The Few, The Loud: Platform-Mediated Articulation of Conspiratorial Discourse by Political Elites on X and Facebook

Conspiracy theories have moved from the fringes into mainstream political debate, yet, despite the growing scholarly attention to the role of political elites in coining and amplifying conspiracy theories, we lack an understanding of which political elites engage in conspiratorial communication. This gap conceals the ideological orientation of conspiracy-inclined politicians, the phenomenon’s prevalence, and how it varies across countries and platforms. We address these questions by showcasing how a narrow set of (far-right) elite conspiracy entrepreneurs peddle conspiratorial narratives, challenging the bounds of acceptable discourse. Analyzing a random sample of manually annotated posts from all lower house members in Belgium, Finland, and Poland during parliamentary elections, we use gradient threshold analysis to identify elite conspiracy entrepreneurs, logistic regression to detect their characteristics, and close reading to examine cross-platform communication strategies. Results indicate that the conspiratorial discourse is driven by a narrow set of radical (largely far-right) politicians, who generate bigger engagement than their colleagues, despite having comparable levels of following and posting rates. We outline how conspiracy entrepreneurs tailor their messaging to the platform, relying on coded hashtags on X, while elaborating on the conspiratorial features. These findings shed light on the role of political elites in cultivating epistemic crisis while alerting to the role of social media platforms in algorithmically rewarding conspiratorial content and providing a unique set of tools for politicians to generate engagement.