Conspiracy theories and their argumentation strategies as an example of ideological discourses

Abstract

Conspiracy theories as a specific type of rumours (or unofficial news) belong to the relative new field of research in the Slovak folklore studies. The paper presents this genre as an argumentative type of narratives, with a strong ideological background. The author focuses on specific argumentation strategies used in discussions on the selected internet forums. For that reason she tries utilize instead of the „classic“ folkloristic analytic methods some elements from discourse analysis in an effort to follow the ways of dissemination and propagation of this texts through the internet.