ABSTRACT
As an extraordinary event, there was bound to be differing explanations for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370), which vanished on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. However, within a remarkably short time after the flight’s disappearance, an abundance of conspiracy theories emerged – in Malaysia and beyond – offering counter-narratives of the event and purporting to explain the role of heretofore unknown or hidden actors. One of the earliest conspiracy theories proposed that MH370 had been carrying ‘sensitive’ cargo and that the flight was ‘remotely controlled’ and flown to a secret location. Other conspiracy theories emerged almost as quickly. Some – such as the claim that the flight was lost in a ‘second Bermuda triangle’ in the Indian Ocean or that aliens transported the plane to the moon – appeared to be based on fantasy; other claims – such as the suggestion that the flight was inadvertently shot down in a military exercise, that the C.I.A. are intentionally withholding information about the flight’s disappearance (a claim repeated by the then former Malaysian prime minister) or that secret military research had caused the plane to crash (see Frizell 2014) – seem to be based on kernels of (mis-) information that are extrapolated into broader conclusions.
