Language Mutations Sustain the Persistences of Conspiracy Theories on Social Media

2026-05-19

AI Summary

This study investigates how linguistic variation influences the persistence of conspiracy theories on social media. Drawing on a three-year corpus of conspiracy-related posts from the X platform, the research integrates computational linguistic analysis, survival modeling, and Actor–Action–Target (AAT) structural coding to systematically examine how semantic and psycholinguistic features—such as personal pronouns, social reference terms, and cognitive markers—affect the lifespan of conspiracy narratives. The analysis identifies two dominant patterns of linguistic variation: simplification and assimilation, both of which significantly extend the duration of conspiracy theory circulation. These findings elucidate the relationship between linguistic adaptability and content longevity, offering a theoretical foundation for platform-level moderation strategies that dynamically track the evolution of core conspiratorial claims rather than static content alone.

Abstract

This study investigates how language mutations affect the persistent diffusion of conspiracy theories on social media. Drawing on a three-year dataset of conspiracy-related posts from X, and applying computational linguistic analysis alongside survival modelling, we find that conspiracy claims with greater semantic mutations have substantially longer lifespans. Mutations in psycholinguistic properties, including pronouns, social reference words, cognitive process terms, risk- and health- related vocabularies, are associated with extended lifespans. Mutations in actor, action and target (AAT) categories are associated with longer lifespans as well. Qualitative analysis identifies two predominant mutation patterns: simplification and assimilation, at both linguistic and AAT structural levels. Taken together, the results advance our understanding of how language mutations contribute to conspiracy persistence online and shed lights on longitudinal content moderation strategies. We argue that content moderation should consider the mutability of conspiracy claims and focus on the core claims that can address their potential variations.

Problem

• language mutations
• conspiracy theories
• social media
• persistent diffusion
• semantic variation

Innovation

• language mutations
• conspiracy theories
• survival modelling
• psycholinguistic features
• AAT framework