Utility of CTs for politicians

CTs blame small groups of powerful people for achieving some objectives and often include a secretive and specified out-group who allegedly undermine the interests of the broader public or political in-group (Cichocka et al. Reference Cichocka, Marchlewska, Golec de Zavala and Olechowski2016; Miller et al. Reference Miller, Saunders and Farhart2016; Uscinski and Parent Reference Uscinski and Parent2014). Populist claims and conspiracy theorizing sometimes coincide in this way.Footnote ¹ Populist politicians frequently claim that their political opponents are ‘shadowy forces that continued to hold onto illegitimate powers to undermine the voice of the people’ (Mudde et al. Reference Mudde, Kaltwasser, Freeden, Sargent and Stears2013: 503). These anti-elite assertions align with CTs, which suggest that a group of conspirators secretly harms some broader public (Uscinski et al. Reference Uscinski, Klofstad and Atkinson2016).

Given the overlap between populists' communication strategies and conspiracy theories (Hameleers Reference Hameleers2021), it is unsurprising that CTs can help cement populist rule. Some populists leverage CTs to rally their base (Plenta Reference Plenta2020; Santini et al. Reference Santini, Salles and Barros2022) or to justify policy and institutional changes (Barton Hronešová Reference Barton Hronešova2022; Jenne Reference Jenne2018). Though some CTs are rooted in partisan and ideological divides, others can appeal to people who hold anti-establishment views (Uscinski et al. Reference Uscinski, Enders, Seelig, Klofstad, Funchion, Everett, Wuchty, Premaratne and Murthi2021). For supporters of populist parties, which often leverage anti-establishment appeals (Mudde Reference Mudde2004), the invocation of CTs by politicians may be attractive.

Populists push CTs for instrumental purposes including mobilizing voters (Plenta Reference Plenta2020; Vaishnav Reference Vaishnav2019), delegitimizing election results (Munn Reference Munn2021; Nicas Reference Nicas2023), increasing support for their policies and programmes (Plenta Reference Plenta2020), attacking opponents, encouraging a sense of crisis and distracting from their governing failures (Pirro and Taggart Reference Pirro and Taggart2022). Politicians' rhetoric on CTs matters because individuals' ideologies and partisanship influence their CT beliefs (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Saunders and Farhart2016; Pasek et al. Reference Pasek, Stark, Krosnick and Tompson2015; Smallpage et al. Reference Smallpage, Enders and Uscinski2017; Uscinski et al. Reference Uscinski, Klofstad and Atkinson2016). Though CT belief is not correlated with political ideology (Enders et al. Reference Enders, Farhart, Miller, Uscinski, Saunders and Drochon2023), CTs – particularly partisan CTs – appeal more to extremists and strong partisans than moderates (Enders and Smallpage Reference Enders and Smallpage2019; Enders and Uscinski Reference Enders and Uscinski2021; van Prooijen et al. Reference van Prooijen, Krouwel and Pollet2015).

The power and salience of CTs may vary based on who spreads them and how they use CTs. Politicians who can graft CTs onto existing foreign threats or domestic polarization may gain additional engagement (Blackington and Cayton Reference Blackington and Cayton2024). Politicians who are electoral ‘losers’ may use CTs more often, leveraging their status as outsiders to gain support (Uscinski and Parent Reference Uscinski and Parent2014). Due to the anti-establishment nature of populist rhetoric, populists may continue to portray themselves as outsiders once in power. Populists may continue to use CTs to justify their governing decisions and explain away their failures (Pirro and Taggart Reference Pirro and Taggart2022), which may be especially potent as populist attitudes and conspiratorial beliefs can overlap (Oana and Bojar Reference Oana and Bojar2023; Zulianello and Guasti Reference Zulianello and Guasti2023).

