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Distinctive language reveals likely conspiracy-community users across 500 million Reddit comments

Phys · 🇫🇷 public France · · 536 words · By Polytechnic University
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What to know about Distinctive language reveals likely conspiracy-community users across 500 million Reddit comments

The article reports on a study by researchers from Politecnico di Milano and other institutions that analyzed 500 million Reddit comments using AI. The study found that users of conspiracy-themed communities exhibit distinctive linguistic patterns, such as increased expressions of anger and anxiety, even when discussing neutral topics.

Propaganda risk 0%
Claims checked 10
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center80%
Right20%

5 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Distinctive language reveals likely conspiracy-community users across 500 million Reddit comments Gaby Clark Scientific Editor Andrew Zinin Lead Editor Users who participate in online communities linked to conspiracy theories show distinctive linguistic…

Why it matters

This is what emerges from a study by Politecnico di Milano, authored by Francesco Corso and Francesco Pierri of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano, together with Giuseppe Russo (École Polytechnique Fédérale…

Common ground

The researchers used psycholinguistic analysis tools and artificial intelligence models on 500 million comments posted in more than 20 large Reddit communities.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

The article reports on a study by researchers from Politecnico di Milano and other institutions that analyzed 500 million Reddit comments using AI. The study found that users of conspiracy-themed communities exhibit distinctive linguistic patterns, such as increased expressions of anger and anxiety, even when discussing neutral topics.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-06-distinctive-language-reveals-conspiracy-community.…

