Measuring the Semantic Structure and Evolution of Conspiracy Theories
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866911602065801216 |
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| author | Keim, Manisha Chandio, Sarmad Khalid, Osama Nithyanand, Rishab |
| author_facet | Keim, Manisha Chandio, Sarmad Khalid, Osama Nithyanand, Rishab |
| contents | Research on conspiracy theories has largely focused on belief formation, exposure, and diffusion, while paying less attention to how their meanings change over time. This gap persists partly because conspiracy-related terms are often treated as stable lexical markers, making it difficult to separate genuine semantic changes from surface-level vocabulary changes. In this paper, we measure the semantic structure and evolution of conspiracy theories in online political discourse. Using 169.9M comments from Reddit's r/politics subreddit spanning 2012--2022, we first demonstrate that conspiracy-related language forms coherent and semantically distinguishable regions of language space, allowing conspiracy theories to be treated as semantic objects. We then track how these objects evolve over time using aligned word embeddings, enabling comparisons of semantic neighborhoods across periods. Our analysis reveals that conspiracy theories evolve non-uniformly, exhibiting patterns of semantic stability, expansion, contraction, and replacement that are not captured by keyword-based approaches alone. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_26062 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Measuring the Semantic Structure and Evolution of Conspiracy Theories Keim, Manisha Chandio, Sarmad Khalid, Osama Nithyanand, Rishab Computation and Language Computers and Society Social and Information Networks Research on conspiracy theories has largely focused on belief formation, exposure, and diffusion, while paying less attention to how their meanings change over time. This gap persists partly because conspiracy-related terms are often treated as stable lexical markers, making it difficult to separate genuine semantic changes from surface-level vocabulary changes. In this paper, we measure the semantic structure and evolution of conspiracy theories in online political discourse. Using 169.9M comments from Reddit's r/politics subreddit spanning 2012--2022, we first demonstrate that conspiracy-related language forms coherent and semantically distinguishable regions of language space, allowing conspiracy theories to be treated as semantic objects. We then track how these objects evolve over time using aligned word embeddings, enabling comparisons of semantic neighborhoods across periods. Our analysis reveals that conspiracy theories evolve non-uniformly, exhibiting patterns of semantic stability, expansion, contraction, and replacement that are not captured by keyword-based approaches alone. |
| title | Measuring the Semantic Structure and Evolution of Conspiracy Theories |
| topic | Computation and Language Computers and Society Social and Information Networks |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26062 |