Messaging for the audience

Though populists sometimes push CTs to mobilize their base, invoking CTs risks alienating moderates (Przybylski Reference Przybylski2018). Models of mass communication suggest that political candidates have incentives to adjust their messages to map onto the preferences of the majority of voters (Druckman et al. Reference Druckman, Kifer and Parkin2010). Politicians hoping to win elections may respond to the political preferences of their supporters (Downs Reference Downs1957) by tailoring their message and emphasizing different parts of their agenda to appeal to different target audiences (Goggin Reference Goggin1984; Miller and Sigelman Reference Miller and Sigelman1978; Stier et al. Reference Stier, Bleier, Lietz and Strohmaier2018). Some politicians present more ideologically extreme positions in primary elections and more moderate positions in general elections (Acree et al. Reference Acree, Gross, Smith, Sim and Boydstun2020; Brady et al. Reference Brady, Han and Pope2007; Burden Reference Burden, Galderisi, Ezra and Lyons2001). Though incentives to strategically radicalize and deradicalize exist, some voters perceive these strategic candidates as flip-flopping their positions (Burden Reference Burden2004). As such, politicians sometimes seek other ways to signal varying levels of extremism.

Multi-vocal communication strategies like dog-whistling or double-speak enable politicians to appeal simultaneously to party faithful and general audiences (Albertson Reference Albertson2015; Khoo Reference Khoo2017; Mendelberg Reference Mendelberg2001) by projecting two messages: one to the general public and one to other activists (Feldman and Jackson Reference Feldman and Jackson2014). Double-speak allows radical right politicians to appeal to the general public while also keeping far-right activists engaged in the movement (Korhonen Reference Korhonen, Čeginskas, Kaasik-Krogerus and Sääskilahti2021). In this way, ‘covert, coded, and ever-adapting language use’ enables the far right to reach broader audiences (Åkerlund Reference Åkerlund2022: 1810). Since multi-vocal communication strategies are designed to go over the heads of those who lack insider knowledge of the far right's messaging strategy, these audiences may remain unaware of their exposure to these far-right cues, which can spread these messages further (Saul Reference Saul, Fogal, Harris and Moss2018).

Given that some populist parties strategically deradicalize their message to appeal to the general public (Przybylski Reference Przybylski2018) and others use more nativist appeals when speaking to partisan outlets than in less partisan forums (Borbáth and Gessler Reference Borbáth and Gessler2023), we expect that populists will also discuss CTs differently depending on the audience. Specifically:

If populists leverage dog-whistles repeatedly over time, mainstream audiences may learn the double-speak. Dog-whistles can be ‘steeped in the echoes of history’, which enables the message to appear coded and deniable (Moshin Reference Moshin2018: 37). However, repeat exposure to dog-whistles may motivate some audiences to seek out further information about their meaning (Kasimov et al. Reference Kasimov, Johnston and Heer2023) and mainstream the dog-whistle through repetition (Moshin Reference Moshin2018).

Can populists similarly mainstream CT dog-whistles? We expect that if populists repeatedly dog-whistle a CT, greater numbers of people will come to learn the dog-whistle's meaning. If mainstream audiences learn the dog-whistle's meaning, it will fail to operate as double-speak. From this logic, we derive our second hypothesis:

Empirical context

To test our theory, we analyse the Smoleńsk plane crash, which generated CTs that populists endorsed to varying degrees over time. The crash generated long-lasting politically salient CTs, allowing us to analyse changes in politicians' discursive strategies.

The roots of the Smoleńsk plane crash CTs date to 1940, when the Russian People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) murdered nearly 22,000 Polish intelligentsia and military officers near the town of Katyń (Drzewiecka and Hasian Reference Drzewiecka and Hasian2018). During communism, Soviet leaders claimed the Nazis committed this massacre. Only in 1990 did President Mikhail Gorbachev admit that the NKVD was responsible; he opened archives with corroborating documents. In 2004, President Vladimir Putin closed these archives, which harmed Polish–Russian relations. In 2010, Putin invited top Polish officials to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyń massacre, which heralded a potential improvement in Polish–Russian relations. However, the plane carrying 96 Polish dignitaries to the commemoration crashed en route. All passengers died, including Polish President Lech Kaczyński as well as senior military, government and religious officials.

