{"id":127367,"date":"2019-09-26T15:16:28","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T19:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=127367"},"modified":"2026-04-01T14:39:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:39:03","slug":"stephanie-kelly-romano-guide-to-conspiracy-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/09\/26\/stephanie-kelly-romano-guide-to-conspiracy-rhetoric\/","title":{"rendered":"A field guide to conspiracy-theory rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFollow the money,\u201d the FBI source Deep Throat told the reporters unraveling the Watergate burglary in the film All the President\u2019s Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A corollary for our time might be \u201cname the evil.\u201d If you want to understand what\u2019s driving a particular conspiracy theory, advises rhetoric professor Stephanie Kelley-Romano, then try to characterize the perceived evil that motivates the theorists\u2019 stories.<\/p>\n

For instance, why did then\u2013political aspirant Donald Trump boost the \u201cbirther\u201d conspiracy, the lie that Barack Obama\u2019s presidency was illegitimate because Obama hadn\u2019t actually been born in the U.S.? What was the perceived evil behind that particular rhetoric?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s pretty plain,\u201d Kelley-Romano told a Bates audience on Sept. 19. \u201cIt\u2019s fear of a black president, right? It\u2019s just blatant white supremacy and racism. And so, when we see that for what it is, it becomes a lot easier to understand the subsequent rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Associate<\/a>

Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano poses in her Pettigrew Hall Office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Kelley-Romano, associate professor and chair of rhetoric, film, and screen studies, was honored last winter with Bates\u2019 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. Giving her Kroepsch Lecture in Pettengill Hall last week, she treated a packed Keck Classroom to a quick tour of her ongoing conspiracy rhetoric research.<\/p>\n

The talk, a sort of field guide to conspiracy rhetoric, was another in a welcome and timely series of Bates examinations of truth and untruths<\/a>. In fact, earlier in the day and also under the Kroepsch aegis, four faculty members described how the concept of truth figured in their teaching, a topic suggested by Kelley-Romano.<\/p>\n

During that event, in recounting how he and Alex Dauge-Roth designed their First-Year Seminar scrutinizing the nature of truth<\/a>, economist Michael Murray neatly summarized how the context has changed around the concept.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe motivation was really our shared dismay and outrage at a climate in which alternative facts become something that people think of as real, and the dismissal of what one might learn through science,” Murray said. \u201cWe wanted somehow to provide students with a venue in which they could deal with that environment more richly and deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Kroepsch<\/a>

Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty (right), talks with Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics Michael Murray and Professor of Psychology Amy Douglass, presenters at the panel discussion \u201cTruth and How One Teaches It,” a prelude to Stephanie Kelley-Romano’s Kroepsch lecture later in the day. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Kelley-Romano\u2019s late-afternoon lecture, distinguished by clarity, urgency, and humor, was another such venue. She focused on four subjects of her research: people who say they have been abducted by space aliens; the television blockbuster The X-Files<\/em>; Trump\u2019s conspiracy rhetoric; and the Fox News treatment of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.<\/p>\n

\u201cA conspiracy is a group of people who are doing something in secret for harmful or evil reasons,\u201d Kelley-Romano explained. \u201cAnd so a conspiracy theory is the belief<\/em> that there is a group of people who are doing something in secret for harmful or illicit reasons.<\/p>\n

Further, she asked, \u201cWhat are the defining characteristics of it? Thematically, what are the things that unite it? Formally, what are the common argumentative strategies?\u201d And in the case of television\u2019s X-Files<\/em> and the Kavanaugh hearings, \u201cwhat are the visual trappings?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cThis<\/a>

A characteristic of conspiracy rhetoric, and a recurring device in the show The X-Files<\/em>, is the mixing of fact with fiction as a means of lending credibility to the latter, says Kroepsch Award honoree Stephanie Kelley-Romano. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

As a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas in the mid-1990s, Kelley-Romano found rhetoric around human-alien encounters becoming something of a theme in her life. She was an obsessive fan of The X-Files<\/em>, whose main characters, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, were bent on exposing a federal plot to conceal the earthly activities of extraterrestrials.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t know if I wanted to be Mulder and Scully or if I wanted to date them, but I knew I wanted more of them,\u201d Kelley-Romano told the Bates audience. \u201cAnd so, since I was in graduate school, I had to write about it, because I couldn’t [otherwise] justify watching it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, defying her Ph.D. adviser (\u201cYou’ll never get a job,\u201d he warned), Kelley-Romano interviewed 100 professed abductees to form the basis of her dissertation, on the rhetoric of alien abduction.<\/p>\n

A characteristic of conspiracy rhetoric is the mixing of fact with fiction as a means of lending credibility to the latter. An X-Files<\/em> motif was the use of actual or carefully replicated news footage, often with text superimposed on it that serves the fictional plot. (One episode references the famous Zapruder film of John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination in revealing that it was actually a key X-Files<\/em> character, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, who killed the president.)<\/p>\n

\"FILE<\/a>

In 2012, Arizona conspiracy theorist Mike Zullo announces at a press conference that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery. The birther conspiracy that dogged President Obama was fueled by “a fear of a black president,” explains Stephanie Kelley-Romano, associate professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies. (AP Photo\/Matt York)<\/p><\/div>\n

