Verschwörungsdenken, Wahn und Virtualität

“Nothing is as it seems”, “nothing happens by chance”, and “everything is connected”—These three basic assumptions characterize conspiracy theories of different provenance. Thus, they show a clear parallelism to the structure of paranoid and delusional experience. However, this is contrasted with important differences, such as the formation of extended groups of conspiracy believers, to which no paranoid “delusional communities” correspond. The paper first examines both phenomena comparatively and then turns to the question of how the virtualization of communication in social media fosters the formation of conspiracy theory communities.