Journal of Marketing Management

Conspiracy Theories and Merchants of Doubt: Exploration of an Implicit Link
Gilles Paché

Abstract
A lot of industrial sectors whose activity is at the origin of public health problems have in the past been able to conduct very sophisticated strategies to manipulate the masses. By selling doubt, powerful companies have thus protected themselves from the implementation of coercive regulations that could harm their financial results. The merchants of doubt rely on different marketing and communication tools that are now widely known and studied. However, there is virtually no research linking them to conspiracy theories. The objective of this research note is to fill the gap by pointing to the presence of systemic conspiracies to better understand the link with manipulation strategies over several decades. Two illustrations are drawn from the French context: the 2018-2019 Yellow Vests crisis and Professor Didier Raoult’s controversial medical protocol against COVID-19. In both cases, the protagonists evoke a systemic conspiracy driven by economic and political elites to smash initiatives challenging the established order. The merchants of doubt, who seek to spread relativism, are undoubtedly responsible for the development of conspiracy theories at the heart of democratic societies.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jmm.v11n1a3