I Want to Believe (but the Vocabulary Changed): Measuring the Semantic Structure and Evolution of Conspiracy Theories

ArXi:2603.26062v1 Announce Type: new Research on conspiracy theories has largely focused on belief formation, exposure, and diffusion, while paying less attention to how their meanings change over time. This gap persists partly because conspiracy-related terms are often treated as stable lexical markers, making it difficult to separate genuine semantic changes from surface-level vocabulary changes. In this paper, we measure the semantic structure and evolution of conspiracy theories in online political dis.