There seems to be a broad agreement we are currently undergoing a crisis of political and epistemic authority. However, the pervasive dissensus on what it is, let alone how to address it, persists. The role of experts is at the forefront of those considerations. While some scholars call for reinstating the authority of experts to manage complex reality and stifle anti-scientific social movements, the anti-technocratic camp warns against the outreach of unelected expert bodies, calling for the democratization of knowledge. So far, the literature on conspiracy theories (CTs) has primarily understood their prominence in terms of the deficiency of epistemic authority. In this reading, CTs constitute a byproduct of the ‘post-factual’ era in which the epistemic authority is flattening, as statements of laymen gain more traction while credentialed experts lose their standing. Here, scholars point to societally harmful conspiratorial beliefs surrounding vaccination or climate change to emphasize how sidelining experts makes us unable to face contemporary challenges.

We argue that the ‘post-factual’ approach unduly prioritizes the ‘populist’ danger of CTs over the political context of their emergence. Building on scholarship on ‘counter-knowledge’ and epistemic contestation, we investigate the politico-strategic dimension of CTs, thereby suspending judgment over their veracity. To do so, we shift the analytical focus from conspiracy entrepreneurs at online forums to official accounts of party officials. This recalibration allows us to capture the degree of mainstreaming of conspiracist communication to the forefront of public debate.

Admittedly, capturing conspiracist communication of elites on social media comes with challenges. Crucially, elite-led conspiracist communication on social media differs from how anonymous users spread it on online forums. The research shows the format of posting at X encourages concise and sensational communication. Moreover, we know the multifaceted nature of partisan communication, with one message often simultaneously targeting multiple audiences. This leaves us with the challenge of capturing a mode of communication that is both fragmented and ambiguous. To develop the measure, we bridge scholarship on the ‘fragmented’ nature of populist communication with the burgeoning literature on CTs. Effectively, our measure captures the invocation of evil conspirators, ominous plots, or deceit of the people as conspiracism, thereby accounting for its fragmented nature.