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This chapter deals with the question: What is a conspiracy theory? It provides a concept of conspiracy theories and situates conspiracy theories in the context of COVID-19.

In order to understand how COVID-19 conspiracy theories work, one requires a theoretical concept of conspiracy theories. The developed understanding is especially grounded in Frankfurt School critical theory. Section 2 of this chapter works out a critical theory concept of conspiracy theories. Section 3 is an introduction to the communication of COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

This chapter reflects on calls for and processes of the de-colonisation of academia and the study of media, communication and the digital. It asks: what does it mean to de-colonise academia and the study of media, communication and the digital? How can academia be transformed in progressive ways? This essay takes a Radical Humanist and Political Economy perspective on de-colonisation, which means that it is interested in how capitalism, power and material aspects of academia such as resources, money, infrastructures, time, space, working conditions and social relations of production shape the possibilities and realities of research and teaching. This essay stresses the importance of defining (neo-)colonialism as foundation of debates about de-colonisation and engages with theoretical foundations and definitions of (neo-)colonisation. It identifies how material forces and political economy shape and negatively impede on the university and academic knowledge production. It provides perspectives for concrete steps that can and should be taken for overcoming the capitalist and colonised university and creating the public interest and commons-oriented university and academic system.

This chapter deals with the question: What is Digital Humanism? It argues that Digital Humanism is a philosophy suited for the analysis of the digital age that has specific epistemological, ontological and axiological dimensions. It also introduces a specific version of Digital Humanism, namely Radical Digital Humanism. It argues that we need to advance the co-operation of all Humanisms in order to circumvent the rise of new fascisms in the digital age. The chapter also discusses and responds to objections to Digital Humanism.

This chapter asks: How has Donald Trump communicated about COVID-19 on Twitter? How have conspiracy theories influenced his Twitter communication about COVID-19? Utilising critical discourse analysis, it analysed tweets in which Trump communicated about COVID-19 and showed that he used social media to spread conspiracy theories and fake news about COVID-19.

The findings show that Donald Trump uses social media such as Twitter for spreading far-right ideology, conspiracy theories and fake news. He makes use of a variety of linguistic ideological devices. In the context of COVID-19, Trump has spread a variety of conspiracy theories to his millions of followers, which has contributed to the intensification of risks and harms at the time of the worst global health crisis in 100 years.

This chapter is a reflection on the digital mediation of death and dying in the COVID-19 pandemic from a critical political economy perspective. It asks: What is the role of the communication of death and dying in capitalist society? How has communication with dying loved ones changed in the COVID-19 pandemic? What roles have digital technologies and capitalism played in this context?

Building on foundational theoretical insights into the role of death and dying in capitalism, this essay presents some empirical studies of death and dying in society and the COVID-19 pandemic and interprets their findings from a Communication Studies perspective.

In capitalist societies, death and dying are taboo topics and are hidden, invisible and institutionalised. The COVID-19 pandemic had contradictory effects on the role of death in society. It is a human, cultural and societal universal that humans want to die in company with loved ones. The presented empirical studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. The wish to die in a social manner derives from humans' social and communicative nature. In capitalism, the reality of dying diverges from the ideal of dying. Capitalism hides, individualises, makes invisible and institutionalises death and dying.

The analysed studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. Building and going beyond the works of the political theorist and philosopher Achille Mbembe and the philosopher and sociologist Erich Fromm, the essay introduces the notion of capitalist necropower. It is shown how the COVID-19 pandemic in many cases destroyed the social and communicative nature of human beings and how capitalist necropower created unnecessary surplus deaths and formed the context of the digital mediation of communication with dying loved ones in the pandemic.

This chapter draws conclusion from the analyses presented in the preceding chapters.

Everyday life and everyday communication have undergone large changes in the pandemic crisis. The conclusion asks in what kind of society we want to live and how we want to communicate in the future. It poses the question of what kind of Internet we want and need in the future in post-pandemic times. Commontopia is presented as the potential future of communication and society.