Abstract
This dissertation explores how institutional distrust shapes the development of radical discourses through an analysis of the anti-5G movement: a mobilization of individuals who oppose the fifth generation of mobile network technologies. As a collective, anti-5G activists produce a range of discourses on 5G, from concerns about the potential environmental health effects of wireless technologies to conspiracy theories that position 5G as a weapon that was created to control, surveil, and harm the public. Using digital ethnographic methods, I explore the social factors that motivate individuals to express their institutional distrust through movement participation. Overall, I argue that institutional distrust shapes radical discourses by framing systems of institutional power as inherently suspicious.
Contrary to popular narratives that purport that radical discourses lead to public distrust of institutions, I find that the social contexts in which institutional distrust is developed encourages individual’s receptiveness to radical discourses. In the anti-5G movement context, I find that a combination of perceived institutional failure and pedagogical interactions between activists help to develop an individual’s distrust of the institutions that are facilitating the wireless expansion. This interactive teaching and learning process drives participation in anti-5G collective actions. Additionally, I investigate the sudden influx of conspiracy activists into the movement during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and explore some of the similarities between more moderate criticisms of the telecommunications industrial complex and systemic conspiracy theories related to the 5G network.