Official investigation reports revealed that fog and pilot error caused the crash (Zukiewicz and Zimny Reference Zukiewicz and Zimny2019). Nonetheless, CTs about the crash had emerged by late April 2010 (Niżyńska Reference Niżyńska2010) and were published in popular media outlets (Zukiewicz and Zimny Reference Zukiewicz and Zimny2019). Competing accounts of the plane crash proliferated (Myslik et al. Reference Myslik, Khalitova, Zhang, Tarasevich, Kiousis, Mohr, Kim, Turska-Kawa, Carroll and Golan2021; Olechowska Reference Olechowska2022), with the key CT motif claiming that the crash was caused by explosions.

The populist PiS party's officials sometimes dog-whistle and sometimes endorse crash CTs (Bilewicz et al. Reference Bilewicz, Witkowska, Pantazi, Gkinopoulos and Klein2019; Davies Reference Davies2016). For example, in 2012, Jarosław Kaczyński, PiS chairman and brother of the deceased president, accused PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk of conspiring with Russia to cover up the explosions (Davies Reference Davies2016). Other PiS officials have used government resources to launch unsubstantiated crash investigations.

This case allows us to test our theory that populist CT rhetoric discursively varies by target audience because every year, on the 10 April anniversary, discussions about the crash occur offline and online. We argue that these two unique mediums – online discussion and offline commemoration marches – generate two different target audiences. Whereas the offline events create a space filled with the CT's ‘true believers’, online discourse occurs in a space with more diverse general audiences, generating incentives for populists to dog-whistle CTs rather than endorse them outright.

Offline, PiS politicians actively mobilize their electorate around Smoleńsk CTs. On the 10th of each month in Warsaw, PiS officials participate in and organize masses and marches to commemorate those who died in the crash. Attendance totals in the several thousand annually (Jaroch and Urzykowski Reference Jaroch and Urzykowski2022). After a mass, participants march to either the Presidential Palace or to a crash monument PiS built in central Warsaw. Kaczyński typically gives a speech surrounded by PiS politicians, clergymen and police officers. Participants in these marches are ‘actively mobilized and funded’ by PiS (Ekiert and Perry Reference Ekiert, Perry, Ekiert, Perry and Yan2020: 2). Thus, marches attract strong party supporters and CT ‘true believers’ who expend substantial time and resources to participate in this collective action. Therefore, PiS politicians have few incentives to moderate their speech at these offline events.Footnote ²

On the monthly crash anniversary, there is also online discourse about Smoleńsk. Online CT discourse can circulate widely to a more diverse audience, as populists can be followed by both faithful supporters and members of the general public. According to research from the Polish Institute for Research on the Internet and Social Media, Polish social media users are heavily female (56%), young (93% aged 18–29) and live in major cities (68% live in cities with over 250,000 inhabitants). These traits correlate with support for PiS's main opposing party, PO. Indeed, 68% of Polish social media users support PO (Dabrowska-Cydzik Reference Dabrowska-Cydzik2023). Furthermore, on Polish Twitter, many users have politically diverse networks, such that Polish Twitter can ‘facilitate multiple-sided exposure in obtaining political news’ (Matuszewski and Szabo Reference Matuszewski and Szabo2019: 10). Previous studies show that online discourse about the Smoleńsk crash is diverse, including ardent appeals to the CTs, standard media coverage and memorialization of those who died in the crash (Blackington and Cayton Reference Blackington and Cayton2024). Altogether, Polish Twitter provides a more diverse audience than that found at offline gatherings.

