“I Am Not a Conspiracy Theorist, But . . .”: Communicative Norms in Conspiracy Theory Supporters’ Interactions With Other News Users in Germany, Israel, Sweden, and the United States

Abstract

Belief in conspiracy theories (CTs) has gained considerable public visibility, raising concerns about supporters’ antidemocratic attitudes and resistance to evidence-based arguments. While there is ample research documenting such tendencies among dedicated CT communities, however, it is less clear how well these findings generalize toward other CT supporters closer to the societal mainstream. In this study, we analyze user commentary responding to German, Israeli, Swedish, and U.S. news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how CT-related ideas are presented and contested within mainstream public discourse. Based on a pragma-dialectic analysis of CT-related controversies in user-generated commentary, we study which political and epistemic norms are invoked and practiced by CT supporters. We find that most individuals expressing support for CTs remain broadly committed to democratic pluralism and evidence-based argument, even if they frequently violate these norms in practice; instead, CT supporters’ rejection of institutional validation emerges as a key distinction.