The Seed of Doubt: Examining the Role of Alternative Social and News Media for the Birth of a Conspiracy Theory

Abstract

Consuming conspiracy theories erodes trust in democratic institutions, while conspiracy beliefs demotivate democratic participation, posing a potential threat to democracy. The proliferation of social media, especially the emergence of numerous alternative platforms with minimal moderation, has greatly facilitated the dissemination and consumption of conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, there remains a dearth of knowledge concerning the origin and evolution of specific conspiracy theories across different platforms. This study aims to address this gap through a large-scale, cross-platform examination of the genesis of new conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Through a (semi-) automated content analysis conducted on a distinctive dataset comprising N = 8,020,314 Epstein-related posts posted on both established platforms ( Twitter, Reddit) and alternative platforms ( Gab and 4Chan), we demonstrate that conspiracy theories emerge early and influence public discourse well in advance of reports from established media sources. Our data shows that users of the studied platforms immediately turn to conspirational explanations, exhibiting skepticism towards the official representation of events. Especially on alternative platforms, this skepticism swiftly transformed into unwarranted conspiracy theorizing, partly bolstered by references to alternative news media sources. The present study shows how conspirational explanations thrive in low information environments and how alternative media plays a role in turning rational skepticism into unwarranted conspiracy theories.