Manipulating Conspiracy Traits: Identifying the Most Democratically Harmful Components of Conspiratorial Narratives

Conspiracy theories pose well-documented risks to democratic life, yet we still know little about which specific narrative components make them persuasive, socially disruptive, and democratically corrosive. Existing experiments typically compare exposure to a conspiratorial message versus a neutral one, treating conspiracism as a monolithic category. This obscures the mechanisms through which distinct rhetorical features—such as secrecy, elite control, victimhood, epistemic awakening, or emotional framing—shape belief, sharing behaviour, and democratic orientations. This study proposes a novel experimental design that isolates and manipulates five core traits of conspiratorial discourse while holding the baseline conspiratorial “grammar” constant. Within the framework of the TaCT-FoRSED project, participants across several countries are randomly assigned to one of six conditions: a placebo, a baseline conspiracy narrative, or treatments selectively emphasizing secrecy, elite control, collective victimhood, epistemic awakening, or affective mobilisation. We then assess four outcomes: perceived credibility, emotional activation, willingness to share, and satisfaction with democracy. This design allows us to identify which narrative elements most strongly heighten conspiratorial belief and intention to disseminate the message, and which most directly erode democratic satisfaction and endorsement of democratic principles. We expect that elite control and secrecy will particularly undermine democratic legitimacy, while victimhood and emotional anger cues will amplify sharing behaviour and conspiratorial predispositions. By offering a granular, component-level understanding of conspiracist persuasion, the study provides evidence to inform targeted pre-bunking, media literacy interventions, and platform moderation strategies. Ultimately, it contributes to the broader goal of strengthening democratic resilience by pinpointing the rhetorical features of conspiracism that are most harmful.