices in the conspiracy narratives connected with Soros is the war
scenario. It first and foremost characterises our political narratives, but also
alternative knowledge ones in which our value world is constructed via an
antithetical opposition to the value worlds of the conspirators. Political narrat-
ives are often constructed as endangering our existence. Often they are based on
the textual strategy of creating analogies with historical events, for instance, it is
indicated that Soros’s activities display the same signs that can be detected in
the unleashing of wars that have taken place recently. Conspiracy narratives of
alternative knowledge, however, present the financier as an instigator of pro-
cesses of a long duration that have led to moral decline. Marketing conspiracy
narratives are based on a more ambivalent and playful conflict in which the
opposing force is represented as an omnipotent, yet at the same time glamorous,
villain. The aim of marketing the cultivation of conspiracy associations is prim-
arily to catch the audience’s attention and keep it on the meaning world linked
with their brand for as long as possible through mysteriousness and the effect of
infotainment.
The fourth chapter explained the role of affective semiosis and transmedial
narrating in amplifying the potential of strategic narratives for attention grabbing
and viral spread. We showed which discursive means (e.g. signs connected with
fear) can trigger affective semiosis that serves as an important precondition for
the emergence of connective -
action -
based audiences. As regards strategic
transmedia storytelling, we highlighted devices that help make the storyworld
more nuanced both on emotional as well as informational planes, and also those
devices that create cohesion between different fragments of the story.
Due to the setup of the problem, the framework we are offering will cover
only a single stretch in studying strategic communication that involves several
Conclusion and future directions 111
parties and versatile dissemination channels. The scope of the book does not
allow the conducting of a deep analysis of different aspects of complex trans-
platform storytelling; rather, we concentrate on some representative examples
that reveal the potential of transmedia storytelling and illustrate the basic textual
strategies. Neither did we treat in detail the sign-typological basic mechanism of
affective meaning-making that causes intense reactions in the interpreter. In this
book we have only pointed at the discourse of fear and happiness as a necessary
context, and signs expressing this that trigger specific semiosis in the audience.
In the following, we will give a brief outline of how future studies could con-
tribute to the applicability of the semiotic theory presented in this book in more
comprehensive analyses of strategic social media communication.
Sketching the methodology of social media strategic

One of the most important steps in the further development of our approach
would be a thorough application of our theoretical framework in analysing an
empirical text corpus. The main challenge concerning this is the delimiting and
categorisation of the material to be analysed under the conditions of the
informational superabundance on social media. Another difficulty that arises in
connection with the text corpus studied is that we must take into account that
social
-
media -
dominated public communication is marked by proliferation of
(audio-
)visual and viral content. Such text creation is based on “the
interconnection of texts and images” where “the text is often an integral part of
the image and the same applies vice versa” (Kovács 2015, 67). Different visually
oriented texts enable the reinforcing of messages through an emotional impact,
which makes the ideas graspable for a potentially very wide audience (Monaci
2017, 2852; Leone 2019), and often such discourses are driven by affective
meaning-making (Prøitz 2017). In our estimation it seems promising to proceed
from Peirce’s triadic division of types of sign – icons, indexes and symbols –
and analyse in more depth which intensity each type of sign evokes in the trig-
gering of affective semiosis, whether, and how, affective semiosis is influenced
by the coeffect of multimodal texts, etc.
Taking into account the significance of visual meaning-making we need to
combine the multimodal approach (Kress 2012; O’Halloran et al. 2013) with
using various data collecting programs. It seems to us that the use of programs
such as Multimodal Analysis Image (http://multimodal-analysis.com/products/
multimodal-analysis-image) could prove effective, as it can be used to collect
and analyse data (hashtags, visual viral texts/symbols, etc.) in the first phases of
semiotic content analysis, which is helpful in preparing material for analysis.
Kay O’Halloran et al., who developed the method of semiotic multimodal
discourse analysis, points out that “this approach is motivated by the idea that if
two annotation units are ‘not related’ in time, then it does not make sense to con-
sider these units in the pattern” (2013, 674). This means that such a passage will
make it possible to detect certain patterns occurring in the preliminary data, as
regards different key words, dominant signifiers and images. “Further filtering of
pattern histogram (accurate representation of the distribution of data – authors’
comment M-L.M, A.V) can be done based on the assumption that one may be
interested in more repeated patterns than in less repeated ones. This approach
favours highly repeated patterns over less frequent patterns and greatly reduces
the total number of patterns in the histogram, making it easier to interpret
manually” (ibid.). It was pointed out in the chapter on transmedia storytelling
that the repetition of certain textual elements creates cohesion on the level of the
text and contributes to it becoming fixed in the audience’s memory. Repetition
can be regarded as a special characteristic of the strategic narrative
(Zhabotynska, Velivchenko 2019, 361). Thus, the quantitative level of collecting
data can help to detect the most relevant and representative texts for qualitative
analysis that is conducted manually and so proves to be resource intensive.
The first stage of the research – categorising the data based on the
patterns – would be followed by the second stage of classification. Proceeding
from the research questions posed, the data, that have been provisionally
mapped and categorised, can be classified under broader categories: key
topics, attributions of agency and visual representations of us and the other.
This categorisation will help to reveal how conflicts are presented from
different cultural-political perspectives and platforms and how these issues are
constructing networked publics. At this stage it is possible to employ the
model presented in this book that allows for detecting text-strategic devices
for constructing the Model Reader and the Model Author, as well as aims set
by the strategic narrative.
The qualitative approach also means an abductive move in the methodology:
semiotic analysis of patterns that have already been detected can give results in
which it is possible to detect different strategic aims behind larger clusters of
repetitive patterns. This is apparent, for instance, in situations in which appropri-
ation of the strategic narrative occurs, that is, keywords that seem similar are
used to achieve opposite aims. However, this can be detected primarily with the
help of qualitative studies. Here, scholars again meet the question of attribution
mentioned above, but answering it presumes different methods of analysis than
those offered by text-level analysis of strategic narratives. This should involve a
complex study of other policies, e.g. of how some narratives overlap with other
actions of certain (state or non-state) actors both on the home scene and abroad
(for more, see Roselle et al. 2014; O’Loughlin et al. 2017). However, applying
the model we have offered will help those conducting such a complex study ask
relevant research questions and set up hypotheses.
The research direction described above could primarily focus on the level of
the formation and projection of strategic narratives. To study the reception
level, the analysis of interpretive experiences of individuals visiting conspiracy
sites should be focused on, while enquiring if different types of users emerge
there and asking which factors facilitate active content creation on the part of
the audience. This direction could be complemented by multi-site digital ethno-
graphy (Hine 2015), while conducting projective group interviews makes it
Conclusion and future directions 113
possible to analyse how the participants in online communication themselves
describe the role of narratives.
What is the use of studying strategic conspiracy narratives?

