In recent years, conspiracy theories have pervaded mainstream discourse. Social media, in particular, reinforce their visibility and propagation. However, most prior studies on the dissemination of conspiracy theories in digital environments have focused on individual cases or conspiracy theories as a generic phenomenon. Our research addresses this gap by comparing the 10 most prominent conspiracy theories on Twitter, the communities supporting them, and their main propagators. Drawing on a dataset of 106,807 tweets published over 6 weeks from 2018 to 2019, we combine large-scale network analysis and in-depth qualitative analysis of user profiles. Our findings illustrate which conspiracy theories are prevalent on Twitter, and how different conspiracy theories are separated or interconnected within communities. In addition, our study provides empirical support for previous assertions that extremist accounts are being “deplatformed” by leading social media companies. We also discuss how the implications of these findings elucidate the role of societal and political contexts in propagating conspiracy theories on social media.

近年来，阴谋论已席卷主流话语。尤其是社交媒体，增强了它们的可见性和传播能力。但是，关于数字化环境中的共谋理论传播的大多数先前研究都将个别案例或共谋理论视为一种普遍现象。我们的研究通过比较Twitter上的10种最著名的阴谋论，支持它们的社区及其主要传播者，来解决这一差距。利用从2018年到2019年的6周内发布的106,807条推文的数据集，我们将大规模网络分析和用户资料的深入定性分析相结合。我们的发现说明了Twitter上普遍存在哪些阴谋论，以及社区中不同的阴谋论是如何分离或相互联系的。此外，我们的研究为先前的论断提供了经验支持，这些论断是领先的社交媒体公司正在“极端化”极端主义的说法。我们还将讨论这些发现的含义如何阐明社会和政治环境在社交媒体上传播阴谋论的作用。