The few, the loud: platform-mediated articulation of conspiratorial discourse by political elites on X and Facebook

Despite growing concerns about the role of political elites in producing and amplifying conspiracy theories, little is known about which politicians engage in this behavior, how prevalent it is across countries and platforms, and what ideological patterns it follows. We address these questions by identifying a narrow set of elite conspiracy entrepreneurs who disproportionately produce conspiratorial discourse, challenging the bounds of acceptable debate across three European democracies. Using gradient threshold analysis, logistic regression, and close reading, we analyze a manually annotated sample of posts by political elites (N = 702) in Belgium, Finland, and Poland to identify conspiracy entrepreneurs, characterize them, and examine their cross-platform communication. Results indicate that conspiratorial discourse is driven by a narrow set of predominantly far-right politicians, who generate higher engagement than their colleagues, despite comparable following and posting rates. Conspiratorial discourse also differs across platforms, with Facebook enabling more fully articulated conspiratorial narratives and X favoring more fragmented, context-dependent communication. These findings illuminate how political elites cultivate epistemic crisis and how social media platforms may algorithmically reward conspiratorial content by providing tools for politicians to generate engagement.