‘Hook’-shaped polarization: how conservative super-commenters shape conspiracy beliefs and news engagement across the political spectrum

Conservative news comment sections are raising concerns about polarization. These sections have become hotbeds for participatory propaganda, as some conservative media outlets employ this strategy to segment, obscure, and amplify propagandistic messages. This study examines how users across the liberal-conservative political spectrum respond to participatory propaganda, with a special focus on top-ranked comment threads featuring content from so-called ‘super-commenters’ – a small group of highly active commenters. We reanalyzed a nationally representative dataset (N = 4912) from an online experiment on Breitbart News to examine how exposure to conservative super-commenters influences conspiracy beliefs, news-sharing, and commenting intentions. Machine learning and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models revealed consistent ‘hook’-shaped patterns: all outcomes peaked among extreme conservatives, were smaller among moderates, and slightly higher again among liberals. Conspiracy beliefs showed the most pronounced asymmetry, with extreme conservatives scoring much higher than liberals. News-sharing and commenting intentions followed similar but weaker trends, with generally high levels across the political spectrum. Moderation analysis showed that exposure to super-commenter exposure did not alter the ‘hook’-shaped patterns in conspiracy beliefs or news-sharing intentions but did increase commenting intentions across the political spectrum. Notably, it reduced conspiracy beliefs among extreme liberals while boosting news-sharing and commenting among conservatives. These findings suggest that participatory propaganda heightens conservative engagement and paradoxically lowers conspiracy beliefs among extreme liberals – potentially deepening polarization from both sides.