“If you can’t see the pattern here, there’s something wrong”

This chapter will adopt a data-driven, cognitive stylistic approach, exploring ‘false flag’ conspiracy theories about mass shootings, specifically the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, which claimed the lives of twenty children and six adults. ‘False flags’ are a sub-type of conspiracy theory where it is believed that, “one group commits an attack and blames it on a rival group or a fictitious group of its invention” (Kearns, Conlon, & Young, 2014, p. 46). Situated against a background of research in psychology examining the characteristics and behaviours of both conspiracy manufacturers and supporters (for example, Douglas et al. 2017; Wood et al. 2012), the chapter will use two concepts from cognitive stylistics – figure-ground, which explores the positioning of attention (Emmott and Alexander 2014; Stockwell 2009, 2020) and schema theory, which focuses on prior knowledge. Building on a previous study by the author (Mason 2019b), the chapter will explore how factually flawed false flag accounts are constructed as persuasive and credible. The research will use a triangulated design to examine stylistic patterns of discourse of both conspiracy manufacturers and supporters, through close analysis of video transcripts and viewer comments from three videos concerning Sandy Hook released on YouTube.