The question posed in this title is our final one; it closes the book and, rather,
serves as a rhetorical one. Our concentrating on the analysis of conspiracy nar-
ratives in this study does not mean that the semiotic approach we have
developed would have no explanatory power in the context of other strategic
narratives. Due to their code -textual
centre, strategic conspiracy narratives
emerge as stories with a fixed structure and great explanatory force, but similar
textual strategies can also be identified in narratives that do not presume the
existence of a malevolent group of a criminal inclination. Thus, the framework
we have proposed can be used to analyse the textual strategies of any strategic
narrative.
Taking the above into consideration, it can be claimed that this book con-
tributes to a more general understanding of problems connected with informa-
tion security. Lately, democratic countries have increasingly been compelled to
counter such problems manifesting as, for instance, fake news or proliferation of
manipulative texts. The analysis of different semiotic strategies of modelling the
opponent – antithesis and agonism – will also be useful in understanding the
context that connects conspiracy -
theoretical thought with populism and
radicalisation. Humans are not born with radical or populist views, neither are
they conspiracy theorists from the beginning. In addition to economic (eco-
nomic inequality between people, differences in the accessibility of social ser-
vices, etc.) and social conditions (the society’s level of education, gender and
age ratio, etc.), also systems of meaning in which we live and which shape our
understanding of the world have their role in a person’s radicalisation or
adopting beliefs regarding conspiracies. Disciplines of both humanities and
social sciences can contribute to the study of this circle of problems. This book
proposes a novel semiotic perspective for analysing contemporary strategic
communication.
Bibliography
Abidin, Crystal 2018. Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online. Bingley: Emerald
Publishing.
Ahmed, Sara 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University.
Alexievich, Svetlana 2016. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. New York:
Random House.
Altheide, David 2002. Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis. Hawthorne,
New York: de Gruyter.
American Antichrist and Soros are Spreading Chaos in Post-Soviet Space 2019. EU
versus Disinformation 21.06. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/american-antichrist-and-
soros-are-spreading-chaos-in-post-soviet-space/.
Andrejevic, Mark 2013. Infoglut: How too Much Information is Changing the Way we
Think and Know. New York: Routledge.
Antoniades, Andreas; O’Loughlin, Ben; Miskimmon, Alister 2010. Great power politics
and strategic narratives. Working paper no. 7. The Centre for Global Political
Economy, University of Sussex.
Armstrong, Sean 2009. Stalin’s Witch -
hunt: Magical Thinking in the Great Terror.
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 3, 221–240.
Arro, Kaspar 2019. Milline Euroopa meil meeles mõlgub? Uued Uudised 18.05. https://
uueduudised.ee/arvamus/kaspar-arro-milline-euroopa-meil-meeles-molgub/.
Askanius, Tina; Mylonas, Yiannis 2015. Extreme-right Responses to the European Eco-
nomic Crisis in Denmark and Sweden: The Discursive Construction of Scapegoats and
Lodestars. Javnost: The Public, 22 (1), 55–72.
Astapova, Anastasiya 2017. In Search for Truth: Surveillance Rumors and Vernacular
Panopticon in Belarus. Journal of American Folklore, 130 (517), 276–304.
Atton, Cris 2006. Far-right Media on the Internet: Culture, Discourse and Power. New
Media & Society, 8, 573–587.
Aupers, Stef 2012. “Trust No One”: Modernization, Paranoia and Conspiracy Culture.
European Journal of Communication, 27 (1), 22–34.
Ballinger, Dean 2011. Conspiratoria: The Internet and the Logic of Conspiracy Theory.
The University of Waikato, the department of Screen and Media Studies. Doctoral
thesis.
Barkun, Michael 2003. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary
America. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Barthes, Roland 1980. From Work to Text. In: Image-Music-text, (trans. S. Heath). New
York: Hill and Wang, 155–164.
Bibliography 115
Benkler, Yochai; Faris, Robert; Roberts, Hal 2018. Network Propaganda: Manipulation,
Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Bennett, Lance; Segerberg, Alexandra 2012. The Logic of Connective Action. Informa-
tion, Communication and Society, 15 (5), 739–768.
Berger, John M. 2016. Nazis vs. ISIS on Twitter: A Comparative Study of White
Nationalist and ISIS Online Social Media Networks. Washington: George Washington
University Program on Extremism Report.
Bergmann, Eirikur 2018. Conspiracy & Populism the Politics of Misinformation. Cham:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Bessi, Alessandro; Coletto, Mauro; Davidescu, George Alexandru; Scala, Antonio;
Caldarelli, Guido; Quattrociocchi, Walter 2015a. Science vs Conspiracy: Collective
Narratives in the Age of Misinformation. PLOS ONE, 10 (2), 1–17.
Bessi, Alessandro; Zollo, Fabiana; Del Vicario, Michela; Puliga, Michelangelo; Scala,
Antonio; Caldarelli, Guido; Uzzi, Brian; Quattrociocchi, Walter 2016. Users
Polarization on Facebook and YouTube. PLOS ONE, 11 (8), 1–24.
Bessi, Alessandro; Zollo, Fabiana; Del Vicario, Michela; Scala, Antonio; Caldarelli,
Guido; Quattrociocchi, Walter 2015b. Trend of Narratives in the Age of Misinformation.
PLOS ONE, 10 (8), 1–16.
Birchall, Clare 2006. Knowledge Goes Pop. Oxford, New York: Berg.
Blair, Anthony J. 2004. The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments. In: Defining Visual Rhetoric,
(eds. C. Hill; M. Helmers). New Jersey: LEA, 41–62.
Bockstette, Carsten 2008. Jihadist Terrorist Use of Strategic Communication
Management Techniques. The Marshall Center Occasional Paper Series. The George
C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.
Bondarenko, Veronika 2017. George Soros is a Favorite Target of the Right — Here’s
How That Happened. Business Insider 20.05, www.businessinsider.com/how-did-
george-soros-become-the-favorite-boogeyman-of-the-right-2017-5?r=UK.
Boros, Tamás 2018. The Hungarian “STOP Soros” Act: Why Does the Government Fight
Human Rights Organisations? https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/budapest/14205.pdf.
Boym, Svetlana 1999. Conspiracy Theories and Literary Ethics: Umberto Eco, Danilo
Kiš and The Protocols of Zion. Comparative Literature, 51 (2), 97–122.
Branco, Angela; Valsiner, Jaan 2010. Towards Cultural Psychology of Affective Pro-
cesses: Semiotic Regulation of Dynamic Fields. Estudios de Psicología, 31 (3),
243–251.
Bratich, Jack Z. 2004. Trust No One (on the Internet): The CIA-Crack-Contra Conspiracy
Theory and Professional Journalism. TELEVISION & NEW MEDIA, 5 (2), 109–139.
Bratich, Jack Z. 2008. Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Brazzoli, Mario S. 2007. Future Prospects of Information Warfare and Particularly
Psychological Operations. In: South African Army Vision 2020, (ed. L. le Roux).
Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 217–232.
Broniatowski, David A.; Jamison, Amelia M.; Qi, SiHua; Al Kulaib, Lulwah; Chen, Tao;
Benton, Adrian; Quinn, Sandra; Dredze, Mark 2018. PhD Weaponized Health
Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate. AJPH
OPEN-THEMED RESEARCH, 108 (10), 1378–1384.
Buchbender, Ortwin 1989. Zentrum des Bosen. Zur Genesis National-sozialistischer
Feinbilder. In: Feinbild. Geschichte – Dokumentation – Problematik, (ed. G. Wagenlehner).
Frankfurt am Main: Report Verlag, 17–57.
116 Bibliography
Butter, Michael 2014. Plots, Designs, and Schemes: American Conspiracy Theories from
the Puritans to the Present. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.
Butter, Michael; Knight, Peter 2016. Bridging the Great Divide: Conspiracy Theory
Research for the 21st Century. DIOGENES, 1–13.
Campbell, Alexandra 2008. Without “you” I’m Nothing: Making White Britishness
Online. Social Semiotics, 18 (4), 409–424.
Campion-Vincent, Vèronique 2005. From Evil Others to Evil Elites: A Dominant Pattern
in Conspiracy Theories Today. In: Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and
Legend, (eds. G.A. Fine; V. Campion-Vincent; C. Heath). New Jersey, New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers, 103–122.
Campion-Vincent, Vèronique 2015. Note sur les Entrepreneurs en Complots. Dioge`ne,
249–250, 99–106.
Caumanns, Ute; Önnerfson, Andreas 2020. Conspiracy Theories and Visual Culture. In:
Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories 1st Edition, (eds. M. Butter; P. Knight).
New York: Routledge, 441–455.
Chadwick, Andrew 2009. Web 2.0: New Challenges for the Study of e-democracy in an
Era of Informational Exuberance. Journal of Law and Policy for the Information
Society, 5 (1), 10–42.
Cichocka, Aleksandra 2016. Understanding Defensive and Secure In-group Positivity:
The Role of Collective Narcissism. European Review of Social Psychology, 27,
283–317.
Colăcel, Onoriu; Pintilescu, Corneliu 2017. From Literary Culture to Post-communist
Media: Romanian Conspiracism. Messages, Sages and Ages, 4 (2), 31–40.
Conspiracy Theories about Billionaire George Soros Take Centre-stage in Hungarian
Election 2018. South China Morning Post 18.03. www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/
article/2137696/conspiracy-theories-about-billionaire-george-soros-take-centre.
Cronin, Blaise; Crawford, Holly 1999. Information Warfare: Its Application in Military
and Civilian Contexts. Information Society, 15 (4), 257–263.
CrossTalk Bullhorns: Crazy World 2019. Russia Today 13.05. www.rt.com/shows/
crosstalk/459178-trump-russia-foreign-policy/.
Dahlberg, Lincoln 2011. Re -
constructing Digital Democracy: An Outline of Four
“Positions”. New Media & Society, 13 (6), 855–872.
Dahlgren, Peter 2006. Doing Citizenship: The Cultural Origins of Civic Agency in the
Public Sphere. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 9 (3), 267–286.
Darczewska, Jolanta; Żochowski, Piotr 2015. Russophobia in the Kremlin’s Strategy. A
Weapon of Mass Destruction. Point of View, 56. Warsaw: Centre of East European
Studies.
Davosis netihiiglaste hukku kuulutanud Soros pelgab tegelikult nende kontrollimatust 2018.
Uued Uudised 28.01. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/davosis-netihiiglaste-hukku-
kuulutanud-soros-pelgab-tegelikult-nende-kontrollimatust/.
Dean, Jodi 2002. Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Dean, Jodi 2010. Affective Networks. Media Tropes, 2 (2), 19–44.
Del Vicario, Michela; Bessi, Alessandro; Zollo, Fabiana; Petroni, Fabio; Scala, Antonio;
Caldarelli, Guido; Stanley, H. Eugene; Quattrociocchi, Walter 2016. The Spreading of
Misinformation Online. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 113 (3), 554–559.
Denning, Dorothy E. 1999. Information Warfare and Security. Boston, MA: Addison-
Wesley.
Bibliography 117
Dimitriu, George; De Graaf, Beatrice 2016. Fighting the War at Home: Strategic Narrat-
ives, Elite Responsiveness, and the Dutch Mission in Afghanistan, 2006–2010. Foreign
Policy Analysis, 12 (1), 2–23.
Dispute Between Protesters and Police. There is a Rally Near Soros Office 2019. Armenia
Sputnik 03.06. https://armeniasputnik.am/armenia/20190603/18946725/qashqshuk-
akciayi-masnakicneri-u-vostikanutyan-mijev-sorosi-gtrasenyaki-mot-hanrahavaqe.html.
Donovan, Barna 2011. Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American
Conscious. Jefferson: McFarland & Company.
Eco, Umberto 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. London: Indiana University press.
Eco, Umberto 1990. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Cambridge: World, History,
Texts Tanner Lectures.
Eco, Umberto 2005. Lector in fabula. Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Eesti 200 – seda Soros rahastaks 2018. Objektiiv 23.08. https://objektiiv.ee/juhtkiri-eesti-
200-seda-soros-rahastaks/.
Einstein, Katherine L.; Glick, David M. 2015. Do I Think BLS Data are BS? The Con-
sequences of Conspiracy Theories. Political Behavior, 37 (3), 679–701.
Ekman, Mattias 2016. Online Islamophobia and the Politics of Fear: Manufacturing the
Green Scare. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38 (11), 1986–2002.
Evans, Elizabeth 2011. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media, and Daily Life.
New York: Routledge.
