ABSTRACT
In recent years, the use of social media has greatly increased. More than 8.5 billion devices are connected worldwide today (Fundación Telefónica 2018), outnumbering the world’s inhabitants. In 2019, the main social networks, according to their active user accounts reported by We Are Social–Hootsuite (2019), were Facebook (2.3 billion), YouTube (1.9 billion) and WhatsApp (1.5 billion). This large concentration of users in specific platforms makes them susceptible to exposure to conspiracy theories and prone to their further dissemination on the Internet. This, in turn, has the potential to impact a society’s perception of itself and of others, and how it conducts its politics. In addition, the increase in Internet users has become a structural phenomenon in societies, paving the way for the development and dissemination of different types of conspiracy theories in digital space. This high use of social network platforms, as well as the development and expansion of Web 2.0 as a collaborative website (Ackland 2013) allows social interaction and conversation between users on social networks, which in turn increases the number of users. However, it is not clear what the relationship is between the structural elements of social media and the seeming proliferation of conspiracy theories online: ‘Has the internet increased the popularity of conspiracy theories or has it merely made them more visible?’ (Butter, Knight 2016: 9).