Since tweets can quickly spread far beyond their direct follower network due to the retweet feature (Wu et al. Reference Wu, Hofman, Mason and Watts2011), politicians sometimes see Twitter as a way to convey news to, connect with, and share their positions with national and diverse audiences (Heidenreich et al. Reference Heidenreich, Eberl, Lind and Boomgaarden2022; Kreiss et al. Reference Kreiss, Lawrence and McGregor2018; Larsson and Skogerbø Reference Larsson and Skogerbø2016). Politicians may seek to create social media content that will be received well by their followers, so their followers spread the politicians' messages even further (Kelm Reference Kelm2020). Moderating those online posts may improve the resonance of the content. Rather than referencing the CT itself, we thus expect that online discussion of CTs will centre more around the context or histories of those events that gave rise to a CT. This quasi-memorialization can be interpreted as a dog-whistle, earning recognition by compatriots while going over the heads of non-followers (Albertson Reference Albertson2015). Dog-whistling a CT allows populists to appeal to their base in a more covert manner, while also seeking moderate support. Thus, on Twitter, populists may moderate their conspiratorial claims, alluding to rather than endorsing a CT outright.

As noted above, the Smoleńsk CTs have deep historical roots (Khalitova et al. Reference Khalitova, Myslik, Turska-Kawa, Tarasevich and Kiousis2020). Veiled references comparing the Smoleńsk plane crash to the 1940 Katyń massacre or other acts of Russian aggression against Poland may operate as dog-whistles. Over time, we expect these dog-whistles to become mainstream (Kasimov et al. Reference Kasimov, Johnston and Heer2023; Moshin Reference Moshin2018), such that the veiled messaging loses its ability to double-speak. As these dog-whistles become understood by a more mainstream audience, the need to dog-whistle may lessen, encouraging PiS politicians to explicitly invoke the CTs both online and offline.

Data

We create two data sources to assess our theory. First, we compile an original dataset of speeches made by PiS party leader Jarosław Kaczyński at the annual 10 April commemoration events from 2012 to 2019 and in 2022.Footnote ³ The average length of a speech in Polish is 977 words, with a standard deviation of 290 words. Second, we collect a corpus of 433 tweets from the official PiS Twitter account @pisorgpl on 10 April of each year from 2010 to 2022. The average length of a tweet in Polish is 16 words, with a standard deviation of six words.Footnote ⁴

Our approach builds upon other scholars' work assessing (dis)continuities in the rhetorical strategies that politicians deploy in online and offline settings (see Lacatus Reference Lacatus2019; Lacatus and Meibauer Reference Lacatus and Meibauer2023). Our article also builds upon work by scholars who compare tweets and speeches to assess communication (in)congruities across mediums (Lacatus Reference Lacatus2021; Schaefer et al. Reference Schaefer, Abels, Lewandowsky and Stede2023). Further, like Ipek Cinar et al. (Reference Cinar, Stokes and Uribe2020) and Paolo Ricci and Gustavo Venturelli (Reference Ricci and Venturelli2023), we focus on party leaders' discourse because they play a critical role in shaping the party's agenda (Fouirnaies Reference Fouirnaies2018) as well as partisans' attitudes and beliefs (Broockman and Butler Reference Broockman and Butler2017; Zaller Reference Zaller1992).

Analysis

We leverage a mixed-methods approach to analyse whether populists diverge in dog-whistling or explicitly referencing CTs across mediums, deploying both structural topic models (STM) and qualitative content analysis.Footnote ⁵

Structural topic models

We employ STM to parse the underlying themes in the Kaczyński speeches and PiS tweets corpora. Topic models are an unsupervised learning method in which the topics derived are ‘inferred’ rather than ‘assumed’ a priori by the researchers (Grimmer et al. Reference Grimmer, Roberts and Stewart2022; Lucas et al. Reference Lucas, Nielsen, Roberts, Stewart, Storer and Tingley2015; Roberts et al. Reference Roberts, Stewart, Tingley, Lucas, Leder-Luis, Gadarian, Albertson and Rand2014). Through STM, we can assess the extent of CT and non-CT discourse in both corpora. Further, STM allows us to model ‘topics’, or words that commonly appear alongside one another in our corpora, as a function of other metadata.Footnote ⁶ Importantly, topics are derived from the corpus by the STM and not assigned a priori by researchers. We assess topic content (the words used to discuss a topic) and prevalence (how often a topic is discussed) as a function of a tweet or speech's year.Footnote ⁷

