FINSCI Symposium on Conspiracy Theory Research

Keynote speaker Prof. Jan-Willem van Prooijen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and several domestic and international conspiracy theory researchers addressed the question using perspectives and approaches from philosophy, behavioural sciences, religion, psychology, and communication.

After the symposium, Prof. van Prooijen was interviewed on the topic of conspiracy theories in an event open to the public.

The symposium and public event were chaired and hosted by Senior Research Fellow Pasi Kivioja (Department of Psychology and Speech-language Pathology). 

The symposium was organised by the FINSCI project, which investigates Finnish science capital, i.e. the resources a person has in relation to science: the things they do and talk about, the people they know and the ways they use science and the scientific method in their everyday lives. The project is funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC).

The symposium lectures and public event descriptions are below. You can also view Juha Rautio's premiere performance below.

Keynote speaker Jan-Willem van Prooijen holds the positions of Associate Professor of Social Psychology and Program Director of the Psychology Bachelor at VU Amsterdam; Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR); and Endowed Professor of Radicalization, Extremism, and Conspiracy thinking at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Maastricht University. He is interested in the dark side of human beings, particularly in the context of politics, law, and society – specifically in terms of conspiracy theories, unethical behaviour, and radical ideologies.

More information on the keynote speaker can be found on his website.

Associate Professor Johanna K. Kaakinen (Department of Psychology & Speech-language Pathology) is the Director of project FINSCI (SRC). She leads a research group, which specifically investigates Finnish conspiracy theory beliefs and their influencing background factors.

Katja Valaskivi is Professor in Religious Studies and Media Research and heads the Helsinki Research Hub on Religion, Media and Social Change (Heremes).  Valaskivi is currently the PI in research projects on mediatized religious populism, politics of conspiracy theories as well as the circulation of extremism in the dark web and beyond. 

Research Fellow Angelo Fasce is involved in project JITSUVAX: Jiu Jitsu with misinformation in the age of Covid (EU Horizon 2020). The project explores using refutation-based learning to enhance vaccine uptake and knowledge among healthcare professionals and the public.

Kinga Polynczuk-Alenius (Polish Academy of Sciences, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies) is a media and communication researcher interested in the role of communication in addressing, or not, ethical and political challenges that face an increasingly globalised world. 

University Researcher Niko Pyrhönen is involved in projects MERELPO and SEPOS. Project MERELPO: Mediatized Religious Populism (NordForsk) produces knowledge on the workings and impact of religious populism in the contemporary, pluralist society saturated by hybrid media. Project SEPOS: Social exclusion, polarization and security in the Nordic welfare state (Academy of Finland) develops a broader, policy-relevant conceptualization of societal security, built on the notion human security that covers aspects such as social cohesion, trust and drivers for marginalization.

The FINSCI (SRC) project's belief population survey of 2021 as well as subsequent online surveys on the same topic received plenty of anonymous feedback from respondents. Poet Juha Rautio joined the project group in November 2022 to create a piece based on the feedback, the FINSCI project's research as well as his own background research into conspiracy beliefs. The premiere of his poem "Jokainen epäilys ennen tätä ja tämän jälkeen" [Each suspicion before this and after] was included in the symposium programme. The English translation of the poem can be found behind this link. 

Rautio's book was published in 2024.

Conspiracy beliefs tend to raise a lot of questions. What is so appealing about them? What unites people who believe in conspiracy theories? Are conspiracy theories dangerous? And can one get out of the rabbit hole?

Prof. Jan-Willem van Prooijen answered these and many more tough questions after the symposium in an event open to the public. 

The event was hosted by Senior Research Fellow Pasi Kivioja (Department of Psychology & Speech-language Pathology). Working as a researcher, non-fiction writer, and journalist, Kivioja has gained an extensive understanding of the Finnish subculture formed around conspiracy theories. Kivioja joined the FINSCI project in 2021 and published the first results of the project's belief survey in his non-fiction book Salaliittoteorioiden ihmemaassa: tositarinoita ihmisistä kaninkolossa [In the wonderland of conspiracy theories: true stories of people in the rabbit hole] (Docendo, 2022).