journal articles on 9/11 conspiracy theories

[jon]

Searching on Web of Knowledge etc., have been surprised that I couldn't find articles on 9/11 conspiracy theories in 'academic'/peer-reviewed journals (found a couple that look at this in a tangential way, but nothing that gives them much time). I can understand why these wouldn't be taken seriously in terms of evidence provided etc., but I'd have expected some attention to have been given to the fact that so many people believe this [rule8].

Am I missing something here? - if anyone knows of research that has been done, it'd be great if you'd let me know Or is this a gap in the research?

 

[Alphaba]

Looks like a gap, although I wouldn't bet on the inexistence of ongoing studies.

As often, it is the publication of a first study in a respected journal (even if not prestigious) that will spark interest in academic networks, be it just in signalling the topic as worth to publish about.

Off the top of my head I can see a couple of reasons why few (no?) social scientists (in sociology, social or cultural anthropology, social psychology, political science, etc.) have ventured into this loose territory:

• Until very recently the phenomenon mostly was an Internet-based one, with manifestations in the flesh and blood world going hardly beyond private discussions. Not something particularly original or exciting for researchers (there probably are just too much conspiracy theories present and discussed on the Internet for one in particular to be considered more salient or relevant than the others). But now that, thanks to Loose Changers, a group starts to manifest itself and to become vocal in public out of the Internet, it is much more probable that this group -and the peculiar CT it waves- will pop up on the radar of social scientists.
  
  
• At first sight, dealing with the LC-9/11 CTs-'Truth' movement isn't an easy task for a social scientist alone: Either the researcher does completely set aside the 'technical' claims made by CTists, at the risk of seing one of the (few) hard scientists involved in this movement pointing the inability of the researcher to grasp the 'facts', or the researcher enters the technical details and, as amply demonstrated in the LC threads on this board, it necessitates to familiarize oneself with highly specialized technical domains. A collective work, associating for instance a social scientist to a structural engineer, might thus be a better way to tackle the subject. A relatively infrequent combo and modus operandi...

 

[jon]

Thanks - some good thoughts on why there's not much on this (yet).

It's interesting that this CT does seem to have been very web/video focused in the US (and here in the UK, to an extent). Thierry Meyssan's book on 'the big lie' apparently sold quite a lot of copies in English, but was much bigger in France.