Societal crises give rise to societal instability and create fertile grounds for conspiratorial thinking. During the COVID19-pandemic, conspiracy beliefs seemingly affected the stability of the democratic order by fueling discontent with political elites. Social media accelerate the distribution of conspiracy narratives, and thereby, conspiracy beliefs (Lamberty & Rees, 2021), possibly fostering anti-elitism and norm-deviating political behaviour (Imhoff et al., 2020).

However, the precise mechanism contributing to the growing discontent of certain societal groups is still unclear, and linking social media content effects to offline dynamics has proven challenging. Against the backdrop of these developments, we aim to address the link of conspiracy beliefs to anti-elitism by comparing longitudinal analyses of Telegram data and survey panel data. Explicitly, the paper aims to answer whether (a) the publicly discussed dynamics on Telegram are holding empirically and (b) the relationship found online is mirrored in society as a whole.

To examine these questions, this study uses data on German Telegram protest communication in 2020/2021 since Telegram manifested as the most important platform for the distribution of COVID19-related conspiracy narratives (Hohlfeld et al., 2021). The results of this content analysis are contrasted with individual-level analyses based on a three-wave panel survey conducted in 2021 in Germany. By using comparable measurements of the key dimensions of conspiracy beliefs and anti-elitism, the results of the two studies can be interpreted in comparison. Finally, we exploit the longitudinal structure of both datasets to explore the direction of the effects of conspiracy beliefs on anti-elitism (and vice versa).