How to Stay Popular: Threat, Framing, and Conspiracy Theory Longevity

Abstract

Why do some conspiracy theories (CTs) remain popular and continue to spread on social media while others quickly fade away? Situating conspiracy theories within the literature on social movements, we propose and test a new theory of how enduring CTs maintain and regain popularity online. We test our theory using an original, hand-coded dataset of 5,794 tweets surrounding a divisive and regularly commemorated set of CTs in Poland. We find that CTs that cue in-group and out-group threats garner more retweets and likes than CT tweets lacking this rhetoric. Surprisingly, given the extant literature on party leaders’ ability to shape political attitudes and behaviors, we find that ruling party tweets endorsing CTs gain less engagement than CT tweets from non-officials. Finally, when a CT’s main threat frames are referenced in current events, CTs re-gain popularity on social media. Given the centrality of CTs to populist rule, these results offer a new explanation for CT popularity—one focused on the conditions under which salient threat frames strongly resonate.