We first consider what themes are prominent across both the tweets and speeches corpora. We specify the number of topics with attention to the dispersion parameter, as detailed by Matt Taddy (Reference Taddy2012), yielding five topics for the tweet corpus. To maintain comparability, we also use five topics for the speech corpus.Footnote ⁸ We present the words with the highest probability of being associated with a given topic, both for speeches (Table 1) and for tweets (Table 2). We label each topic based on these words, as well as frequent and exclusive words for each category. We include the full unlabelled topic-year results and discuss the set of words in each topic in more detail in the Supplementary Material, Appendix C.

Table 1.

Speech Topics

Note: Bolded words are conspiratorial. Italicized words memorialize the crash.

Table 2.

Twitter Topics

Note: Bolded words are conspiratorial. Italicized words memorialize the crash.

Assessing the offline speeches, we find that explicit references to the Smoleńsk CTs comprise over 33% of the speech corpus. This topic explicitly references activists who promote monthly events that regularly invoke crash CTs, such as the editor-in-chief of the right-wing weekly Gazeta Polska, Tomasz Sakiewicz. Indeed, both Sakiewicz's first name and Gazeta Polska are regularly mentioned in Kaczyński's annual speeches. Similarly, the second most common topic – making up 22% of the speech content – asserts that the events in Smoleńsk were a ‘crime’ for which the ‘truth’ should be identified. We title this group ‘crash investigation and CT’, as these phrases are suggestive of a need to ‘discuss’ and re-evaluate the ‘response’ to the crash. The offline crash investigation discourse is unsurprising, given PiS's reopening of an investigation into the origins of the crash when it returned to power in 2015. The commission tasked with investigating the crash deliberately ignored evidence that would falsify Smoleńsk CTs (Ptak Reference Ptak2022). Finally, the smallest topic of the speech corpus explicitly characterizes the crash as an ‘evil attack’. Together, over 69% of offline speeches advance crash CTs.

By contrast, the largest topic in the Twitter corpus is memorialization – appearing in almost 33% of the corpus. This category explicitly characterizes the crash as a ‘disaster’, a unique word choice that does not attribute blame for what happened at Smoleńsk but acknowledges the tragedy. This contrasts with the language terming the crash a ‘crime’ or ‘attack’ in Kaczyński's speeches. This category also acknowledges the ‘anniversary’ of the death of ‘President Kaczyński’, focusing more on his loss than the political origins and/or ramifications surrounding his death.

Similarly, the second most common topic for the tweet corpus mnemonically ties those who died in the crash to the Katyń massacre, the event that Polish officials flew to Smoleńsk to commemorate. Linking Smoleńsk to Katyń is a dog-whistle for the Smoleńsk CTs, as it portrays the plane crash as ‘the latest narrative arc in a calamitous book of Polish memory’ (Soroka Reference Soroka2022: 335) and suggests support for Smoleńsk CTs without endorsing them. The next two categories focus on logistics of the offline speech, directing followers to where and how they may find information. Finally, the smallest category – at only 12% of the corpus – appeals to discovering the ‘truth’. While we label this category as CTs, the words identified by the STM are less explicit CT references than those in the speeches.

In both corpora, we find support for our first and second hypotheses. PiS invokes more explicit appeals to CTs amongst its base. When speaking to a broader audience, CT references are less explicit but rather are buried amongst other appeals to historical memory.

To gain a sense of whether and how these appeals may mainstream, we leverage the STM's ability to account for how a topic's content and prevalence varies as a function of time. Figures 1 and 2 provide the expected proportion of the corpus comprising each topic over time. In both figures we colour code topics by those that make CT appeals (red), those appealing to politically relevant topics that are not specific CT endorsements (blue) and those topics focusing on programmatic or logistics related information (black).

Figure 1.

Expected Topic Proportion Over Time – Speeches

Figure 2.

Expected Topic Proportions Over Time – Tweets

Figure 1 shows that Kaczyński's rhetoric at marches oscillates between explicit CT appeals, agitating to spread CTs offline, or detailing the CT investigation. All three topics remain common in his discourse over time. Though we must remain conservative in our interpretation given the limited number of speeches in our corpus, the ‘crash CT investigation’ category rises from a predicted 0% of the corpus in 2012 to roughly 50% by 2022.

PiS also leverages memorialization rhetoric to greater degrees over time in both corpora. Between 2019 and 2022, Kaczyński's speeches invoke more memorialization rhetoric. This topic jumps from about 10% of the speeches to roughly 40%. Similarly, on Twitter, while CTs remain a small proportion of PiS tweets, explicit CT endorsements increase over time. In this manner, the speech and tweet time trends resemble each other.

Importantly, over time, the confidence intervals widen in both the tweet and the speech corpora for both the memorialization (blue) and CT (red) topics. These widened confidence intervals occur alongside the uptick in both CT and memorialization rhetoric. The ambiguity around topic usage rates and increased usage of both rhetorical strategies suggest that PiS officials increasingly couple dog-whistles with explicit CT endorsements online and offline.

Though descriptive, this trend could reflect a blurring of the distinction between dog-whistling and CT endorsements. Dog-whistling and barking may not be stable strategies that elites can continuously peddle to different audiences over time. Instead, as elites use dog-whistles repeatedly, this rhetoric loses its ability to double-speak. We interpret this evidence as supporting our third hypothesis that the distinction between ‘dog-whistles’ and ‘barks’ may become less explicit as elite CT appeals are recognized by mainstream audiences.

Qualitative content analysis

Our unsupervised STMs suggest a substantive distinction between online and offline PiS CT rhetoric. To gain a better sense of the tenor of these conversations, we turn to the rhetoric itself. We find that while Kaczyński sometimes invokes dog-whistles, he almost always explicitly endorses CTs about the crash in his speeches. Likewise, online, even language appearing within the ‘conspiracy theory’ category often reflects dog-whistling rhetoric.

Offline

In seven of the nine years in our sample of speeches, Kaczyński ‘barked’ crash CTs. In 2022, he stated that the crash was ‘an assassination’. He subsequently noted a need to identify ‘how to treat those responsible for the crime … those that made the decision and those who carried it out, here in Poland, but above all, there in Russia’. Kaczyński's rhetoric endorsed crash CTs at this 2022 event. Similarly, in 2016, Kaczyński stated of Tusk and PO:

They wanted to kill this memory [of the crash]; they are afraid of being banned … that previous government was responsible for it. Not this one of Kopacz, of course, only the one of Donald Tusk … The Smoleńsk tragedy was no accident.

Alongside explicit statements blaming PO for instigating the crash, Kaczyński interwove various dog-whistles. He implied that foreign or domestic actors were responsible for hiding ‘the truth’, which Poles needed to identify. These statements imply support for a CT without explicitly invoking one. For example, in 2019, Kaczyński stated that

The trip to Smoleńsk for Katyń [commemorations] was not an ordinary trip. They were on a mission which promoted a broader cause than just the memory of those who were murdered 70 years ago, now almost 80. It was about Poland … about what is extremely important and what was taken from us not only in the terrible years of World War II, but also later after World War II and after 1989: It is the right to truth. In the case of our nation, this right to truth is also the right to dignity … We must fight for this truth.

To believers of Smoleńsk CTs, this quote dog-whistles by suggesting that the truth surrounding the plane crash remains unknown. However, to a general audience, this quote appears more mild – focused on dignity, truth and national identity rather than a CT.