Fact vs. fiction gets complicated in a hall-of-mirrors way. Kelley-Romano noted that some professed abductees believe that programs like The X-Files<\/em> are actually part of a real<\/em> federal disinformation campaign. If it\u2019s just science fiction, the logic goes, who would believe it? So a drama about a government conspiracy to hide the truth about extraterrestrial activities is, in reality, itself part of such a conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Some kind of perceived evil is an organizing principle or orbital center for a given conspiracy theory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe blurring, and the inability to make these distinctions, is part of the problem with the perpetuation and proliferation of conspiracy belief,\u201d Kelley-Romano said.<\/p>\n

Conspiracy theories exploit the human need for coherence in stories, something that communications theorist Walter Fisher called narrative fidelity. \u201cWe like it when things seem to hang together,\u201d Kelley-Romano explained. Yet \u201cnarrative fidelity or narrative rationality and rational argument are not always in sync.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brought us to the role of evil in conspiracy rhetoric, a concept Kelley-Romano attributed to Earl Creps of Northwest University.\u00a0 For Creps, some kind of perceived evil is an organizing principle or orbital center for a given conspiracy theory. In order to bust that theory, we need to identify the evil that the conspiracy believers are perceiving and responding to.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cThis<\/a>

Kelley-Romano’s witty, energetic style captivated her listeners. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAnd how can we get at combating that, right? Because we all know that we are not going to argue\u2026any type of new mindset [into] most conspiracy believers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playing on the desire for narrative fidelity, The X-Files<\/em> rendered as art another tactic near and dear to conspiracy theorists: the kind of associative \u201clogic,\u201d Kelley-Romano explained, \u201cwhereby things that come in concurrent succession are somehow argumentatively or rationally related, which is not necessarily the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

She admitted, \u201cThat was part of why I loved watching the show. I loved the intellectual calisthenics and the illogic of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s fun and lovable over pizza on a Friday night becomes something different and much less fun when it\u2019s a factor in mainstream political discourse, including conspiracy rhetoric \u00e0 la Trump (whom she dubbed \u201cthe conspiracy president\u201d), and Fox News coverage of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.<\/p>\n

Borrowing a phrase from Wabash College\u2019s Jeffrey Mehltretter Drury, Kelley-Romano held up Trump as a great example of the \u201crogue ethos\u201d: the \u201cnotion that your credibility as a politician comes from the fact that you’re outside the system. You’re willing to shake things up. You’re willing to go rogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, as Drury made clear, the rogue has to profess populist solidarity. \u201cYou can’t do it for your own personal gain,\u201d Kelley-Romano said. \u201cIt has to be for the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"President<\/a>

President Trump is an example of the “rogue ethos” at work, says Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Trump positions himself as a latter-day Rick Blaine, the Casablanca<\/em> protagonist who wants to stay out of the fray but finally has to step up and do the right thing. \u201cI don’t want to talk about this,\u201d Trump might say, \u201cbut when I walk down the street, they’re saying, ‘Don’t give up. Don’t give up.’<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so he has to talk about it, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump is also a master of rhetorical questioning, which has the desired effect of spreading doubt and suspicion without leveling actual charges that would require evidence. \u201cHe’s just wondering. He’s just asking,\u201d Kelley-Romano said. \u201cAnd he manages to absolve himself of any type of responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a shout-out to advisee and collaborator Claire Sullivan \u201919, whose senior thesis examined the role of conspiracy rhetoric in Fox News\u2019 Kavanaugh coverage, Kelley-Romano used the 2018 hearings as an example of \u201ctactical framing.\u201d (The concept comes from Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.)<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A Donald Trump tweet from Stephanie Kelley-Romano’s presentation shows the president’s skill with rhetorical questions.<\/p><\/div>\n

That\u2019s when news organizations turn their attention away from actual news content and instead, report \u201con the coverage or the positioning of something,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo rather than focus on what was actually being said during the testimony, there was this meta-narrative that unified the Fox News coverage \u2014 which was, this is actually a conspiracy by the Democrats to thwart the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, and, in particular, out of revenge for the Clintons.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cWhen we think about that problem of rhetorical evil, what is this conspiracy responding to? I would argue, that this conspiracy is hell-bent on defending a particular way of American life \u2014 of privilege and white, heteronormative men. And specifically, Brett Kavanaugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Stephanie<\/a>

Stephanie Kelley-Romano as seen through her Kroepsch Award. (Photograph by Jonathan Cavallero)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to understand what\u2019s driving a particular conspiracy theory, advises rhetoric professor Stephanie Kelley-Romano, try to understand the perceived evil behind the theorists\u2019 stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":127428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"If you want to understand what\u2019s driving a particular conspiracy theory, advises Bates College rhetoric professor Stephanie Kelley-Romano, try to understand the perceived evil behind the theorists\u2019 stories.","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11011,195,11009],"tags":[12430,3520,5089,12429,8163],"class_list":["post-127367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-awards","category-news-politics","category-the-college","tag-and-screen-studies","tag-film","tag-kroepsch","tag-rhetoric","tag-stephanie-kelley-romano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127367"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172441,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127367\/revisions\/172441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}