conspiracy theories and folklore are connected?

Lies and rumors often spread faster than the truth, and the same goes for conspiracy theories rather than facts. this article's research was provided by the joint knowledge of Tangherlini and his co-authors from the University of California. The first example of conspiracies was the "Pizzagate" conspiracy. this conspiracy was created when presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, had her e-mail leaked. the e-mails had vague connections to human trafficking and the media started making more loose connections tying the e-mails to a pizza restaurant and claiming the restaurant basement was the base for holding child sex slaves. this interesting story built from loose connections lead to others contributing and making more loose connections from their interperatations thus creating a conspiracy theory. these stories build off of loose connections and unstable facts are easily spread and can quickly build up, but becasue of these loose links they can also be easily disassembled. once one link is taken out many of the theories are no longer connected and dont make sense. 

I had a little trouble understanding the context of the examples and their analysis of the examples because I'm not all that interested or caught up with current events or news. Nonetheless, I kept reading, gathered and connected stray parts occasionally doing some googling to fully understand the article. After reading the article i'm not so sure as to where the folklore element is aplied, but I do have a more solid understanding of how conspiracies work. Knowing how something is built you can easily destroy or sustain it and this can be especialy helpfull when something like conspiracy theories start getting out of hand.