用语义演化分析阴谋论如何随时间变化，发现其结构并非一成不变。
Measuring the Semantic Structure and Evolution of Conspiracy Theories
- 通过词向量构建阴谋论的语义空间，将其视为可追踪的语义对象
- 基于1.7亿条评论发现阴谋论语义存在稳定、扩张、收缩等多重演化模式
- 揭示了传统关键词方法无法捕捉的复杂语义变迁，适合舆情与传播研究者
阴谋论研究多关注信念形成、曝光与扩散，却较少关注其意义随时间的变化。这一空白部分源于阴谋相关词汇常被视为稳定的语言标记，难以区分真正的语义演变与表层词汇变化。本文利用2012—2022年来自Reddit r/politics子版块的1699万条评论，测量在线政治话语中阴谋论的语义结构与演化。结果表明，阴谋相关语言在语义空间中形成连贯且可区分的区域，使阴谋论可被视作语义实体。通过使用对齐词嵌入追踪这些实体的历时演变，我们发现阴谋论的语义演化呈非均匀性，表现出语义稳定、扩展、收缩与替换等模式，这些特征无法仅靠关键词方法捕捉。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Research on conspiracy theories has largely focused on belief formation, exposure, and diffusion, while paying less attention to how their meanings change over time. This gap persists partly because conspiracy-related terms are often treated as stable lexical markers, making it difficult to separate genuine semantic changes from surface-level vocabulary changes. In this paper, we measure the semantic structure and evolution of conspiracy theories in online political discourse. Using 169.9M comments from Reddit's r/politics subreddit spanning 2012--2022, we first demonstrate that conspiracy-related language forms coherent and semantically distinguishable regions of language space, allowing conspiracy theories to be treated as semantic objects. We then track how these objects evolve over time using aligned word embeddings, enabling comparisons of semantic neighborhoods across periods. Our analysis reveals that conspiracy theories evolve non-uniformly, exhibiting patterns of semantic stability, expansion, contraction, and replacement that are not captured by keyword-based approaches alone.
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