Prof. Jothsna Rajan of IIT Kanpur to deliver the session on 29 June

23 June, 2026, Bengaluru: The Centre for Public Policy at IIM Bangalore will host a seminar titled ‘Conspiracy Communities: Belief, Strategy, and Political Effects’, to be delivered by Prof. Jothsna Rajan, Department of Management Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. The session will be held on 29 June 2026, from 3.30 PM to 4.30 PM, in Classroom P-22 at IIM Bangalore.

Abstract

Conspiracy theorizing can no longer be dismissed as the irrational mutterings of the political fringe—it is shaping elections, public health responses, and democratic norms across much of the world. Yet the theoretical literature on the phenomenon remains poorly integrated. One stream of literature treats conspiracy theories primarily as belief systems—focusing on the epistemic processes through which people adopt conspiratorial views. In this stream, the remedial approach to conspiracy theories pivots on fact-checking and debunking false beliefs. However, such approaches rarely disabuse adherents of their conspiratorial notions. Another theoretical strand is concerned with the macro-political effects of contemporary conspiracism: how bare assertion and repetition without evidence disorient the public sphere and erode democratic institutions. Yet it leaves under-theorised the process through which conspiracy theories move from privately held beliefs to politically effective forces. Both approaches capture important aspects of the phenomenon but remain weakly integrated. It is this gap that the concept of a conspiracy community is intended to address. Shifting attention to the meso-level, we argue that conspiracy communities are loosely held coalitions of actors who signal allegiance through narrative repetition, held together not necessarily by shared belief but by an opportunistic compatibility of goals. Within these communities, there are distinct functional roles—conspiracy theory entrepreneurs, foot soldiers, truth seekers, fanatics—that reflect a plurality in the motivations and propositional attitudes of members.

A conspiracy communities perspective shifts the locus of intervention away from individual-level debunking toward the structural conditions that render conspiratorial narratives plausible and compelling. Rather than treating conspiracy belief as a problem of misinformation alone, we argue that remedial approaches must direct attention to the underlying political, economic, and social grievances that give such narratives their affective force—while simultaneously attending to the credibility of public institutions and the disruption of self-reinforcing trust networks within conspiracy communities. Effective

intervention, we argue, must be heterogeneous and targeted, calibrated to the position of the actor within the community.

About the speaker

Jothsna Rajan is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Management Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Her research explores how policy choices and institutional arrangements influence development outcomes, particularly in settings shaped by technological and organizational change. Her work lies at the intersection of public policy, management, and technology, using a mix of empirical methods to study the design, implementation, and impact of governance arrangements and development interventions. Her recent work branches out into the politics of knowledge and public discourse, examining how conspiracy theories and misinformation shape policy processes and democratic governance. She has published in leading journals such as World Development and the Journal of Management Inquiry.