Kamile Grusauskaite

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I’m a writer, researcher, and postdoctoral fellow at the Media Culture & Policy Lab at KU Leuven and the Department of Sociology at Yale University.

My research centers around three interconnected areas: (1) the cultural production of conspiracy theories on mainstream and alternative platforms; (2) the governance of disinformation and how institutions, platforms, and civil society actors define and respond to it; and (3) the identity and community dynamics that shape political mobilization in digital spaces.

I use ethnography, digital observation, and in-depth interviews to understand how creators construct narratives, engage with audiences, and respond to infrastructural constraints like deplatforming and content moderation.

I’m currently writing a book based on my fieldwork in conspiracy-theory conventions, titled Broadcasting Together, which explores the cultural and technological dimensions of conspiracy theory production on YouTube.

My research has been published in New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, and Public Understanding of Science, among others. I write a Substack newsletter on online culture and have appeared in media outlets like VICE Netherlands. I’ve presented my work at international conferences including ICA, AoIR, ISA, and the European Sociological Association.

Publications

Click a title to show/hide the abstract.

• Grusauskaite, K. (2025). Broadcasting together: The biographical trajectories of YouTube conspiracy theory micro‑celebrities. Journal of Information Technology & Politics.

  Social media platforms like YouTube are often seen as gateways for the spread of conspiracy theories. While much of the research has focused on why people consume conspiracy theory content, little attention has been given to how individuals become creators of such content. This paper addresses this gap by examining how conspiratorial online practices emerge from social and cultural contexts mediated by social media platforms and communities of practice. Drawing on 22 in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this study explores the biographies of conspiracy YouTubers, revealing three key moments in their trajectories: the reinterpretation of pre-existing worldviews, integration into a community of practice, and the pursuit of self-promotion and branding. The findings not only contribute to understanding the life experiences that draw people to the conspiracy milieu but also underscore how online environments cultivate and sustain such conspiracy micro-celebrities.
• Grusauskaite, K., Harambam, J., & Aupers, S. (2024). Reactionary exiles: How conspiracy theorists deal with socio‑technological exclusion. Cultural Sociology.

  Due to growing public concerns regarding the consequences of disinformation and conspiracy theories, major tech companies have introduced policies to curtail them on their platforms. Until now, the academic debate has largely focused on whether these punitive policies are effective. In this study, we address the question of how de-platformed ‘conspiracy theorists’ themselves experience and deal with such socio-technological exclusion. Drawing on seminal theories in the symbolic interactionist tradition, we conceptualize conspiracy theories as stigmatized ‘knowledge’ and empirically study the ways that conspiracy theory producers manage their stigma after de-platforming. Particularly, we draw on an analysis of 22 in-depth, qualitative interviews, ethnographic observations with (former) conspiracy YouTubers and a digital ethnography. Our findings demonstrate that YouTubers respond to de-platforming by emphasizing the ‘silver linings’ of their exclusion and by accommodating, bypassing and reframing their ‘stigma’. De-platforming contributes to their legitimacy in the face of their audiences and enables them to carve out space to cultivate a new, stronger form of conspiracy capital and status. This study contributes to the literature on conspiracy theories from a cultural sociological perspective. It advances our understanding of how de-platforming may backfire, strengthening people’s beliefs and standing within their subculture.
• De Wildt, L., Grusauskaite, K., & Aupers, S. (2024). Encoding/decoding entertainment media. In Entertainment Media and Communication.

  Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model of cultural analysis was born as a critique of linear sender/message/receiver-models of communication, which Hall argued concentrate on message exchanges without questioning who sends and who receives a message, and the political-economic asymmetry between the two. By contrast, in encoding/ decoding analyses, the message itself—a television show or other entertainment media object—is only a pivotal object between two ‘moments’ of encoding and decoding. Encoding conceptualizes the process of how, why, and by whom a message is produced; and decoding conceptualizes how, why, and by whom the message is consumed. This chapter provides, first, an introduction to Hall and encoding/decoding as an approach to studying media entertainment; second, an overview of the theoretical challenges undergone by researchers over the last decades to operationalize and empirically apply Hall’s model; and third, an insight into the relevance to and challenges presented by 21st‑century (online, interactive, and platformized) entertainment media.
• Aupers, S., & Grusauskaite, K. (2024). From a personality disorder to a sociological phenomenon. In Dark Emotions.

  The ‘paranoid personality’ is generally understood as an individual, psychological and pathological disorder characterized by suspicion and pervasive distrust of others. Since the early works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung to its professional classification in DSM since the 1950s, paranoia has been mainly considered as a pathological and psychological anxiety. This chapter broadens the perspective from the psychological micro level to the sociological macro level and ties the popularization of conspiracy theories to modernization processes and cultural change.
• Grusauskaite, K., Carbone, L., Harambam, J., & Aupers, S. (2023). Debating (in) echo chambers: How culture shapes communication in conspiracy theory networks on YouTube. New Media & Society.

  The ubiquity of social media platforms fuels heated discussions about algorithms and selection biases leading people into online “echo chambers.” Based on mixed‑methods analysis of 1,199 comments under four YouTube videos, we find that these discussions vary in their “echo‑chamberness,” which is better explained through the lens of conspiratorial (sub)cultures than through media‑effects assumptions alone.
• Harambam, J., Grusauskaite, K., & De Wildt, L. (2023). Poly‑truth, or the limits of pluralism. Public Understanding of Science.

  Qualitative content analysis of 522 comments under a Dutch newspaper article reveals four points of controversy around post‑truth: a habitus of distrust, who to involve in debate, which ways of knowing to allow, and what is at stake—highlighting tensions between technocratic and democratic ideals.
• Grusauskaite, K., Harambam, J., & Aupers, S. (2022). Picturing opaque power. Social Media + Society.

  Analyzes 24 conspiracy‑video narratives to show three modes—simulating, deciphering, and exhibiting—by which producers recontextualize mass‑media material into oppositional readings of hegemonic truths.
• Grusauskaite, K., & Van Eijck, K. (2022). Turn on, tune in, drop out? A typology of psychedelic microdosing as technologies of the self. Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change.

  Identifies three uses of psychedelic microdosing: as a technology of self‑esteem and control at work, as self‑help, and as “slow living.”

Work in Progress

• Switzer, R., & Grusauskaite, K. Against Mainstreaming.

  “Mainstreaming” has, since at least 2000, been the core metaphor in researchers’ attempts to comprehend the ‘rise of the far right.’ Efforts to understand the 21st century’s apparent rightward shift and purportedly increasingly normalized atmosphere of political violence are highly invested in portraying these developments as aberrations. Aberrations from an otherwise inclusionary liberal democracy; aberrations from an otherwise pluralistic public sphere; all aberrations from a mainstream. In this contribution I aim to coalesce recent critiques of the “mainstreaming” metaphor and move towards what I call a movement against mainstreaming. This article first takes stock of the emerging body of work critical of the notion of mainstreaming (Mondon and Winter 2020; Tetrault 2024). This literature review is followed by my own reflections of ethnographic fieldwork with far right activists in Sweden. Following Gillespie’s call for researchers to consider “their relationship to, and perhaps their investment in, both the objects they purport to be studying, and the very distance they posit between themselves and those objects” (2024, p. 16) this article theorizes my own encounters in the field with violence, nativism, and masculinity as empirical sites through which to critique the mainstreaming metaphor.
• Grusauskaite, K., Marwick, A. Guardians of Disinformation. How Social Media Companies Have Constructed the Category of Disinformation, 2006-2025

  coming soon
• Grusauskaite, K. & Aupers, S. Stream of Paranoid Consciousness. How Free Speech Absolutism Reshapes Conspiracy Content on Alt-Tech Platforms.

  This paper examines how alt-tech platforms, particularly Rumble, reconfigure conspiracy culture. While mainstream social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook have influenced the visibility and circulation of conspiracy theories, increasing content moderation has led to the migration of creators to alternative platforms that promote unrestricted speech. Through a six-month digital ethnography of a right-wing conspiracy theory channel that transitioned from YouTube to Rumble, this study analyzes how platform affordances and ideological commitments shape conspiracy narratives. Findings reveal that Rumble fosters a distinct conspiratorial discourse characterized by (1) amateur aesthetics and (2) rhizomatic, open-ended narratives, conceptualized as a "stream of paranoid consciousness." This format, enabled by Rumble’s free speech absolutism, encourages a fluid and immersive mode of engagement that disrupts traditional narrative closure. Unlike the structured, episodic storytelling often found in mainstream media, conspiracy content on Rumble embraces ongoing uncertainty, fostering a participatory distrust loop among viewers. These aesthetic and discursive transformations echo historical right-wing media practices, particularly the interactive, unscripted style of 1990s talk radio. By demonstrating how alt-tech platforms cultivate a distinct conspiratorial culture, this paper contributes to broader discussions on platform governance, media infrastructures, and digital counter-publics. Rather than merely hosting content rejected by mainstream platforms, Rumble actively reshapes the production and reception of conspiracy theories, illustrating the profound role of platform infrastructures and values in structuring public discourse and normalizing forms of extreme speech.

Academic Appointments

• 2022-now. Research Affiliate. The Center for Information, Technology, & Public Life (CITAP), UNC Chapel Hill.
• 2024-now. Postdoctoral Fellow (FWO). KU Leuven (Belgium) — Media Culture & Policy Lab & & Yale University, Sociology.
• 2024. Postdoctoral Researcher (AHRC). KU Leuven (Belgium) — Media Culture & Policy Lab.
• 2020-2024. PhD Candidate. KU Leuven (Belgium) — Media Culture & Policy Lab.

Grants & Awards

• FWO Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2024
• FWO Mobility Grant, 2024
• Best Paper in Popular Culture division of ICA — shortlisted
• FWO Mobility Grant, 2022

Service

• Member of the Editorial Board for a Forthcoming Sage journal Disinformation
• Reviewer for Social Media + Society, New Media & Society, and other journals.
• Member, Diversity & Sustainability committee, KU Leuven.

Full CV available upon request.