Blog Post 6

In Chapter Eleven, "Selling Conspiracy Theories to Skeptical Audiences," three main components are outlined. These three components in a conspiracy theory argument are sowing distrust, challenging plausibility, and telling a better story.
Sowing distrust is the attempt to plant "serious doubt" about what happened during an incident or event into the minds of your audience based on where the story is coming from. This happens in the film "Loose Change" with the idea that the US Government may be lying to us. This component is fed to the audience in multiple ways, with showing plans and practice runs taken by the government on what would have happened if a plane was to crash into the Pentagon. Another way this was shown was with the idea that Condoleezza Rice warned a government official to not travel on September 11th.
Challenging plausibility is the act of asking your audience whether or not what they previously believed is completely believable and capable of happening. For example, the idea that the first plane to crash into the first tower made a sharp turn mid air that was more commonly done by a military jet, and previously was though that it could not be done by a commercial airplane. This fact causes the audience to question the idea that this was a hijacking rather than a previously planned out event by the government.
Finally, telling a better story is what happens once the previous acts are accepted by the audience. For example, if this DIDN'T happen then what did happen? Loose Change ends the movie with the question, if it was really the government that caused 9/11, then why? After this question is presented they propose reasons as to why this catastrophic event could have worked in the US government's favor and how the economy could have benefited from this attack.
The three components laid out in Chapter 11 are in the documentary "Loose Change" and all three elements are chronological, meaning that in order for the third to happen, the second must happen and in order for that to happen the first must happen. In the documentary "Loose Change" all three components are found in the correct order and I do believe this documentary to provide plausible evidence in their hopes to convert our way of thinking about September 11th.