Social Media-Based Differences in Conspiracy Theory Beliefs

Recent studies highlight the significant role of social media in spreading conspiracy theories (Enders et al., 2022; Theocharis et al., 2023), influencing both normative (e.g., voting) and non-normative (e.g., protests) forms of political participation (Pantazi et al., 2022; Papaioannou et al., 2023). Platform-specific features further increase political polarization and complicate trust in democratic institutions (Tappin et al., 2020). By leveraging AI-generated immersive environments, this study provides new insights to the literature of social media's effect on political participation, conspiracy theories, and political behavior. Conducted within the context of Turkey, where social media usage is among the highest globally, this experiment examines how exposure to congruent versus incongruent political content influences users' susceptibility to conspiracy theories and their subsequent behavioral responses. To that end, we investigate how social media platform differences influence conspiracy theory beliefs and political participation preferences through a carefully designed experiment. The experimental design involves a 2x2 factorial structure, where participants are exposed to politically congruent or incongruent content on two different platforms (Twitter and Instagram), allowing for the examination of both platform-specific features (e.g., text-based vs. image-based formats) and the alignment between users' political predispositions and the content they encounter. This project is supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).