Conspiracy landmarks -
Process & Description

In purpose to connect the derive to our main project I put my main focus on conspiracy theories, of which a lot are infamously spread through Russian troll/fake news farms.

I wanted to create a visualisation of these farms and their location in russia as the foundation of this derive. This turned out to be an infeasable option, since a lot of these companies are hidden. I tried to create a list of most noteable Russian institutes that have spread fake news and conspiracies, but found out that most institutes actually are mostly underground and create very generic newspages that spread fake news. It’s quite impossible to find the actual source of these, although a lot of them have been linked to Internet Research Agency (IRA).

First direction

Source:
https://medium.com/dfrlab/the-russians-who-exposed-russias-trolls-72db132e3cd1

It might not be that surprising in hindsight that the locations of two of these institutions are not listed on neither Google Maps or Yandex. RT News is the biggest Russian network that is known worldwide and also includes headquarters in other countries (like the UK and US), so it makes sense that this is the only one that’s actually visible.

Second direction

By lack of actual information that I could get to create a map I decided to connect conspiracy theories in a more abstract way.

In my eyes clicking on and being recommended content that spreads conspiracy theories on digital platforms as youtube, facebook and twitter are a digital infrastructure. One that can in essence be compared to an real life infrastructure, like a city. On the internet you’re being guided by an algorithm bringing you from digital landmark to other digital landmarks which get more extreme along the way.

The content that is available is a landscape, the algorithm recommending you things is the tourguide whose only goal is to make people follow a certain path to let people watch more and more content. A tourguide makes their money with showing people interesting and noteworthy things that pull viewers attention, digital platforms do the exact same way by recommending people interesting and noteworthy content on a more personalized way.

I could go into two directions now:

Show how digital platforms create this path through algorithms and how this spreads conspiracy theories.

Show how to break free of this path by doing a derive in this (digital) landscape.

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The second option is obviously the one that fits both this assignment and my interests better. My biggest interest lays in visualising a way in which the spectator can create their own path/route of how they’re being swallowed by conspiracy theories.

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Create a visualisation/map of how this content actually looks like a real-life infrastructure.

Ideas

Create an anti-tourguide; not sending you through a certain path, but completely the other way.

Show these platforms without their underlying algorithms.

Creating a purely audio based map with content from conspiracy podcasts and shows through which people can navigate.

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My last idea is basically a combination of all, it gives the spectators control over where they are going, but they will quite literally be in the dark of which direction they’re going into. It makes it quite easy to perform a derive without being influenced by any visual cue, since you have no idea where you are going. You are your own tourguide and decide for yourself where you will go and what (auditory) content you will be involved with.

All sources used in final result

https://twitter.com/Sjoerrdd/status/1323249604318633990
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87LqjUhofpE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRtti0o5k8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4W3SpLwsKU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCB79poLhdc

https://www.youtube.com/c/ThoughtsOfAFreeMan/videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApoEGvBUAwQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyxAsSBUCbA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFXCLMnKOIk