Users who participate in online communities linked to conspiracy theories show distinctive linguistic characteristics even when discussing apparently neutral topics, such as films, music, cooking or science, and even before they take part in conspiracy communities.
This is what emerges from a study by Politecnico di Milano, authored by Francesco Corso and Francesco Pierri , of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of Politecnico di Milano, together with Giuseppe Russo (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and Gianmarco De Francisci Morales (CENTAI Institute).
The researchers used psycholinguistic analysis tools and Artificial Intelligence models on 500 million comments posted in more than 20 large Reddit communities. The aim was to verify whether it was possible to distinguish users active in the r/conspiracy community from other users of the platform, observing only their language in mainstream contexts.
The results show that these users display recognisable linguistic signals with an average accuracy of 87% , even years before their explicit participation in conspiracy communities. Among the most recurring linguistic elements are a greater presence of anger , anxiety, references to conflict, illness and death, as well as more frequent use of aggressive or emotionally charged language.
The study also shows, however, that there is no single “conspiratorial language”: users adapt their communicative style to different online social contexts. Models developed specifically for individual communities are in fact much more effective than a general model valid for the entire platform.
The research from the Politecnico di Milano has been accepted for presentation at ACL 2026 (Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics), one of the leading international conferences in the field of artificial intelligence and natural language processing.
“In this work, we wanted to understand whether involvement in conspiracy communities leaves recognisable linguistic traces even outside the spaces in which these theories are explicitly discussed,” explains Francesco Corso , a PhD candidate at the Data Science Lab of Politecnico di Milano and author of the study.
“The results suggest that there is no single conspiratorial language valid for the entire platform. Users adapt their way of expressing themselves to the norms of different online communities, and this makes it necessary to design analysis and moderation tools that are more sensitive to context,” adds Francesco Pierri, assistant professor at the Data Science Lab.
Building on this study, the research continued with a second paper, accepted at the 20th edition of the AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media, on the Jeffrey Epstein case. In this study, the authors analyse the impact of a sudden increase in the visibility of the r/conspiracy community, showing that mainstream exposure can attract many new users, but does not necessarily produce their lasting integration into the community.
The research contributes to the understanding of radicalisation processes and the dynamics of the spread of conspiracy narratives online, highlighting the need to develop moderation and monitoring systems capable of taking into account the differences between different digital communities.
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