Farkas, Johan; Schou, Jannick 2018. Fake News as a Floating Signifier: Hegemony,
Antagonism and the Politics of Falsehood. Javnost: The Public, 25 (3), 298–314.
Fekete, Liz 2012. Pedlars of Hate: The Violent Impact of the European Far Right.
London: Institute of Race Relations.
Feklyunina, Valentina 2013. Constructing Russophobia. In: Russia’s Identity in Inter-
national Relations: Images, Perceptions, Misperceptions, (ed. R. Taras). Routledge:
London, 91–109.
Fenster, Mark 2008. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture.
Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.
Fiske, John 1994. Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Flaherty, Emma; Roselle, Laura 2018. Contentious Narratives and Europe. Conspiracy
Theories and Strategic Narratives Surrounding RT’s Brexit News Coverage. Journal of
International Affairs, 71, 53–60.
Foucault, Michel 1977. Orders of Discourse, (trans. R. Sawyer), Social Science Informa-
tion, 10/2.
Foucault, Michel 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books.
Freedman, Lawrence 2006. Networks, Culture and Narratives. The Adelphi Papers, 45
(379), 11–26.
Freeman, Matthew 2016. Small Change–Big Difference: Tracking the Transmediality of
Red Nose Day. Journal of European Television History and Culture, 5 (10), 87‒96.
Frenkel, Sheera; Confessore, Nicholas; Kang, Cecilia; Rosenberg, Matthew; Nicas, Jack
2018. Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebookʼs Leaders Fought Through Crisis. The
New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-
election-racism.html.
Furedi, Frank 2019. Kuidas hirm toimib. Hirmukultuur 21 sajandil. Tallinn: Postimees.
Gaines-Ross, Leslie 2010. Reputation Warfare. Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.
org/2010/12/reputation-warfare.
118 Bibliography
George Soros asutas USA valimiste mõjutamiseks super–sihtfondi 2019. Objektiiv 02.08.
https://objektiiv.ee/george-soros-asutas-usa-valimiste-mojutamiseks-super-sihtfondi/.
George Soros – Euroopa vaenlane 2016. Uued Uudised 14.04. https://uueduudised.ee/
uudis/maailm/george-soros-euroopa-vaenlane/.
Gergely, Andras 2015. Orban Accuses Soros of Stoking Refugee Wave to Weaken Europe.
Bloomberg 30.10. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-30/orban-accuses-soros-
of-stoking-refugee-wave-to-weaken-europe.
Giry, Julien 2015. Le movement LaRouche a` l’international. Impact du territoire et
stratégies politiques d’implantation a` l’échelle nationale et locale. Approche comparée
France/Etats-Unis. Politeïa, 28, 433–452.
Giry, Julien; Gürpınar, Doğan 2020. Functions and Uses of Conspiracy Theories in
Authoritarian Regimes. In: Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories 1st Edition,
(eds. M. Butter, P. Knight). New York: Routledge, 317–328.
Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka; Cichocka, Aleksandra; Eidelson, Roy; Jayawickreme,
Nuwan 2009. Collective Narcissism and its Social Consequences. Journal of Person-
ality and Social Psychology, 97, 1074–1096.
Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka; Peker, Müjde; Guerra, Rita; Baran, Tomasz 2016. Col-
lective Narcissism Predicts Hypersensitivity to In-group Insult and Direct and Indirect
Retaliatory Intergroup Hostility. European Journal of Personality, 30 (6), 532–551.
Grey Ellis, Emma 2019. Greta Thunberg’s Digital Rise Calls Back to a Pre-Digital Era.
Wired 28.09. www.wired.com/story/greta-thunberg-social-media/.
Griffin, Roger 2002. The Incredible Shrinking Ism: The Survival of Fascism in the Post-
fascist Era. Patterns of Prejudice, 36 (3), 3–8.
Griffin, Roger 2003. From Slime Mold To Rhizome: An Introduction to the Groupuscular
Right. Patterns of Prejudice, 37 (1), 27–50.
Grossberg, Lawrence 1992. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and
Postmodern culture. New York: Routledge.
Grusin, Richard 2010. Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Gudkov, Lev 2005. Идеологема врага. In: Образ врага, (ed. L. Gudkov). Moscow:
O.G.I., 7–79.
Gureeva, Julija; Lužnikova, Anna 2019. Всю ответственность несёт правительство:
фонд Сороса призвал Тбилиси бороться с “гибридной войной” РФ против Грузии.
Russia Today 5.07. https://russian.rt.com/world/article/647256-fond-soros-gruziya-ruso
fobiya?fbclid=IwAR20kMN5mbiUMyStUnxgDXdQ1flfN9PavkMllMsCr1waFg0hjjfu
FTogTDk.
Hallahan, Kirk; Holtzhausen, Derina; van Ruler, Betteke; Verčič, Dejan; Sriramesh,
Krishnamurthy 2007. Defining Strategic Communication. International Journal of
Strategic Communication, 1 (1), 3–35.
Harsin, Jayson 2014. Public argument in the new media ecology: Implications of
temporality, spatiality, and cognition. Journal of Argumentation in Context, 3(1), 7–34.
Harsin, Jayson 2015. Regimes of Posttruth, Postpolitics, and Attention Economies.
Communication, Culture & Critique, 8, 327–333.
Helmus, Todd C.; Bodine-Baron, Elizabeth; Radin, Andrew; Magnuson, Madeline;
Mendelsohn, Joshua; Marcellino, William; Bega, Andriy; Winkelman, Zev 2018.
Russian Social Media Influence: Understanding Russian Propaganda in Eastern
Europe. www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2237.html.
Herman, David 2009. Basic Elements of Narrative. Chichester, Malden: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Bibliography 119
Hine, Christine 2015. Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday.
London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Hofstadter, Richard 1967. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays.
New York: Vintage Books.
Hopkins, Valerie 2018. Soros-linked University to Move Courses out of Hungary. Finan-
cial Times 25.10, www.ft.com/content/d1a6074e-d856-11e8-ab8e-6be0dcf18713.
Howard, Robert Glenn 2013. Vernacular Authority: Critically Engaging “Tradition”. In:
Tradition in the Twenty-First Century. Locating the Role of the Past in the Present,
(ed. T. Blank; R.G. Howard). Utah: State University Press, 72–99.
Howarth, David; Glynos, Jason 2007. Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Polit-
ical Theory. Abingdon: Routledge.
Hristov, Todor 2019. Impossible Knowledge Conspiracy Theories, Power, and Truth.
London, New York: Routledge.
Hume, Tim 2018. How Hungary Helped Make George Soros the Ultimate Villain to
Nationalists Around the World. Vice 25.11, www.vice.com/en_us/article/yw7pxw/
how-hungary-helped-make-george-soros-the-ultimate-villain-to-nationalists-around-
the-world.
Hungary: Europe’s Champion of Conspiracy Theories. DW interview with Peter Kreko
2018. Deutsche Welle 11.12. www.dw.com/en/hungary-europes-champion-of-
conspiracy-theories/a-46689822.
Icke, David 1999. The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World. Ryde:
Bridge of Love Publications.
Icke, David 2005. Infinite Love is the Only Truth: Everything Else is Illusion. Ryde:
David Icke Books.
Jakobson, Roman 1971a. Dominant. In: Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and
Structuralist Views, (eds. L. Matejka; K. Pomorska), Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
82–87.
Jakobson, Roman 1971b. Language in Relation to Other Communication Systems. In:
Selected Writings II: Word and Language. Hague, Paris: Mouton, 697–708.
Jakobson, Roman 1976. Metalanguage as a Linguistic Problem. In: Selected Writings VII,
The Hague: Mouton, 113–121.
Jantunen, Saara 2018. Infosõda. Tallinn: SA Kultuurileht.
Jenkins, Henry 2011. Transmedia 202: Further Reflections. Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_
further_re.html.
Johnson, Jessica 2018. The Self-Radicalization of White Men: “Fake News” and the
Affective Networking of Paranoia. Communication Culture & Critique, 11, 100–115.
Jolley, Daniel; Douglas, Karen M. 2013. The Social Consequences of Conspiracism:
Exposure to Conspiracy Theories Decreases Intentions to Engage in Politics and to
Reduce One’s Carbon Footprint. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 35–56.
Jürgen Rooste annab edasi punarohelise maailmavaate kogu tema demagoogias,
vihkamises ja võltsmoraalis 2019. Uued Uudised 02.08. https://uueduudised.ee/
arvamus/juhtkiri/jurgen-rooste-annab-edasi-punarohelise-maailmavaate-kogu-tema-
demagoogias-vihkamises-ja-voltsmoraalis/.
Jurgenson, Nathan 2012. When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and
Augmented Revolution. Future Internet, 4, 83–91.
Kalmar, Ivan; Stevens, Christopher; Worby, Nicholas 2018. Twitter, Gab, and Racism:
The Case of the Soros Myth. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on
Social Media and Society, Copenhagen 18–20.07, 330–334.
120 Bibliography
Karlova, Natascha; Fisher, Karen 2013. “Plz RT”: A Social Diffusion Model of
Misinformation and Disinformation for Understanding human Information Behaviour.
Proceedings of the ISIC 2012, 1–17, www.hastac.org/sites/default/files/documents/
karlova_12_isic_misdismodel.pdf.
Kasekamp, Andres; Madisson, Mari-Liis; Wierenga, Louis John 2019. Discursive Oppor-
tunities for the Estonian Populist Radical Right in a Digital Society. Problems of Post-
Communism, 1−12.
Kaufman, Michael T. 2002. Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. New
York: Knopf.
Keeley, Brian L. 1999. Of Conspiracy Theories. The Journal of Philosophy, 3, 109–126.
Kilcullen, David 2013. Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knight, Peter 2002. A Nation of Conspiracy Theorists. In: Conspiracy Nation: The Politics
of Paranoia in Post-War America, (ed. P. Knight). New York: New York University
Press, 1–17.
Knight, Peter 2008. Outrageous Conspiracy Theories: Popular and Official Responses to
9/11 in Germany and The United States. New German Critique, 1, 165–195.
Kovács, Attila 2015. The ‘New Jihadists’ and the Visual Turn from Al-Qa’ida to ISIL/
ISIS/Da’ish. BiztPol Affairs, 2 (3), 67.
Kragh, Martin; Åsberg, Sebastian 2017. Russia’s Strategy for Influence Through Public
Diplomacy and Active Measures: The Swedish Case. Journal of Strategic Studies, 40 (6),
773–816.
Krasodomski-Jones, Alex 2019. Suspicious Minds: Conspiracy Theories in the Age of
Populism. Demos 26.04. https://demos.co.uk/project/suspicious-minds-conspiracy-the-
ories-in-the-age-of-populism/.
Krekó, Péter; Enyedi, Zsolt 2018. Orbán’s Laboratory of Illiberalism. Journal of Demo-
cracy, 29 (3), 39–51.
Kress, Gunther 2012. Multimodal Discourse Analysis. In: The Routledge Handbook of
Discourse Analysis (eds. J.P. Gee; M. Handford). Oxon and New York: Routledge,
35–50.
Kristeva, Julia 1969. Sémiotiké. Recherches puor une – semianalyse. Essais. Paris: Le Seuil.
Kui Trump Soros Ekspressi migrandikolonni pidama ei saa, järgnevad sellele miljonid
parema elu otsijad 2018. Uued Uudised 01.11. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/
kui-trump-soros-ekspressi-migrandikolonni-pidama-ei-saa-jargnevad-sellele-miljonid-
parema-elu-otsijad/.
Laclau, Ernesto 1990. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London and New
York: Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto; Mouffe, Chantal 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a
Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Larson, Erik V.; Darilek, Richard E.; Gibran, Daniel; Nichiporuk, Brian; Richardson, Amy;
Schwartz, Lowell H.; Thurston, Cathryn Q. 2009. Effective Influence Operations: A
Framework for Enhancing Army Capabilities. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
Laver, John 1975. Communicative Functions of Phatic Communion. In: Organization of
Behaviour in Face-to-Face Interaction, (eds. A. Kendon; R. Harris; M. Key). The
Hague: Mouton, 215–238.
Leone, Massimo 2017. Fundamentalism, Anomie, Conspiracy: Umberto Eco’s Semiotics
against Interpretive Irrationality. In: Umberto Eco in his Own Words, (ed. T. Thellefsen).
Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 221–229.
Bibliography 121
Leone, Massimo 2019. The Semiotics of the Face in the Digital Era, Perspectives,
RFIEA.
Leone, Massimo; Madisson, Mari-Liis; Ventsel, Andreas 2020. Semiotic Approaches to
Conspiracy Theories. In: Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories 1st Edition,
(eds. M. Butter; P. Knight). New York: Routledge, 43–54.
Lepik, Peet 2007. Universals in the Context of Juri Lotman’s Semiotics. Tartu Semiotics
Library 7. Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Lewandowsky, Stephan; Ecker, Ullrich K.H; Cook, John 2017. Beyond Misinformation:
Understanding and Coping with the “Post-Truth” Era. Journal of Applied Research in
Memory and Cognition, 6 (4), 353–369.
Lewandowsky, Stephan; Gignac, Gilles E.; Oberauer, Klaus 2013. The Role of
Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science. PLOS ONE,
10 (8), 1–12.
Liu, James H.; Hilton, Denis J. 2010. How the Past Weighs on the Present: Social
Representation of History and Their Role in Identity Politics. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 44 (4), 537–556.
Livingston, Steven; Nassetta, Jack 2018. Framing and Strategic Narratives: Synthesis and
Analytical Framework. SAIS Review of International Affairs, 38 (2), 101–110.
Lotman, Juri 1982. The Text and the Structure of Its Audience. New Literary History, 14 (1),
81–87.
Lotman, Juri 1988a. The Semiotics of Culture and the Concept of Text. Soviet Psych-
ology, 26 (3), 52–58.
Lotman, Juri 1988b. Text Within a Text. Soviet Psychology, 26 (3), 32–51.
Lotman, Juri 1997. Culture as a Subject and an Object in Itself. Trames 1 (51/46), 7–16.
Lotman, Juri 2000. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Lotman, Juri 2005. On Semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies, 33 (1), 205–229.
Lotman, Juri 2006. Kirjandus ja mütoloogia. In: Kultuurisemiootika, Tallinn: Olion,
273–298.
Lotman, Juri 2007. Hirm ja segadus: Esseid kultuurisemiootikast, (ed. M. Lotman).
Tallinn: Varrak.
Lotman, Juri 2010. Kultuuritüpoloogiad. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus.
Lotman, Juri 2019. The Symbol in the System of Culture. In: Culture, Memory and
History, (ed. M. Tamm). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 161–173.
Lotman, Juri; Uspenskij, Boris 1975. Myth-name-Culture. Soviet Studies in Literature: A
Journal of Translations, 11 (2/3), 17–46.
Lotman, Juri; Uspenskij, Boris 1978. On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture. New Lit-
erary History, 9 (2), 211–232.
Lotman, Juri; Uspenskij, Boris 1984. The Role of Dual Models in the Dynamics of
Russian Culture (Up to the End of the Eighteenth Century). In: The Semiotics of
Russian Culture, (ed. A. Shukman). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 3–28.
Lotman, Juri; Ivanov, Vjacheslav; Toporov, Vladimir; Pjatigorskij, Aleksander;
Uspenskij, Boris 2013. Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied to the
Slavic texts). In: Beginnings of the Semiotics of Culture, (eds. S. Salupere; P. Torop;
K. Kull). Tartu Semiotics Library 13, Tartu: Tartu University Press, 51–77.
Lotman, Mihhail 2007. Hirm ja segadus – irratsionaalse semioosi poole. In: J. Lotman. Hirm
ja segadus. Esseid kultuurisemiootikast, (ed. M. Lotman). Tallinn: Varrak, 141–158.
Madisson, Mari-Liis 2014. The Semiotic Logic of Signification of Conspiracy Theories.
Semiotica, 202, 273–300.
122 Bibliography
Madisson, Mari- Liis 2016a. The Semiotic Construction of Identities in Hypermedia
Environments: The Analysis of Online Communication of the Estonian Extreme Right.
Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Madisson, Mari- Liis 2016b. NWO Conspiracy Theory: A Key Frame in Online
Communication of Estonian Extreme Right. Lexia, 23/24, 189–208.
Madisson, Mari- Liis; Ventsel, Andreas 2016a. Autocommunicative Meaning- making in
Online Communication of Estonian Extreme Right. Sign Systems Studies, 44 (3), 326−354.
Madisson, Mari-Liis; Ventsel, Andreas 2016b. “Freedom of Speech” in the Self-Descriptions
of the Estonian Extreme Right Groupuscules. National Identities, 18 (2), 89−104.
Madisson, Mari-Liis; Ventsel, Andreas 2018. Groupuscular Identity-creation in Online
Communication of Estonian Extreme Right. Semiotica, 222, 25−46.
Madisson, Tiit 2018. Juudi “revolutsionäärid” maailma ümber kujundamas. Blog
Rahvuslane http://rahvuslane.blogspot.com/2018/05/juudi-revolutsionaarid-maailma-
umber.html.
Majakovski, Vladimir 2013. Selected Poems, (trans. J. H. McGavran III). Evanston:
Northwestern University Press.
Maksimov, Aldo 2019. Repliik: Tallinna Ülikool – propagandaasutus või ülikool? Objektiiv
08.07. https://objektiiv.ee/repliik-tallinna-ulikool-propagandaasutus-voi-ulikool/.
Marchart, Oliver 2007. Post- Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in
Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Marmura, Stephen M.E. 2014. Likely and Unlikely Stories: Conspiracy Theories in an
Age of Propaganda. International Journal of Communication, 8, 2377−2395.
Marwick, Alice; Lewis, Rebecca 2017. Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online.
https://datasociety.net/output/media-manipulation-and-disinfo-online/.
McLaughlin, Neil; Trilupaityte, Skaidra 2012. The International Circulation of Attacks and
the Reputational Consequences of Local Context: George Soros’s Difficult Reputation in
Russia, Post-Soviet Lithuania and the United States. Cultural Sociology, 7 (4), 431–446.
Melley, Timothy 2002. Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar
America. New York: Cornell University Press.
Mesežnikov, Grigorij 2019. The EU, Russia, Ukraine in Slovak Pro-Russian Media.
http://4liberty.eu/the-eu-russia-ukraine-in-slovak-pro-russian-media/.
Miller, Vincent 2008. New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture. Convergence, 14,
387–400.
Miskimmon, Alister; O’Loughlin, Ben 2019. Narratives of the EU in Israel/Palestine:
Narrative “stickiness” and the Formation of Expectations. European Security, 28 (3),
268−283.
Miskimmon, Alister; O’Loughlin, Ben; Roselle, Laura 2013. Strategic Narratives,
Communication Power and the New World Order. New York: Routledge.
Miskimmon, Alister; O’Loughlin, Ben; Roselle, Laura 2017. Introduction. In: Forging
the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations, (eds. A. Miskimmon; B.
O’Loughlin; L. Roselle). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1−22.
Monaci, Sara 2017. Explaining the Islamic State’s Online Media Strategy: A Transmedia
Approach. International Journal of Communication, 11, 2842–2860.
Mouffe, Chantal 2005. On the Political. London, New York: Routledge.
Murphy, Margi 2018. YouTube to Fight Conspiracy Theory Videos by Showing Users
Wikipedia Links. The Telegraph 09.07. www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/07/09/
youtube-fight-conspiracy-theory-videos-showing-users-wikipedia/.
Murray, Janet H. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
New York: The Free Press.
Bibliography 123
Nazaryan, Alexander 2017. No, Trump Supporters, the San Francisco Chronicle didn’t
Prove your Point about ‘Paid’ Protesters. Newsweek 08.05. www.newsweek.com/
trump-paid-protesters-san-francisco-chronicle-alt-right-596511.
Nissen, Thomas Elkjær 2015. The Weaponization of Social Media: Characteristics of
Contemporary Conflicts. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Defence College.
Novak, Benjamin 2017. Satan is Using the Soros Plan and Brussels to Usher in the
Apocalypse! Budapest Beacon 09.10. https://budapestbeacon.com/satan-using-soros-
plan-brussels-usher-apocalypse/.
O’Halloran, Kay L.; Marissa K.L.E.; Podlasov, Alexey; Tan, Sabine 2013. Multimodal
Digital Semiotics: The Interaction of Language with Other Resources. Text & Talk, 33
(4/5), 665–690.
Ojamaa, Maarja 2015. The Transmedial Aspect of Cultural Autocommunication. Tartu:
Tartu University Press.
Ojamaa, Maarja; Torop, Peeter 2015. Transmediality of Cultural Autocommunication.
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 18 (1), 61−78.
O’Loughlin, Ben; Miskimmon, Alister; Roselle, Laura 2017. Strategic Narratives:
Methods and Ethics. In: Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International
Relations, (eds. A. Miskimmon; B. O’Loughlin; L. Roselle). Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press. 23–55.
Önnerfors, Andreas 2019. “The Great Replacement” − Decoding the Christchurch Terrorist
Manifesto. www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2019/03/18/the-great-replacement-decoding-
the-christchurch-terrorist-manifesto/.
Papacharissi, Zizi 2014. Affective Publics. Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Papacharissi, Zizi 2016. Affective Publics and Structures of Storytelling: Sentiment,
Events and Mediality. Information, Communication & Society, 19 (3), 307–324.
Papernyi, Vladimir 1996. Культура “Два”. Moscow: NLO Press.
Peirce, Charles Sanders 1932. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Harvard:
Harvard University Press.
Perlmutter, David D. 1998. Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in
International Crises. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Peterson, Bo 2013. Mirror, Mirror … Myth-making, Self-images and the View of the
US “Other” in Contemporary Russia. In: Russia’s Identity in International Rela-
tions: Images, Perceptions, Misperceptions, (ed. R. Taras). London: Routledge,
11–23.
Phillips DeZalia, Rebekah A.; Moeschberger, Scott L. 2014. The Function of Symbols
that Bind and Divide. In: Symbols that Bind, Symbols that Divide the Semiotics of Peace
and Conflict, (ed. S.L. Moeschberger; R.A. Phillips DeZalia). New York: Springer,
1−12.
Piata, Anna 2016. When Metaphor Becomes a Joke: Metaphor Journeys from Political
Ads to Internet Memes. Journal of Pragmatics, 106, 39–56.
Pipes, Daniel 1999. Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes
From. New York: The Free Press.
Pomerantsev, Peter; Weiss, Michael 2014. The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin
Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money. New York: Institute of Modern Russia,
www.stratcomcoe.org/peter- p omerantsev- m ichael- w eiss- m enace- u nreality- h ow-
kremlin-weaponizes-information-culture-and.
Poola proovib peatada Sorost soetamast suurt raadiojaama 2019. Objektiiv 27.01. https://
objektiiv.ee/poola-proovib-peatada-sorost-soetamast-suurt-raadiojaama/.
124 Bibliography
President Donald Trump süüdistas maailmalammutajat George Sorosit laimukampaania
rahastamises 2018. Uued Uudised 05.10. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/
president-donald-trump-suudistas-maailmalammutajat-george-sorosit-laimukampaania-
rahastamises/.
Prøitz, Lin 2017. Visual Social Media and Affectivity: The Impact of the Image of Aylan
Kurdi and Young People’s Response to the Refugee Crisis in Oslo and Sheffield.
Information, Communication & Society, 1–16.
“Räägime asjast”: kõigieestlastest, Kaja Kallasest, koalitsioonist ja rahastamisest 2019.
Uued Uudised 14.04. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/eesti/raagime-asjast-koigieestlastest-
kaja-kallasest-koalitsioonist-ja-rahastamisest/.
Radovanovic, Danica; Ragnedda, Massimo 2012. Small Talk in the Digital Age: Making
Sense of Phatic Posts. #MSM2012 2nd Workshop on Making Sense of Microposts, 10–13.
Radžvilas, Vytautas 2008. Už pilietiškumo miražų – “pilietinė” nomenklatūra. www.balsas.
lt/naujiena/183154/vytautas-radzvilas-uz-pilietiskumo-mirazu-pilietine-nomenklatura/1.
Rahvusriikide lammutaja Soros sekkub Eesti valimistesse – Raul Rebane tõestas seda
2019. Uued Uudised 05.01. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/eesti/rahvusriikide-lammutaja-
soros-sekkub-eesti-valimistesse-raul-rebane-toestas-seda/.
Rahvusriike vaenav vanurist miljardär George Soros üritab oma rahaga Brexitit peatada
2018. Uued Uudised 02.08. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/rahvusriike-vaenav-
vanurist-miljardar-george-soros-uritab-oma-rahaga-brexitit-peatada/.
Rändekriis Vahemerel — kas vaid Liibüa rannavalve töötab selle nimel, et migrandid
mere lõunakaldale jääks? 2018. Uued Uudised 22.06. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/
maailm/randekriis- v ahemerel- k as- v aid- l iibua- r annavalve- t ootab- s elle- n imel- e t-
migrandid-mere-lounakaldale-jaaks/.
Rebane, Raul 2018. 10 levinumat vandenõuteooriat Venemaal. ERR 27.08. www.err.
ee/856514/raul-rebane-10-levinumat-vandenouteooriat-venemaal.
Ringsmose, Jens; Børgesen, Berit K. 2011. Shaping Public Attitudes Towards the
Deployment of Military Power: NATO, Afghanistan and the Use of Strategic Narrat-
ives. European Security, 20 (4), 505–528.
Robertson, Pat 1991. The New World Order. Nashville: Word Records.
Roselle, Laura, Miskimmon, Alister; O’Loughlin, Ben 2014. Strategic Narrative: A New
Means to Understand Soft Power. Media, War and Conflict, 7 (1), 70–84.
Saavik, Siim 2017. Eesti alternatiivmeedia kanalite Nihilist, Vanglaplaneet ja Uued
Uudised toimimine ning funktsioonid. Tartu Ülikool, Ühiskonnateaduste instituut.
Bakalaureusetöö.
Saldre, Maarja; Torop, Peeter 2012. Transmedia Space. In: Crossmedia Innovations:
Texts, Markets, Institutions, (eds. I. Ibrus; C. Scolari). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang
Publishers House, 25–44.
Salvatore, Sergio; Freda, Maria 2011. Affect, Unconscious and Sensemaking. A