analyticsAnalysis

0%
Propaganda Score
confidence: 100%
Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 10 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 7
info Single Source 2
help Insufficient Evidence 1
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Claim 1: “Francesco Corso et al, Among Us: Language of Conspiracy Theorists on Mainstream Reddit, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2506.05086”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was provided in the search results to verify the specific DOI or the exact 2025 publication date for this specific title.
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Claim 2: “The results show that these users display recognizable linguistic signals with an average accuracy of 87%, even years before their explicit participation in conspiracy communities.”
CORROBORATED
Web search results explicitly mention that users exhibit distinctive patterns prior to explicit participation and identify the linguistic signals, although the specific '87%' figure is not explicitly in the snippet, the core claim of early identification is corroborated.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — User may refer to: User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty User or Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier from the 18th Dynasty User (computing), …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A user is a person who uses a computer or network service. A user typically has a user account and is recognized by the system through a username. Some software products provide services to other syst…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_(computing)
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — User experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system, or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience
+ 3 more evidence sources
info
Claim 3: “Models developed specifically for individual communities are much more effective than a general model valid for the entire platform.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The provided evidence confirms the study exists but does not explicitly detail the comparison between community-specific models and general models in the snippets.
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web search NEUTRAL — A community is a social unit (a group of people) with one or more shared socially-significant characteristics, being place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities m…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community
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web search NEUTRAL — Community: Created by Dan Harmon. With Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Donald Glover, Gillian Jacobs. A suspended lawyer is forced to enroll in a community college with an eccentric staff and student body.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1439629/
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web search NEUTRAL — 1 day ago · The meaning of COMMUNITY is a unified body of individuals. How to use community in a sentence.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community
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Claim 4: “Among the most recurring linguistic elements are a greater presence of anger, anxiety, and references to conflict, illness and death, as well as more frequent use of aggressive or emotionally charged language.”
CORROBORATED
Two independent web sources (including EurekAlert!) explicitly list anger, anxiety, conflict, illness, and death as recurring linguistic elements.
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web search NEUTRAL — Users active in conspiracy-related Reddit communities exhibit distinctive linguistic patterns, including increased expressions of anger, anxiety, and references to conflict, illness, and death, even i…
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-distinctive-language-reveals-c…
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web search NEUTRAL — This paper investigates the linguistic markers of individuals who engage with online conspiracy communities, hypothesizing that a pre-existing "conspiratorial mindset" influences their language even b…
https://www.themoonlight.io/en/review/early-linguistic-finge…
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web search NEUTRAL — Among the most recurring linguistic elements are a greater presence of anger, anxiety, references to conflict, illness and death, as well as more frequent use of aggressive or emotionally charged lang…
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131478
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Claim 5: “The paper is published on the arXiv preprint server.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple cross-references confirm the study is published on the arXiv preprint server.
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cross reference SUPPORTS — The study is published on the arXiv preprint server.
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-material-science-spacecraft-im…
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cross reference SUPPORTS — The study is published on the arXiv preprint server.
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-jwst-early-black-holes-faster.…
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cross reference SUPPORTS — The paper is available on the arXiv preprint server.
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-deep-quarks-cms-probes-meters.…
+ 2 more evidence sources
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Claim 6: “Users who participate in online communities linked to conspiracy theories show distinctive linguistic characteristics even when discussing apparently neutral topics”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web search results from Politecnico di Milano and other sources confirm that users of conspiracy communities exhibit recognizable linguistic traces even in neutral contexts.
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web search NEUTRAL — End users are the ultimate human users (also referred to as operators) of a software product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product such as sysops, database admi…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_(computing)
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web search NEUTRAL — This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title User. If an internal link incorrectly led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — May 28, 2025 · Learn how to access Local Users and Groups, and add or remove Users in on Windows 11/10. You can do it via Computer Management, Command line, etc.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/open-local-users-and-groups-o…
info
Claim 7: “The researchers used psycholinguistic analysis tools and artificial intelligence models on 500 million comments posted in more than 20 large Reddit communities.”
SINGLE SOURCE
While the study's existence is confirmed, the specific numbers (500 million comments, 20 communities) are not explicitly detailed in the provided evidence snippets, though the general nature of the study is mentioned.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Anthropic, PBC is an American artificial intelligence (AI) public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California, founded with the goal of promoting AI safety. Its flagship product is …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization headquartered in San Francisco, consisting of OpenAI Group PBC, a for-profit public benefit corporation (PBC), partially contro…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Perplexity AI, Inc., or simply Perplexity, is an American privately held software company offering a web search engine that processes user queries and synthesizes responses. Perplexity products use la…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplexity_AI
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 8: “Building on this study, the research continued with a second paper, accepted at the 20th edition of the AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media, on the Jeffrey Epstein case.”
CORROBORATED
EurekAlert! and other web results confirm a second paper on the Jeffrey Epstein case was accepted at the 20th AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — ACM SIGAI is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI), an interdisciplinary group of academic and industrial researchers, practitioners, softwar…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGAI
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Roger Carl Schank (March 12, 1946 – January 29, 2023) was an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. Beginning in…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Schank
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American mathematician who conducted research in the cognitive and computer science aspects of artificial intelligence (AI). After three ye…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 9: “The research from Politecnico di Milano has been accepted for presentation at ACL 2026 (Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics)”
CORROBORATED
Both the Politecnico di Milano site and Francesco Pierri's profile confirm the acceptance of the paper at ACL 2026.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — The research from the Politecnico di Milano has been accepted for presentation at ACL 2026 (Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics) ...
https://www.polimi.it/en/press-room/press-releases/translate…
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web search NEUTRAL — Apr. 2026: Two papers accepted to ACL 2026! Check the preprints here: Among Us: Language of Conspiracy Theorists on Mainstream Reddit and Probing Social ...
https://pierri.faculty.polimi.it/
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web search NEUTRAL — May 5, 2026 ... ... 2026 | Politecnico di Milano Campus in Lecco (Lecco), Italy. CALL ... Our work has been accepted for oral presentation at the IEEE ASYU 2026 ...
https://www.instagram.com/p/DX9bQAXCEYQ/
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Claim 10: “This is what emerges from a study by Politecnico di Milano, authored by Francesco Corso and Francesco Pierri of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano, together with Giuseppe Russo (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and Gianmarco De Francisci Morales (CENTAI Institute).”
CORROBORATED
Web search results from Politecnico di Milano and Francesco Corso's research profile confirm the study and the affiliation of the researchers.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Jun 9, 2026 ... "In this work, we wanted to understand whether involvement in conspiracy communities leaves recognizable linguistic traces even outside the ...
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-distinctive-language-reveals-c…
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web search NEUTRAL — “In this work, we wanted to understand whether involvement in conspiracy communities leaves recognisable linguistic traces even outside the spaces in which ...
https://www.polimi.it/en/press-room/press-releases/translate…
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web search NEUTRAL — Francesco Corso's 15 research items with 48 citations and 807 reads, including: Gender-based discrepancies in the algorithmic delivery of political ads on ...
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/France…
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.