From Suspicion to Communication: Mapping Conspiracist Discourse Among European Parliament Members

Academic research has largely treated conspiracism as a mass-level psychological or sociopolitical phenomenon. However, more recent research is starting defining it as a set of features that are strategically employed by the political supply side. This paper addresses that gap by analyzing the Twitter activity of all Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to detect conspiracist content through a large language model-based procedure. By focusing on political elites’ messaging in the last 6 years (covering the COVID-19 crisis and the Ukraine/Middle East wars), we aim to illuminate how conspiratorial frames emerge and circulate within the parliamentary sphere. Subsequently, we compare these communicative patterns to survey data on conspiracist attitudes in six European countries, exploring whether elite-level tweets mirror voters’ predisposition toward conspiratorial beliefs. In doing so, this study offers fresh insights into the dynamics that link radical right-wing politics and conspiracism, providing a comprehensive account of how digital communication channels may shape and amplify conspiracist narratives in contemporary politics.