Psychodynamic, Semiotic and Dialogic Model. New Ideas in Psychology, 29 (2),
119–135.
Saussure, de Ferdinand 2011. Course in General Linguistics. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Schöpflin, George 2010. The Dilemmas of Identity. Tallinn: Tallinn University Press.
Schrich, Lisa 2005. Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Schwartau, Winn 1996. Information Warfare: Chaos on the Information Superhighway.
New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Selg, Peeter; Ventsel, Andreas 2008. Towards a Semiotic Theory of Hegemony: Naming
as Hegemonic Operation in Lotman and Laclau. Sign Systems Studies, 36 (1), 167−183.
Bibliography 125
Selg, Peeter; Ventsel, Andreas 2010. An Outline for a Semiotic Theory of Hegemony.
Semiotica, 182, 443–474.
Selg, Peeter; Ventsel, Andreas 2020. Introducing Relational Political Analysis: Political
Semiotics as a Theory and Method. Palgrave (forthcoming).
Skandaalne Soros toetab oma rahadega sisserännet Itaaliasse ja sealt edasi kogu
Euroopasse 2019. Uued Uudised 28.10. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/
skandaalne-soros-toetab-oma-rahadega-sisserannet-itaaliasse-ja-sealt-edasi-kogu-
euroopasse/.
Siibak, Andra 2012. Being Publicly Private: Extreme Nationalist User Practices on Social
Networks. In: Security in Cyberspace: Targeting Nations, Infrastructures, Individuals,
(ed. G. Giamello). London and New York: Bloomsbury, 215–230.
Silverman, Craig 2015. Lies, Damn Lies, and Viral Content. Columbia Journalism
School, http://towcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/LiesDamnLies_Silverman_
TowCenter.pdf.
Singer, Peter Warren; Brooking, Emerson T. 2018. LikeWar: The Weaponization of
Social Media. Boston, New York: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Soros saalib Brüsseli vahet, et Orbánile karistust kaubelda 2018. Objektiiv 23.04. https://
objektiiv.ee/soros-saalib-brusseli-vahet-et-orbanile-karistust-kaubelda/.
Sorose rahastavad propagandaasutused hakkavad Ungari tolmu jalgadelt pühkima 2018.
Uued Uudised 21.04. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/sorose-rahastavad-propagan
daasutused-hakkavad-ungari-tolmu-jalgadelt-puhkima/.
Soukup, Charles 2008. 9/11 Conspiracy Theories on the World Wide Web: Digital Rhetoric
and Alternative Epistemology. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 9 (3), 2−25.
Stæhr, Andreas 2014. The Appropriation of Transcultural Flows Among Copenhagen
Youth – The Case of Illuminati. Discourse, Context & Media, 4/5, 101–115.
Stano, Simona 2020. The Internet and the Spread of Conspiracy Content. In: Routledge
Handbook of Conspiracy Theories 1st Edition, (eds. M. Butter; P. Knight). New York:
Routledge, 438–496.
Statello, Clara 2019. Oliver Stone a Taormina per presentare Revealing Ukraine in prima
visione mondiale. Sputnik 05.07. https://it.sputniknews.com/opinioni/201907057848087-
oliver-stone-a-taormina-per-presentare-revealing-ukraine-in-prima-visione-mondiale/.
Sunstein, Cas; Vermeule, Adrian 2009. Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures. Journal
of Political Philosophy, 17 (2), 202–227.
Swimelar, Safia 2018. Deploying Images of Enemy Bodies: US Image Warfare and Stra-
tegic Narratives. Media, War and Conflict, 11 (2), 179–203.
Tan, Sabine; O’Halloran, Kay L.; Wignell, Peter; Chai, Kevin; Lange, Rebecca 2018.
A Multimodal Mixed Methods Approach for Examining Recontextualisation Patterns
of Violent Extremist Images in Online Media. Discourse, Context and Media, 21,
18–35.
Tiidenberg, Katrin 2017. Ihu ja hingega internetis. Tallinn: Tallinn University Press.
Tiidenberg, Katrin; Siibak, Andra 2018. Affordances, Affect and Audiences – Making
Sense of Networked Publics, Introduction to AoIR 2017 Special Issue on Networked
Publics. Studies in transition states and societies, 10 (2), 1−9.
Todorov, Tzvetan 1977. Theories du Symbole. Paris: Ed. Seuil.
Tõnisson, Roland 2018. Messias Soros. Mõtteid globalismist. Objektiiv 15.03. https://
objektiiv.ee/messias-soros-motteid-globalismist/.
Tõnisson, Roland 2019. Poliitkorrektsus on vasakliberaalide võimuhaaramise vahend.
Uued Uudised 11.08. https://uueduudised.ee/arvamus/roland-tonisson-poliitkorrektsus-
on-vasakradikaalide-voimuhaaramise-vahend/.
126 Bibliography
Trump tuleb: multikultilased, soroslased, sallivuslased ja muud friigid, värisege! 2017. Uued
Uudised 21.01. https://uueduudised.ee/arvamus/juhtkiri/trump-tuleb-multikultilased-
soroslased-sallivuslased-ja-muud-friigid-varisege/.
Trumpi tagandamiskatse taga on Sorosi propagandatööstus 2019. Objektiiv 27.09. https://
objektiiv.ee/trumpi-tagandamiskatse-taga-on-sorose-propagandatoostus/.
Tufekci, Zeynep 2013. “Not This One”: Social Movements, the Attention Economy, and
Microcelebrity Networked Activism. American Behavioral Scientist, 57 (7), 848–870.
Turner-Graham, Emily 2014. “Breivik is my Hero”: The Dystopian World of Extreme
Right Youth on the Internet. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 60 (3),
416–430.
Ühe majanduspõgenikust aafriklase juhtum: “Hüvasti Itaalia, sa valmistasid mulle suure
pettumuse!” 2018. Uued Uudised 25.07. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/uhe-
majanduspogenikust-aafriklase-juhtum-huvasti-itaalia-sa-valmistasid-mulle-suure-
pettumuse.
Ungari annab seadustepaketiga “Stop Soros” valusa hoobi illegaalse immigratsiooni
käsilastele 2018. Uued Uudised 04.06. https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/ungari-
annab-seadustepaketiga-stop-sorosvalusa-hoobi-illegaalse-immigratsiooni-kasilastele/.
Ungari hoiatab “Sorose ekspressi” eest Ameerikas ja Euroopas 2018. Objektiiv 30.10
https://objektiiv.ee/ungari-hoiatab-sorose-ekspressi-eest-ameerikas-ja-euroopas/.
Ungari valitsus: laupäevase meeleavalduse korraldas Soros 2018. Objektiiv 17.04. https://
objektiiv.ee/ungari-valitsus-laupaevase-meeleavalduse-korraldas-soros/.
Ungaris toimub Sorose asjus suur rahvaküsitlus 2017. Objektiiv 15.09. https://objektiiv.
ee/ungaris-toimub-sorose-asjus-suur-rahvakusitlus/.
Uscinski, Joseph E.; Parent, Joseph M. 2014. American Conspiracy Theories. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Uspenskij, Boris 2013. Moskva-Tartu kultuurisemiootika koolkonnast. In: Vene kultuuri
jõujooni. Valik artikleid. Tartu: Ilmamaa, 20–23.
Vaher, Martin 2019. Feministide välimääraja: kes on Eesti naiste eest marssijad? Objektiiv
31.01. https://objektiiv.ee/feministide-valimaaraja-kes-eesti-naiste-eest-marssijad/.
Valitsus: Ungari valimistesse on sekkunud tuhanded soroslased 2018. Objektiiv 27.03.
https://objektiiv.ee/valitsus-ungari-valimistesse-sekkunud-tuhanded-soroslased/.
Valsiner, Jaan 2007. Culture in Minds and Societies: Foundations of Cultural Psych-
ology. New Delhi: Sage.
van Dijck, Jose 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media.
New York: Oxford University Press.
van Dijk, Teun 1998. Ideology. A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.
van Niekerk, Brett; Maharaj, Manoj 2013. Social Media and Information Conflict. Inter-
national Journal of Communication, 7, 1162–1184.
van Prooijen, Jan-Willem; Douglas, Karen M. 2018. Belief in Conspiracy Theories: Basic
Principles of an Emerging Research Domain. European Journal of Social Psychology,
1−12.
Vatikani diil globalistide ja soroslastega: pedofiilia mahavaikimise eest geiagenda ja
multikultijutt 2018. Uued Uudised 25.09, https://uueduudised.ee/uudis/maailm/
vatikani-diil-globalistide-ja-soroslastega-pedofiilia-mahavaikimise-eest-geiagenda-ja-
multikultijutt/.
Ventsel, Andreas 2007. The Construction of the We-category: Political Rhetoric in Soviet
Estonia from June 1940 to July 1941. Sign Systems Studies, 35, 249−267.
Ventsel, Andreas 2009a. Towards Semiotic Theory of Hegemony. Tartu: Tartu University
Press.
Bibliography 127
Ventsel, Andreas 2009b. The Role of Political Rhetoric in the Development of Soviet
Totalitarian Language. Russian Journal of Communication, 2, 9−26.
Ventsel, Andreas 2011. Hegemonic Signification from Cultural Semiotics Point of View.
Sign Systems Studies, 39 (2/4), 58−88.
Ventsel, Andreas 2014. Hegemonic Signification from Perspective of Visual Rhetoric.
Semiotica, 199, 175−192.
Ventsel, Andreas 2016a. Political Potentiality of Conspiracy Theories. Lexia, 23/24,
309−326.
Ventsel, Andreas 2016b. Rhetorical Transformation in Estonian Political Discourse
During World War II. Semiotica, 208, 103−132.
Ventsel, Andreas; Madisson, Mari-Liis 2017. Tõejärgne diskursus ja semiootika. Acta
Semiotica Estica, XIV, 93−116.
Ventsel, Andreas; Hansson, Sten; Madisson, Mari-Liis; Sazonov, Vladimir 2019.
Discourse of Fear in Strategic Narratives: The Case of Russia’s Zapad War Games.
Media, War & Conflict, 1−19.
Vincent, Cédric 2006. Mapping the Invisible: Notes on the Reason of Conspiracy The-
ories. In: Sarai Reader, (eds. M. Narula; S. Sengupta; R. Sundaram; J. Bagchi; A.
Sharan; G. Lovink). Delhi: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 41−48.
Vogel, Kenneth P.; Shane, Scott; Kingsley, Patrick 2018. How Vilification of George
Soros Moved from the Fringes to the Mainstream. The New York Times 31.10. www.
nytimes.com/2018/10/31/us/politics/george-soros-bombs-trump.html.
von Stackelberg, Peter; Jones, Ruth 2014. Tales of Our Tomorrows: Transmedia
Storytelling and Communicating about the Future. Journal of Futures Studies 18 (3),
57–76.
Walker, Shaun 2018. University Founded by George Soros “forced out” of Hungary. The
Guardian 25.10. www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/25/university-founded-by-george-
soros-forced-out-of-hungary.
Weaver, Courtney; Hopkins, Valerie 2018.The Soros Conspiracy Theory goes Global.
Financial Times 04.11. www.ft.com/content/e2a1ecb0-dc0d-11e8-9f04-38d397e6661c.
Weimann, David 2003. Internet. In: Conspiracy Theories in American History: An
Encyclopedia, (ed. P. Knight), Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC CLIO, 347−349.
Wetoszka, Adam 2016. An Attempt to Identify Hybrid Conflict. Sõjateadlane (Estonian
Journal of Military Studies), 54−66.
White, Hayden 2003. Kirjandusteooria jab ajalookirjutus. Tuna, 1, 111–127.
Wiggins, Bradley E. 2017. Navigating an Immersive Narratology: Factors to Explain the
Reception of Fake News. International Journal of E-Politics, 13, 16−29.
Williams, David 2018. Denver’s Airport Pokes Fun at Conspiracy Theories. Walls are
Hiding Construction, Not Lizard People. CNN Travel 07.09. https://edition.cnn.com/
travel/article/denver-dia-airport-conspiracy-trnd/index.html.
Willman, Skip 2000. Spinning Paranoia: The Ideologies of Conspiracy and Contingency
in Postmodern Culture. In: Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Post War
America, (ed. P. Knight). New York: New York University Press, 21−39.
Wisnicki, Adrian 2007. Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to
the Modern Novel. New York: Routledge.
Wodak, Ruth 2015. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean.
London: Sage.
Wolfson, Sam 2018. “Remodelling the Lizard People’s Lair”: Denver Airport Trolls
Conspiracy Theorists. The Guardian 07.09. www.theguardian.com/us- news/2018/
sep/07/denver-airport-construction-conspiracy-lizard-people.
128 Bibliography
Wong, Julia Carrie 2018a. Twitter Permanently Bans Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones.
The Guardian 06.09. www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/06/twitter-permanently-
bans-conspiracy-theorist-alex-jones.
Wong, Julia Carrie 2018b. Facebook Policy Chief Admits Hiring PR Firm to Attack
George Soros. The Guardian 22.11. www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/21/
facebook-admits-definers-pr-george-soros-critics-sandberg-zuckerberg.
Wong, Julia Carrie 2018c. Zuckerberg: I Didn’t Know of Facebook Ties to Firm that
Attacked George Soros. The Guardian 15.11. www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/
nov/15/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-george-soros-antisemitism.
Yablokov, Ilja 2015. Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool: The Case
of Russia Today (RT). Politics, 35 (3/4), 301–315.
Yablokov, Ilja 2018. Fortress Russia: Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet World.
Cambridge: Polity.
Zhabotynska, Svetlana; Velivchenko, Valentina 2019. New Media and Strategic Narrat-
ives: The Dutch Referendum on Ukraine – EU Association Agreement in Ukrainian
and Russian Internet Blogs. European Security, 28 (3), 360–381.
Index
absolute power, notion of 44 Babylonian language games 34

