Finanziamento UE – NextGenerationEU PRIN 2022 "StUdying SuPply, demand, and Endorsement of Conspiracy TheorieS in six European countries - SUSPECTS" PNRR M4C2 investimento 1.1 Avviso 104/2022

Conspiracy theories are usually defined as explanations of social facts according to which groups of extremely powerful actors secretly influence the economic, political, and social systems in a way that goes beyond what is realistic to expect in an open society. With the pandemic crisis, the so-called “infodemic” and the consequences that it led to (in terms of vaccination rates and compliance to health regulations) made clear that conspiracy theories and people who believe in them are here to stay, and that can harm the social and political fabric of liberal democracies. The literature on the topic mainly focused on conspiracy theories’ believers, their political and demographic characteristics, their psychological traits, and their reactions to new theories. Another line of research analyzed the production of these theories, namely, the (mainly virtual) places in which they are produced and diffused. The SUSPECTS project aims at integrating and expanding these two strands of the literature, by proposing a supply-and-demand theoretical framework: according to our framework, the ecosystem that encompasses the consumption and production of conspiracy theories can be seen as a market, in which conspiracy theories are “produced” and “sold” by relevant actors - such as influencers, public figures, but also (and more concerningly) politicians. At the same time, the theories are “consumed” by the general audience, or by particularly receptive parts of it. More specifically, SUSPECTS aims at analyzing the ways in which specific politicians and political leaders are able to exploit conspiracy theories in order to increase their popularity. Applying a supply-and-demand framework to the conspiracy theories’ ecosystems represents a potential leap forward in analyzing the phenomenon, as it allows to explicitly take into account both the mass public and a political elite that seems to be increasingly attracted by more aggressive/fringe types of communication. The project investigates the demand and supply of conspiracism in six European countries (Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Sweden and Poland). The project has 3 main aims. 1) By using quantitative social media analysis, we will investigate the environments in which the demand and supply of conspiracy theories emerge. We will study the role that conspiracist groups have in producing and disseminating these theories, with particular reference to the connections that these groups have with political entrepreneurs. 2) By using qualitative analysis of leaders’ political communication, we will investigate the “supply side” of the conspiracist ecosystem, focusing on the ways in which political leaders contribute to spreading theories. 3) by using original survey data, we investigate the "demand-side", by focusing on how much citizens are influenced by conspiracist communication enacted by politicians and conspiracy theorists, and which strategies are more likely to be successful.