Experts versus eyewitnesses. Or, how did conspiracy theories come to rely on images?

This article considers how the increasing availability of photographic and film imagery has affected what is described as the American culture of the counter-narrative. This culture corresponds to a segment of recent and contemporary political discourse that rejects the official explanation of a traumatic event and that instead exhibits a preference for a conspiratorial counter-narrative. Admittedly, these counter-narratives often only hint at the alleged conspiracy; more frequently, their primary preoccupation lies with the discovery of ostensible inconsistencies that supposedly blight the official explanation and detract from its credibility. This article examines three episodes within the history of this culture. The first revolves around the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; the second around the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963; and the third around the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. While the first case study demonstrates that images and inferences drawn from them are not a necessary precondition for a culture of the counter-narrative to gain traction, the two subsequent cases provide an opportunity to examine how this culture has evolved once images are recognized and treated as a source of evidence that calls into question the official version or even potentially contradicts it. In particular, these developments are examined in terms of the deference and credibility accorded to the voice of expertise and the voice of eyewitnesses respectively.