actor of strategic narrative 24, 31n4 Ballinger, Dean 41–42
advertising campaign, of Denver basic values and social norms,
Airport 86 manipulation of 83
affective communication, conspiracy Bilderberg Group, The 45
theories for 92–98; affective semiosis black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME)
93–98; social media, use of 92 people 39
affective semiosis: based on emotional Boros, Tamás 73
attitudes 95; defined 93; and discourse Boym, Svetlana 38
of fear 95; dominant textual strategies of brainwashing narrative 82–83, 88
94–96; function of 96–98; meaning of branded products, connection with
93–94; Peirce’s tradition of 93 conspiracies 86–90
agonistic logic, notion of 5 Breivik, Behring 34; conspiracy theory 34
alternative knowledge, conspiracy Brexit referendum (2016) 1
narrative of 77–84, 95; dominant textual British Secret Service 36
strategies 80–82; functions of 83–84; Bulldozer revolution (2000), Serbia 94
versus political conspiracy narratives 83 Bush, George W. 61
American music industry, conspiracy
narratives of 86–87 Cambridge Analytica data scandal 84
anti-communist code 82 cause-and-effect relationship 82
anti-elitist conspiracy narratives 69–70; Central American migrant caravans 61,
textual strategies of 69 70, 103
anti-Facebook movement 84–85, 89 Central European University (CEU) 59,
anti-heroes, in contemporary conspiracy 61, 79–80
theories 62 Chadwick, Andrew 16
anti-Russian conspiracy 67 child abuse 79, 82, 97
anti-Russophobic front 28 clash of civilisations 75
anti-Semitic PR activities 85 classic morals, notion of 71
anti-Semitism 27, 59 Clinton, Hillary 1, 18, 57, 77, 82
anti-Soros campaign: as cultural conflict code text, of conspiracy theory:
74; goal of 74 characteristic of 45; defined 44
antithetical and agonistic modelling, of Cold War 28
conflict 53–55, 97 collective identity framing 97
antithetical conflict 85, 97 Color of Change 85–86
anti-vaccination conspiracy theories 35 command and control warfare 31n1
anti-Western conspiracy theories 35 communication networks 20
Aradszki, Andras 75 communication process, in semiotic
Asperger syndrome 96 conflicts 13
audience: design of 3; image of 25–29; communicative activity 11, 13;
structure of 24 optimisation of 25
130 Index
communion cohesion, conspiracy theories crossmedia, concept of 108n1
as sources of 39–40, 97 cultural conflict 74
conflict: antithetical and agonistic cultural counter-revolution 74
modelling of 53–55; aspects of 10; cultural homogenisation 37
concept of 9; dimensions of 10; cultural identity, preservation of 74, 76
emergence of 10; information 9; of cultural plurality 75
meanings 9–11; semiotic see semiotic cultural semiotics 2, 5, 9, 11–12, 43, 53,
conflict; semiotics of 10; social 10 55–56, 98, 102, 107, 109; metalanguage
Conservative People’s Party of Estonia of 93
(EKRE) 70, 79, 91n9, 102–103, 106 culture–anti-culture opposition 53
conspiracy communication, aspects of 45 culture–non-culture opposition 55
conspiracy discourse, potentiality of cyber attacks 14
41–42, 67 cyber democracy, discourse of 42
conspiracy narratives, semiotic approach cyberwarfare 31n1
to 40–47, 51; discrete and non-discrete
logic 44–47; model of meaning-making data leaks 19
43–44; mode of modelling 40–43 decision-making, process of 14
conspiracy narrative, strategic construction Definers 84–85, 89
of conflict in 51–57; antithetical and digital conspiracy discourse 42
agonistic modelling of conflict 53–55; discourse, concept of 36
conflict as the topic 52–53; functions of dissemination, of conspiracy theories 35,
51; global NWO conspiracy narrative 58, 61, 68
52; Model Reader for 52–53; rhetorical- Doctors without Borders 79
stylistic code for 53; target audience
55–57 economic refugees 54
conspiracy theories: anti-vaccination 35; economic sabotage 20
anti-Western 35; Breivik’s theory 34; Eco, Umberto 3–4, 24–27, 45, 51–52, 56,
communication of 25; dissemination of 68; framework of hermetic semiosis 42
35, 58, 61, 68; goal of 13; of identity Elders of Zion 57, 59; Protocols of 59
creation 37–38; as mobilisers of emergence, of a conflict 10
communities 38–39; as part of strategic Enyedi, Zsolt 61
communication 35–36; perilousness of Espenberg, Urmas 102
57; phenomenon of employing 86; Estonia 70, 73, 77–78, 82, 94–95, 98, 102;
popularity of 32; problem of conspiracy theories 61; Defence League
communities mediating 34; in 90n2; institutions of higher education
radicalising social media groups 34–35; 80; Jewish ‘revolutionaries 71–72;
against Rasputin’s plotting 12; as Minister of Education 80; right-wing
sources of communion cohesion 39–40; populist information space 80
spreading in Catholic Eastern European ethnic stereotypes, in representing the
countries 60; spreading on the Internet conflict 53
35–36, 93; as trigger of affective Eurabian conspiracy theories 34
communication 92–98; undermining European migration crisis (2016) 1
the state and national unity 13; visual Evil 44–45; concept of 38; function of 38
signs of 33 external enemy, formation of figure of
Conspiracy Theory (1997) 81 65–69; dominant textual strategies for
Coronavirus (COVID-19) 1 66–68; functions for 68–69
corporate communication 20
corruption, of Tallinn University 80 Facebook 80; anti-Facebook movement
counter-cultural revolution: clash of 84–85; anti-Semitic PR activities 85;
civilisations 75; conflict constituting 75 Cambridge Analytica data scandal 84;
Crawford, Holly 14 delegitimise criticism of 89; financing of
creating connections, principle of 45, 67 counter-Facebook movements 89;
criminality, code of 74 Freedom from Facebook campaign 85
Cronin, Blaise 14 fake citizen society 103
Index 131
fake identity 47n1 ideological hypercoding 28, 68, 70–71,
fake news 1–2, 17, 20, 113 81, 103
fake protests: organisation of 85, 103; in illegality, code of 74
support of feminism 61 Illuminati Gossip 87–88, 106
false knowledge 78–79 image care 3
fear: discourse of 95; moralisation of 95 imagined conspiracies, visualising of 33
Fenster, Mark 41–43, 45, 68 informational battlefield, structure of 14
Figyelő (magazine) 74 information conflict 9, 13–16, 36;
Foucault, Michel 64; notion of subjugated methodological challenges in 24; Model
knowledge 5 Reader and the image of the audience
Foundation for the Protection of Family 25–29; Model Reader and the Model
and Tradition (SAPTK) 102–103 Author as a means of analysing strategic
Freda, Maria F. 93 narratives 29–30; and strategic
Freedman, Lawrence 21 narratives 21–23
Freedom from Facebook campaign 85 information fog, creation of 20–21, 35–36
French Revolution 10 information transmitted, by conspiracy
Furedi, Frank 94 theories 39
information warfare 13–16, 30n1, 36, 109
Georgia 36, 60, 65, 67, 70, 95; hybrid intelligence-based warfare 31n1
warfare with Russia 65–66, 69; intentionality, problem of 3, 22, 24, 27, 29,
Revolution of the Roses (2003) 94 46, 62
Giry, Julien 38 Internet 20, 29, 85; conspiracy theories
global conspiracy system 77 spreading on 32–36, 93
global NWO conspiracy narrative 52 interpretative community 45–46, 58,
Griffin, Roger 37 68, 74, 76–77, 80–81, 83, 92, 97,
Grossberg, Lawrence 93 99–102, 107
group belonging/exclusion 9, 40 intertextual scenarios, inferences of 28,
Gudkov, Lev 67 68, 81
Gürpınar, Doğan 38 Islamisation of Europe 60
harmonious society, ideological Jakobson, Roman 39

