Blather, Rinse, Repeat: An Ethnography of Conspiracy Theory
Damien DeBarra
www.blather.net

@damiendebarra
@blatherdotnet

"Internet Anoraks"
'Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.' - John Keats
Anthropologists of the Damned
UFOs
Frog Falls
Alternative Archaeology
Paranormal Activity
Cryptozoology
Alien Big Cats
Folklore
Mythology
Urban Legends
Technology
Climate Change
General, random lunacy
The consumption of alcohol
Fraudsters, liars and Fianna Failers
Art
Cartography
Writing
Ghosts
Poltergeists
Ancient History
Lepreporn: The Irish Porn Industry
Virtual Anthropology
BLATHER DOESN'T CARE
"... a publication of the Gutter' which would achieve 'entirely new levels in everything which is contemptible, despicable and unspeakable in contemporary journalism'. Blather has 'no principles, no honour, no shame'; its objects were 'the fostering of graft and corruption in public life, the furtherance of cant and hypocrisy, the encouragement of humbug and hysteria, the glorification of greed and gombeenism'"
Loose Change
Zeitgeist: The Movie
Mass Hysteria
Farenheit 9/11
The Reflecting Pool
http://www.reflectingpoolfilm.com/reflectingpooltrailer.htm
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501#
911 The Road To Tyranny - Alex Jones
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6517776133137328105#
http://www.fahrenheit911.com/trailer/
1934
Flann O'Brien
1997: blather.net
talking shite
No, seriously.
http://blather.net/shitegeist/2005/04/lepreporn_where_dreams_are_ma.htm
http://blather.net/blather/2008/07/blather_meets_fred_einaudi.html
http://www.blather.net/blather/2009/10/climate_change_in_ireland_the_need_to_mo.html
http://blather.net/blather/2006/10/to_hell_or_howth_the_hostel_of_the_red_g.html
http://blather.net/blather/2004/02/alien_big_cat_report_from_co_k.html
Map of the Weird
http://blather.net/blather/1998/10/super_sargasso_surfin.html
http://blather.net/shitegeist/2006/01/ira_announce_massive_redundan_1.htm
http://blather.net/blather/1998/08/gubu_norge_lake_monster_expedi.html
http://www.blather.net/thegame
http://blather.net/zeitgeist/archives/2006/05/portugese_sopa_opera_causes_ma.html
http://blather.net/blather/1998/04/poltergeists_down_under.html
http://blather.net/blather/2008/04/how_i_helped_write_the_fictional_history.html
http://blather.net/shitegeist/2007/09/northern_rock_collapse_blamed_on_excessi.htm
http://blather.net/blather/2001/09/give_me_interactivity_or_give_me_death.html
http://blather.net/zeitgeist/archives/2008/03/convicted_childmolester_claims.html
http://www.blather.net/zeitgeist/archives/2007/11/romulus_and_remus_cave_found_i.html
Black Market Nukes
http://blather.net/blather/2008/10/black_market_nukes_part_one_found_in_tra_1.html
http://blather.net/blather/2008/03/diggin_in_the_dirt_i_patrick_puke_the_fi.html
Satire
http://www.blather.net/blather/2008/03/blathernets_map_of_the_weird.html 
http://blather.net/blather/1998/09/the_ghosts_of_waterford.html
http://blather.net/blather/2006/01/wyrd.html
111,829 Views 26/10/09
http://blather.net/blather/2003/12/paranormal_activity_in_trinity.html
http://blather.net/blather/ufo/
Msc. in e-learning
University of Edinburgh
Digital Cultures
The outcomes for this course are as follows. On its completion you will:

− have a critical awareness of the key concepts emerging from the study of digital culture

− be able to assess the implications of this thought for the history, development and deployment of online education

− be able to synthesise these ideas in order to develop critically aware, media specific pedagogies for online learning

− have developed practical skills in the use of social media and the presentation of academic discourse online
September - December 2009
Visual Artefact
"The Map is not the Territory"
Cyburbia
Cyberia
Deadwood
Disturbia
http://www.cyburbia.tv/
http://rushkoff.com/books/cyberia/
http://rushkoff.com/2009/08/11/wildwest/
Virtual Ethnography
http://digitalculture-ed.net/
1. Substantive Contribution: “Does the piece contribute to our understanding of social-life?”
2. Aesthetic Merit: “Does this piece succeed aesthetically?”
3. Reflexivity: “How did the author come to write this text…Is there adequate self-awareness and self-exposure for the reader to make judgments about the point of view?”
4. Impact: “Does this affect me? Emotionally? Intellectually?” Does it move me?
5. Expresses a Reality: “Does it seem ‘true’—a credible account of a cultural, social, individual, or communal sense of the ‘real’?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography#Evaluating_Ethnography
Critera for success?
1. If you are part of a community that you really want to study and you feel that you can ask for and receive permission in a timely manner, then you can go ahead and seek this. In this case we recommend that you seek permission to look at archived (not ongoing) discussion/communication.

