Around the world, and against all scientific evidence, a segment of the population believes that Earth’s round shape is either an unproven theory or an elaborate hoax. Polls by YouGov America in 2018 and FDU in 2022 found that as many as 11% of Americans believe the Earth might be flat.
While it is tempting to dismiss “flat Earthers” as mildly amusing, we ignore their arguments at our peril. Polling shows that there is an overlap between conspiracy theories, some of which can act as gateways for radicalization. QAnon and the great replacement theory, for example, have proved deadly morethanonce.
By studying how flat Earthers talk about their beliefs, we can learn how they make their arguments engaging to their audience, and in turn, learn what makes disinformation spread online.
In a recent study, my colleague Tomas Nilsson at Linnaeus University and I analyzed hundreds of YouTube videos in which people argue that the Earth is flat. We paid attention to their debating techniques to understand the structure of their arguments and how they make them appear rational.
One strategy they use is to take sides in existing debates. People who are deeply attached to one side of a culture war are likely to wield any and all arguments (including truths, half-truths, and opinions) if it helps them win. People invest their identity into the group and are more willing to believe fellow allies rather than perceived opponents – a phenomenon that sociologists call neo-tribalism.
The problem arises when people internalize disinformation as part of their identity. While news articles can be fact-checked, personal beliefs cannot. When conspiracy theories are part of someone’s value system or worldview, it is difficult to challenge them.
The three themes of the flat-Earth theory
In analying these videos, we observed that flat Earthers take advantage of ongoing culture wars by inserting their own arguments into the logic of, primarily, three main debates. These debates are longstanding and can be very personal for participants on either side.
First is the debate about the existence of God, which goes back to antiquity, and is built on reason, rather than observation. People already debate atheism v faith, evolution v creationism, and Big Bang v intelligent design. What flat Earthers do is set up their argument within the longstanding struggle of the Christian right, by arguing that atheists use pseudoscience – evolution, the Big Bang and round Earth – to sway people away from God.
A common flat Earther refrain that taps into religious beliefs is that God can inhabit the heavens above us physically only in a flat plane, not a sphere. As one flat Earther put it:
They invented the Big Bang to deny that God created everything, and they invented evolution to convince you that He cares more about monkeys than about you … they invented the round Earth because God cannot be above you if He is also below you, and they invented an infinite universe, to make you believe that God is far away from you.