representation of 96 Jantunen, Saara 14, 21, 24
hegemony, theory of 5
Herman, David 56 Kaczyñski, Jarosaw 74
hermetic semiosis 42, 45; framework of 42 Kalmar, Ivan 59
higher education, Estonia’s institutions of Kilcullen, David 14–15
79–80 Kovács, Zoltán 80
Hilton, Denis 23 Krekó, Peter 61
human-induced climate crisis 1
human-smuggling network 74 Laclau, Ernesto 10, 36, 54; theory of
Hungary 59, 61, 72–73, 106; anti-Soros hegemony 5
campaign 74; counter-cultural LGBT group 55, 78, 82, 105
revolution 75; cultural and historical Lipstadt, Deborah 75
heritage of 76; Fidesz posters 105; Liu, James 23
Parliament of 75; “Stop Soros” package lone wolves 34
73, 75 Lotman, Juri 22, 25, 29, 44, 46, 53, 67,
hybrid warfare: principle of 14; Russia– 107; concept of the structure of
Georgia war 65–66, 69 audience 24
Lotman, Mihhail 95
identity creation 36, 57, 97; in conspiracy Louis XVI, King 10
theories 36–40, 42, 63; dominants of 37;
functions of 63; online communication McLaughlin, Neil 60, 70
and 43; process of 12; symbolic function Madisson, Tiit 70–71, 73, 78, 81
of conspiracy theories of 37–38 Majakovski, Vladimir 20
132 Index
Marcuse, Herbert 78 nation state, concept of 1, 59, 61, 70–72,
marketing, conspiracy narrative of: on 78–79, 95, 97, 103, 105
deliberate connection of branded naturalness, characteristic of 71
products with conspiracies 86–90; Nazism 28
dominant textual strategies 84–86, network warfare see cyberwarfare
87–89; functions of 89–90; using New World Order 81, 95
associations with Soros in PR 84–86 Nissen, Thomas Elkjær 14–15, 47n1, 100
mass migration 37 NWO conspiracy system 52, 61, 81, 87
meaning-making 87, 93; on basis of code
text of conspiracy theories 43–44; Objektiiv (online media outlet) 72, 80,
characteristic of 12; code-textual 44–47; 102–104, 106
conspiracy theory of 38; functions of 13; O’Loughlin, Ben 22–24, 93
mechanisms of 43; process of 13, 38; in Open Estonia Foundation 72, 79, 80, 103
semiotic conflicts 13; visual 111 Open Societies network 79, 94
media development 3 Open Society Foundations (OSF) 59, 79
Melley, Timothy 41, 58 Operation Northwoods (1962) 41
mercenaries, hired by Soros 74 Orbán, Viktor 13; anti-Soros campaign 74;
metalanguage, of cultural semiotics 93 crusade against cultural establishment
micro-celebrities, of social media 89 74; Fidesz Party 74, 76; intertextual
military conflict, nodes of 20–21, 70, 94–95 encodings 74; political agenda of 74;
military psychological operations 20 poster campaign targeting Soros 84;
minority rights, protection of 59, 78 “Stop Soros” package 73, 75
mirror projection, principle of 53–54, 71, 85 ordinary scenarios, inferences of 28, 66,
Miskimmon, Alister 24–25, 30, 93 81–82, 85, 88
mobilisation, function of 38 Othered by the Other 54
mobilisers of communities, conspiracy
theories as 38–39 Peirce, Charles Sanders 11; triadic division
Model Author of conspiracy narratives 63, of types of sign 111
68–69, 84, 85, 92, 112; concept of 3, 24, perception management 20
27; as means of analysing strategic phatic communication 25, 39–40, 97
narratives 29–30; position of 72; Pizzagate conspiracy 17–18, 57, 82, 102
preconditions for constructing 63; self- poisoning case, of Sergei and Yulia (2018)
image of 74; system of codes and 35–36
subcodes 27–29 political conspiracy narrative 65–77;
Model Reader of conspiracy narratives 45, dominant textual strategies 66–68,
51–53, 56, 62, 66, 68, 81–83, 85, 87, 92, 71–72, 74–76; formation of the figure of
94–95, 101, 112; basic dictionary 27; external enemy 65–69; functions of
concept of 3–4, 24; ideological 68–69, 72–73, 76–77; in Lithuania 70;
hypercoding 28–29; and image of the opposing ideological adversaries 73–77;
audience 25–29; inferences of opposition to the elite 69–73
intertextual scenarios 28; inferences of political decisions, legitimation of 97
ordinary scenarios 28; interpretation political entrepreneurs, in conspiracy
paths of 97; as means of analysing theories 38–39
strategic narratives 29–30; on politics of power relations, in conflict 4, 10–11, 64
the Orbán government 74; rhetorical and professional conspiracy 38
stylistic hyper-encoding 27–28; strategy program-electronic communication 14
of the ideological encoding of 75; Propastop 58, 90n2
system of codes and subcodes 27–29; psychological operations 14, 20, 31n1
textual strategies of 63, 74
Monaci, Sara 99 radicalising social media groups, role of
Mossack Fonseca (Panamanian law conspiracy theories in 34–35
firm) 15 radical Islamists 39
Mouffe, Chantal 10, 36, 54–55; agonistic radio-electronic communication 14
logic, notion of 5 Rahvuslik Teataja 78
Index 133
Rasputin’s plotting, conspiracy theory of 12 conspiracy narratives 111–113; as
refugee crisis, in Europe 61–62, 70; and theatre of information conflicts 16
human-smuggling network 74; as social media communication 2, 9, 16, 24,
national security risk 73; policies of 29, 39, 51, 93, 100–111
Hungary on 73; “Stop Soros” package 73 social media groups: conspiracy theories in
religious conflicts 54 radicalising 34–35; introversion of 34
religious ideological hypercoding 70 social network 2, 14, 15, 47n1
reputation warfare 15 social networking sites (SNSs) 2
resources, distribution of 9 social oppression and injustice 34
Revolution of the Roses (2003), Georgia 94 social reality 10
right-wing conspiracy theories 54 social relationships 9–10, 64
rightwing populist conspiracy theories 81 socio-semiotic system 10
Robertson, Pat 81 Soros Express 70–71, 103, 105
robot networks 100 Soros Foundation 65–66, 69, 80
Russian propaganda channels 21 Soros, George 1, 3–4, 13, 106; anti-Semitic
Russophobia, strategic narrative of 20, persecution 58; birth name of 58; birth
27–28 of 58; Black Wednesday (16 September
1992) 58; career in finance 58; as
Salvatore, Sergio 93 conspiracy legend 58–59; conspiracy
Satanist human traffickers and narratives 57–62; conspiracy theory see
paedophiles 34 Soros-themed conspiracy theory;
Saussure, Ferdinand de 11 emigration to England 58; Jewish
Save the Children 79 heritage of 53; as man who broke the
Sayoc, Cesar 57 Bank of England 58; mercenaries hired
Schrich, Lisa 10 by 74; myth/legend of 57–60; network
Schwartau, Winn 14 of Open Societies 79; Orbán’s actions
self-description, anti-cultural model of 54 against 73–74; paying for fake protests
self-enclosed system, characteristic of 97 in support of feminism 61; payment for
self, unity of 53 the protests against Donald Trump
semantic value, in conspiracy theories 39 91n10; philanthropic activities in Eastern
semiotic conflict 9; communication Europe 60; philanthropist activities in
process in 13; cultural 11–12; functions Apartheid-era South Africa 59; pipe
of 13; information conflict 13–16; bomb 57; political conspiracy theories
information warfare 13–16; meaning- connected with 65–77; promotion of
making process in 13; ontology of coloured revolutions 61; protest of
11–13, 53; Peirce’s model of 11; Hungarians against 76; role in initiating
Saussure’s model of 11 the immigration crises 62; speech at the
semiotic organisation, oppositions of 53 World Economic Forum 80; sponsoring
semiotics of conflict 10 of anti-government protest 66
Semjén, Zsolt 73 Soros-themed conspiracy theory 97, 104; of
sexual taboos, code of 81–82, 103 alternative knowledge 77–84;
social conflicts 96; shaping and solving characteristic of 63; circulating in former
of 10 post-Soviet countries 70; as destroyer and
social hierarchies 9–10 annihilator of nation states 71; in Estonia
social identities 23; formation of 37 70, 98; events in 59–62; fake protests in
social media 15, 84; Illuminati Gossip 87; support of feminism 61; goal of 74; goal-
micro-celebrities of 89; narrating oriented nature of 62; institutionalised
practices and affective communities discourses of 64; in Lithuania 70; of
19–20; role in shaping of conflict 16–19; marketing 84–90; narratives originating
role in shaping public opinion 22; in Russia 60; political 65–77; role of
specificity of informational influencing European Union in spreading 63;
on 16–20; for spreading and discussing semiotic construction of 62; “Stop Soros”
conspiracy theories 92; strategic package 73; strategic devices of 62–90;
communication on 63; strategic study of strategic messages 62–65
134 Index
spreading in Catholic Eastern European terrorist attacks 19
countries, conspiracy theories spreading text cooperation, theory of 56–57
in 60 Thunberg, Greta 1, 96
Sputnik Armenia 66, 69 traditional knowledge 84
standard modelling schemes 82 transmedial strategic conspiracy narratives:
Stepanjan, Araik 65, 68 challenges in studying 98; concept of
“Stop Soros” package 73, 75–76, 106 108n1; strategic transmedia storytelling
storytelling 89, 98–108; audience- 98–108
generated content 100; dominant textual Trilupaityte, Skaidra 60, 70
strategies of 102–107; functions of Trump, Donald 1, 20, 35, 57, 61, 70, 72,
107–108; of personal micro-stories 100 91n10
strategic communication 3, 9, 35–36, 43, trustworthiness, criterion of 84
47, 52–53, 55, 63, 68–69, 73, 92, 96, Twitter 16, 35
110, 113; on social media 63
strategic conspiracy narratives, use of urban warfare 15
studying 113 Uspenskij, Boris 53, 63
strategic narrative 9; artistic narratives 24; Uued Uudised (Estonian populist right-
to challenge opponents in military wing media outlet) 54, 70, 79–80, 94,
conflict 21; characteristics of 22; 102–104, 106
circulating on social media 24;
communication mediated by social Valsiner, Jaan 93
media 23; concept of 2, 21–23; visual signs of conspiracy 33
Freedman’s paper on 21; functions of Voice of Europe 70, 103
22; non-fictional narratives 24; quality
of 24; of Russophobia 20, 27–28; Watergate affair (1972) 41
targeted audience 22, 24; “us/them” and Welch, Edgar Maddison 34
“in-group/out-group” perspectives 23 WikiLeaks 15, 35
strategic planning 3 Willman, Skip 96
structure of audience, concept of 24 will of the people, manifestation of 73–74
Tallinn University 80, 82 YouTube 16, 35, 87, 89

