How Do “Truths” Become The Truth? The Diffusion of Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory Visuals on TruthSocial

• In Event: Media Ecosystems and the Diffusion of Contested Ideas

Abstract

Conspiracy theories have become a defining genre of contemporary political communication, accelerated by social media dynamics that reward emotionally charged, easily shareable claims. Research on rumor and conspiracy has long emphasized the social conditions under which uncertain stories become collectively meaningful and circulate as “improvised news” (Allport and Postman 1947; Shibutani 1966). This line of inquiry has steadily grown within sociology more recently, with a marked increase in studies on conspiracy theories and fake news (Rao and Greve 2024). Notwithstanding these pressing concerns, little is known about how conspiracy theories are generated, reproduced, and used to reinforce political rhetoric on far-right social media platforms in the United States.
Conspiracies and other material prohibited on mainstream platforms can spread more freely on alternative right-wing media platforms (Karell et al. 2023). Donald Trump’s social media platform TruthSocial (TS) offers a particularly revealing case: unlike traditional social media platforms that rely largely on decentralized diffusion, it operates through a comparatively top-down and confrontational communication structure (Zhang et al. 2025). On TS, political elites and media entrepreneurs frequently disseminate framed, conspiratorial claims, and users quickly adopt and recirculate them through “ReTruths” (shares), likes, and replies (Casanova and Alvarez 2026). Notably, the volume of image-based posts and has recently surged, particularly with advances in generative AI, suggesting that visual content is increasingly central to conspiratorial mobilization.
Building on this theoretical tradition and institutional context, this paper examines the production and diffusion of conspiracy related media on TS. We address three research questions: (1) What repertoires and narratives constitute prominent conspiracy themes on Truth Social? (2) How does the diffusion of conspiracy-supportive posts differ from other political discourse on the platform in speed and scale of engagement? (3) How do images and video interact with text to shape both the content and diffusion of conspiratorial claims?

Authors

• Duhui Lee, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

• Thomas Davidson, Rutgers University-New Brunswick