Open AccessThe language of conspiracy: A psychological analysis of speech used by conspiracy theorists and their followers on Twitter
Author(s) -
A. A. Fong,
Jon Roozenbeek,
Danielle Goldwert,
Steven Rathje,
Sander van der Linden
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
group processes and intergroup relations/group processes and intergroup relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.535
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1461-7188
pISSN - 1368-4302
DOI - 10.1177/1368430220987596
Subject(s) - psychology , anger , social psychology , outgroup , variety (cybernetics) , content (measure theory) , power (physics) , cognition , certainty , epistemology , mathematical analysis , philosophy , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science
This paper analyzes key psychological themes in language used by prominent conspiracy theorists and science advocates on Twitter, as well as those of a random sample of their follower base. We conducted a variety of psycholinguistic analyses over a corpus of 16,290 influencer tweets and 160,949 follower tweets in order to evaluate stable intergroup differences in language use among those who subscribe or are exposed to conspiratorial content and those who are focused on scientific content. Our results indicate significant differences in the use of negative emotion (e.g., anger) between the two groups, as well as a focus, especially among conspiracy theorists, on topics such as death, religion, and power. Surprisingly, we found less pronounced differences in cognitive processes (e.g., certainty) and outgroup language. Our results add to a growing literature on the psychological characteristics underlying a “conspiracist worldview.”