Online conspiracy theories: using language analysis to predict their spread
Users who participate in online communities related to conspiracy theories display distinctive linguistic characteristics even when discussing common topics such as films, music, cooking, or science. This emerges from a study by Politecnico di Milano based on the analysis of over 500 million comments posted across more than 20 Reddit communities.
The study, conducted by Francesco Corso and Francesco Pierri from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, together with Giuseppe Russo (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and Gianmarco De Francisci Morales (CENTAI Institute), used psycholinguistic analysis tools and artificial intelligence models to investigate whether it is possible to distinguish users active in the r/conspiracy community by observing their language in mainstream contexts.
The results show that these users exhibit recognizable linguistic signals with an average accuracy of 87%, even years before their explicit participation in conspiracy communities. Among the most frequent signals are references to anger, anxiety, conflict, illness, and death, as well as more aggressive or emotionally charged language.
The results suggest that there is no single “conspiracy language” valid across the entire platform. Users adapt their way of expressing themselves to the norms of different online communities, which makes it necessary to design analysis and moderation tools that are more sensitive to context.
Francesco Pierri, Data Science Lab.