Tarrant, Brenton 34
technology, democratisation of 15 Zelensky, Volodymyr 66

Strategic Conspiracy Narratives - A Semiotic Approach-Routledge (Madisson, Ventsel2021)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Strategic Conspiracy Narratives - A Semiotic Approach-Routledge (Madisson, Ventsel2021)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Strategic Conspiracy Narratives - A Semiotic Approach-Routledge (Madisson, Ventsel2021)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Madisson and Ventsel cover a timely and urgent topic from a neglected per-

Strategic Conspiracy Narratives proposes an innovative semiotic perspective for analysing

Andreas Ventsel is a senior researcher of semiotics at Tartu University, Estonia. He holds an

The Stigmatization of Conspiracy Theory since the 1950s

Conspiracy Theories in Turkey

Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories

Contemporary Conspiracy Culture

Mari­-​­Liis Madisson and

ISBN: 978­-​­0­-​­367­-​­03098­-​­8 (hbk)

1 Semiotic conflicts in strategic communication 9

2 A semiotic approach to conspiracy theories 32

3 Strategic Soros­-​­themed conspiracy narratives in politics,

4 The main meaning­-​­making mechanisms of strategic

5 Conclusion and future directions 109

Especially after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Brexit

Determining the theoretical framework

The structure of the book

Conceptualising the conflict of meanings

The ontology of the semiotic conflict

Information conflicts and information warfare

On the specificity of the informational influencing on

The role of social media influencers in the shaping

Affective narrating practices and affective communities

Information conflicts and strategic narratives

• A basic dictionary that determines the elementary semantic qualities of

The Model Reader and the Model Author as a means of

Previously, we have explained the shaping and strategic amplification of

Studying conspiracy theories spreading on the

On the role of conspiracy theories in the rhetoric of

Conspiracy theories as part of strategic communication

The functions of identity creation in conspiracy

Symbolic function of conspiracy theories of identity creation

Conspiracy theories as mobilisers of communities

Conspiracy theories as sources of communion cohesion

The semiotic approach to conspiracy narratives

Studying the mode of modelling conspiracy theories from the

The model of meaning­-​­making on the basis of the code text

Discrete and non­-​­discrete logic of code­-textual

Strategic construction of conflict in conspiracy

Conflict as the topic

Antithetical and agonistic modelling of conflict

The conspiracy narrative and the problem of the worlds of

George Soros­ – the Grand Old Scapegoat of

George Soros and his becoming a conspiracy legend

The events in the Soros­-themed

The strategic devices of the Soros­-​­themed conspiracy

The study of strategic messages from the point of view of

Political conspiracy narrative: formation of the figure of

Dominant textual strategies

Political conspiracy narrative: opposition to the elite

In the conspiracy narratives concerning Estonia, Soros’s minions mostly include

Dominating textual strategies

Political conspiracy narrative: opposing ideological

Conspiracy narrative of alternative knowledge: representing

In 1960–1970 many Western universities turned into strongholds of leftist

These quotations vividly demonstrate the global perspective characteristic of a

Dominant textual strategies

Conspiracy narrative of marketing: using associations with

Mari-Liis Madisson and

ISBN: 978-0-367-03098-8 (hbk)

1 Semiotic conflicts in strategic communication 9

2 A semiotic approach to conspiracy theories 32

3 Strategic Soros-themed conspiracy narratives in politics,

4 The main meaning-making mechanisms of strategic

5 Conclusion and future directions 109

The model of meaning-making on the basis of the code text

Discrete and non-discrete logic of code-textual

George Soros – the Grand Old Scapegoat of

The events in the Soros-themed

The strategic devices of the Soros-themed conspiracy