2. Otherwise we want you to choose a community which:
- is public and open to the whole internet (not password protected or members only) – ie: Flickr, Youtube or similar
- has a culture of using usernames/handles/pseudonyms rather than real names

This ensures that there is a low expectation of privacy and a low level of concern about anonymity which you need to contend with.

3. If you are still concerned about the material you are working with or creating, you can choose to post your snapshot up privately for just the course participants to see and comment on. If you don’t have somewhere private yourself to put things, you could email us your files and we could put them up in an EASE protected space.
Choosing a community
View the Map
A notional 'map of the internet', showing four 'towns'
1
2
3
4
'There was foreknowledge of the attacks'
9/11 Assertions
'Ariel Sharon cancelled a plan to speak in New York on 9/11'
'The five “dancing Israelis” set up a camera to film the WTC before the attacks occurred'
'4000 Israelis failed to turn up for work on 9/11'
'Bunk, Debunk, Rebunk'
"Was there a crash at all? The mayor of Shanksville said “there was no plane”"
"Debris was found 6.1 miles away from crash site. So it must have been shot down"
Flight 93
http://www.911myths.com/html/there_was_no_plane.html
The Pentagon
"There was no wreckage identifiable as coming from a 757"
"Where were the passengers luggage and personal effects?"
http://www.911myths.com/html/757_wreckage.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/personal_effects.html
WTC 7
"Footage of the WTC7 collapse shows clear signs of demolition squibs"
http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc7_squibs.html
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250&ei=G9TuSrm1DYSs2wKX8eHnBQ&hl=en#
Watch: [BBC] Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - The Third Tower
47 stories tall
Built in 1983 
610 feet tall
Hit by falling north tower
Barry Jennings
Emergency coordinator for the New York Housing Authority
Was inside WTC7, after building was evacuated
One of the only eyewitnesses to what happened inside WTC7
Died August 2008, aged 53
"Witnessed explosions inside WTC7"
"Witnessed dead bodies inside WTC7"
Timeline: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/7437516.stm
http://www.groundreport.com/US/Barry-Jennings-Key-9-11-Witness-Dies/2869565
Blather
"There were dead bodies"
Rinse
"Stepping over people"
Repeat
"It doesn't matter what he says"
Mark Pilkington
http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/
Author of 'Mirage Men', published 2010
Ufologists demand government respond to their requests
Government responds
Ufologists reject responses
The plane crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, about 80 miles (130 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Washington, D.C., killing all on board including 40 passengers and crew and four hijackers. Many witnessed the impact from the ground and news agencies began reporting on the event within an hour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93
Translated from English into German and back to English
Research Criteria
"Ethnography in this strategy becomes as much a process of following connections as it is period of inhabitance. In similar vein Marcus suggests that ethnography could (should?) be adapted to ‘examine the circulation of cultural meanings, objects and identities in diffuse time-space’. He suggests a range of strategies for ethnographers to construct fields in the absence of bounded sites, including the following of people, things, metaphors, narratives, biographies and conflicts" - Hine, C (2000) The virtual objects of ethnography, chapter 3 of Virtual ethnography. London: Sage. pp41-66 
"Thick Descriptions' and 'Digital Winks'
In anthropology and other fields, a thick description of a human behaviour is one that explains not just the behaviour, but its context as well, such that the behaviour becomes meaningful to an outsider.
http://www.911blogger.com/
The point for the ethnographer is not to bring some external criterion for judging whether it is safe to believe what informants say, but rather to come to understand how it is that informants judge authenticity.
Hine, C (2000) The virtual objects of ethnography, chapter 3 of Virtual ethnography. London: Sage. pp41-66 
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
http://www.blather.net/about.html
'Digital winks' identified in Zeitgeist: the movie
'How does it function?'
Cynicism
American 'cultural lens'
The Internet
Lack of critical skills
'They'
Wally Miller - Coroner in Somerset County
Found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rygx1Q8zw3E
Quoted as saying "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there."
Blather, Rinse, Repeat
'Them'
'The truth'
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
The BBC debunks this in 2007. Then that clip is posted to Youtube, with commentary from user
'...if someone winks at us without a context, we don’t know what it means. It might mean the person is attracted to us, that they are trying to communicate secretly, that they understand what you mean, or anything. As the context changes, the meaning of the wink changes.'
The "Field Site"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsOKkDwyfjg
This presentation is part of a project for 'Digital Cultures', a semsester of the University of Edinburgh's MsC. in e-learning.

It was used for a talk given at the Dublin Paranormal Convention, November 2009.
@damiendebarra
@blatherdotnet
Project 1
Project 2
http://permanentbetablog.blogspot.com/2009/10/visual-artefact-test-post.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thick_description
The purpose of this ethnography was to identify possible 'digital winks' within the 9/11 conspiracy theory movement by tracking some of what Hine lists as 'people, things, metaphors, narratives, biographies and conflicts'
http://www.debunk911myths.org/topics/Indian_Lake
The 'smoking gun' of 9/11