Language Mutations and the Persistence of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories on Social Media

This study investigates how language mutations affect the persistent diffusion of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on social media. Drawing on a three-year dataset of conspiracy-related posts from X, and applying computational linguistic analysis alongside survival modelling, we find that conspiracy claims with greater semantic mutations have substantially longer lifespans. Mutations in psycholinguistic properties, including pronouns, social reference words, cognitive process terms, risk- and health-related vocabularies, are associated with extended lifespans. Mutations in actor, action and target (AAT) categories are associated with longer lifespans as well. Qualitative analysis identifies two predominant mutation patterns: simplification and assimilation, at both linguistic and AAT structural levels. Taken together, the results advance our understanding of the association between language mutations and conspiracy persistence online and shed lights on longitudinal content moderation strategies. We argue that content moderation should consider the mutability of conspiracy claims and focus on the core claims that can address their potential variations.