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Workshop

How Social Feedback, Habits, and Norms Shape Conspiracy Engagement in Online Communities

  • Veronika Batzdorfer (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
  • Sven Banisch (Karlsruhe Institute for Technology)
E1 05 (Leibniz-Saal)

Abstract

This study examines the motivational mechanisms behind habitual online engagement, specifically focusing on conspiracy theories (CTs). Given the routine nature of much of human behavior, understanding how varying susceptibility to rewards-triggered by contextual cues-affect the proclivity to CT content is crucial. Using a framework from evolutionary psychology, we analyze topic-agnostic CT narratives both at the post level and community norms at the subverse level. We hypothesize that (1) as users become more habitual, they become less sensitive to rewards (e.g. upvotes), and habit strength negatively predicts posting latency; (2) social feedback increases engagement in CT-related spaces; (3) different narrative aspects of a user’s perspective on conspiracies such as individual trait-based (secrecy and pattern) as well as group-identification (action, actor, threat) can be indicative of CTs and enhance content engagement. Our study reveals that user behavior may be influenced by both reinforcement learning (where users adjust their posting based on feedback) and norm learning mechanisms (where they adapt to the norms of multiple communities).

Katharina Matschke

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences Contact via Mail

Jürgen Jost

Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik in den Naturwissenschaften

Eckehard Olbrich

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences

Marjan Horvat

IRRIS Institute

Tom Willaert

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Armin Pournaki

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences