ABSTRACT
The bulk of the material studied in connection with the transmission of conspiracy theories is comprised of written sources. Texts can be investigated with regards to their formal aspects such as narrative structures, rhetorical figures and strategies to produce coherence (Butter 2014: 7). Yet, images are powerful tools – perhaps even more than text – for the diffusion of ideas and mirror the desire to represent the un-representable in the visual culture of conspiracy theory. By turning the imagined conspiracy into an image instead of a text-based theory, the invisible is turned into visible ‘evidence’, for instance, in picturing ‘pyramids’ and ‘networks’. The image thus assumes a completely new quality: Seeing is believing and provides immediate knowledge. Thus, images of conspiracy locate themselves at the border between the seen and unseen; they portray dense and condensed narratives of causal connections in a play between graphic image, reality and imagination.