Similarly, in 2018, Kaczyński used double-speak by claiming that the marches and investigations ‘have contributed to the fact that we can say once again that we have won … we served our homeland, we served the truth and dignity of Poland’. In this quote, ‘the truth’ appears neutral. However, for CT believers, ‘the truth’ suggests that Kaczyński is uncovering the allegedly nefarious causes of the plane crash. Indeed, dog-whistling rhetoric focusing on truth appears in all of Kaczyński's anniversary speeches in our sample.

Online

The large number of tweets within our corpus allow STM to identify the ‘most’ representative tweets in each topic identified within our corpus.Footnote ⁹ These tweets provide a qualitative depiction of the party's online rhetoric.

We start with the 12% of the Twitter corpus identified by the STM analysis as CT references. All five examples of the most representative tweets in this topic quote excerpts of Kaczyński's offline speeches, meaning online barks are recycled from the offline events. For example, in 2015 PiS tweeted, ‘Without the truth about Smoleńsk, we cannot build a strong country – says J. Kaczyński in front of the Presidential Palace.’ This vague appeal to the ‘truth’ of Smoleńsk invokes the crash but is less explicit than the suggestions of Russian explosives or invocation of Tusk's culpability found in the speeches.

More commonly, tweets emphasize standard mourning practices like attending mass or laying flowers on the graves of those who died. For example, in 2021, PiS tweeted on the crash anniversary that ‘On behalf of the PiS Parliamentary Club … PiS MP @TeresaWargocka laid flowers at the memorial to the Smoleńsk catastrophe.’ Similar tweets comprise all five of the ‘memorialization’ categories of tweets, which are roughly 33% of the corpus. These exemplar tweets are largely culled from earlier years (2013, 2014, 2016, 2019 and 2021), reflecting the emphasis on pure memorialization online in the early years after the crash.

Over time, dog-whistling rhetoric wanes whereas explicit CT endorsements increase. This is visible by looking at the words specific to each topic for each year. For a full list of unique words for each year, see Supplementary Material, Appendix C. By 2022, the ‘Katyń memory’ category uniquely included the word ‘crime’ and ‘Ukraine’, as visible in Table 3. Whereas early years of this category focused on attending masses or laying flowers on the graves of those who died in the plane crash, by 2022 even this more neutral category included explicit conspiratorial references. PiS elites suggest that the memorialization of Katyń, the 2010 crash, and Russia's full-fledged invasion of Ukraine constitute examples of ‘crime[s]’.

Table 3.

Katyń Memory Tweet STM Topic: Unique Words to Topic by Year

Dog-whistling and barking rhetoric merges with time. On the one hand, this fusion of dog-whistles and barks may emerge from an event rendering some CT claims as more ‘believable’. In this case, Russia's willingness to seek violent regime change in Ukraine may lend credibility to the idea that Russia similarly may have caused the Smoleńsk crash. On the other hand, after more than a decade of PiS elites dog-whistling Smoleńsk CTs, the average person may understand the meaning of the dog-whistle. In this way, dog-whistles may lose their veiling power, which could create incentives for politicians to simply bark.

The recent blurring between the CT and memorialization rhetoric suggested in our STM is also visible in the raw tweets. For example, in a tweet quoting Kaczyński's 2022 speech, PiS tweets, ‘What happened at Smoleńsk? We knew that it was a catastrophe, but was it an ordinary one, an accident, or something entirely different?’ This appeal – much more explicit than the vague references to ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ referenced in earlier years' tweets – suggests a newfound willingness to bark both on- and offline.

Qualitative analysis of the rhetoric deployed in both Kaczyński's speeches and PiS's tweets on 10 April indicates that while PiS politicians regularly dog-whistle online, PiS politicians regularly endorse CTs in-person. Where true believers gather, politicians may lack incentives to moderate their claims. Further, since dog-whistling often occurs alongside explicit endorsements, these offline outlets may ‘train’ potential CT believers to spot dog-whistles. Finally, as dog-whistles become more mainstreamed, politicians may distinguish less between target audiences when tailoring CT rhetoric.