Conspiracism Dataset: A New Dimension in Politics

• In Event: Understanding Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories

Abstract

As the most extremist subset of misinformation universe, conspiracy theories have begun to receive more scholarly attention. Conspiracy theories constitute only a small portion of the misinformation universe. However, they constitute the most dangerous type within this universe for three reasons. First, conspiracy theories presume malevolent intentions to explain the causes of significant events. This strong faith in the presence of evil actors leads conspiracy believers to justify actions they otherwise would not. Even though, the literature on the political and psychological underpinnings of conspiracy beliefs have been expanding (Douglas et al. 2022), scholarly work on the systemic level consequences and implications of conspiracy theories and conspiracism have been lacking. Conspiracism refers to the style of politics that uses conspiracy theories as the primary instrument of doing politics and political communication. In the international realm, conspiracy theories could also alter the logic and effects of signaling, audiences cost, and institutional decision-making.

Overall, this project establishes the first dataset on conspiracism as a political phenomenon in a comparative perspective. Based on semi-automated content analysis of party leader/president speeches, tweets, party manifestos, and aggregated public opinion data on 32 countries, this dataset presents party level and national level comparative conspiracism levels in 25 democracies and 7 competitive authoritarian regimes, covering 135 political parties, over hundred thousand tweets, hundreds of speeches and several public opinion polls from Pew Research and YouGov. This dataset presents the first attempt to make sense of conspiracism in our politics for comparative politics and international relations scholars. This dataset provides a rich source for scholars who work on party-level and country level data and wants to use the conspiracism index or its several components in their own work as independent, dependent or control variables. The dataset also encompasses dimensions such as populism, left-right ideology, anti-establishment sentiment, and liberal-illiberal democracy indices for each party, and country that is covered by the dataset.

Authors

• TianYi Zhao, Binghamton University

• Mert Can Bayar, University of Washington