Navin Kumar


2026

Conspiratorial discourse is increasingly present in online communication, yet how it is organized across discussion topics remains unclear. We analyze Singapore-based Telegram groups to examine how conspiratorial content appears within everyday conversations rather than isolated echo chambers. To better capture the structure of such discussions, we propose a two-stage framework for topic modeling tailored to conspiratorial posts. First, a RoBERTa-large classifier identifies conspiratorial messages (F1 = 0.866) using 2,000 expert-annotated examples. We then construct a graph where connections reflect textual similarity and conspiratorial stance. This graph is modeled using a Signed Belief Graph Neural Network (SiBeGNN), which learns message embeddings that distinguish conspiratorial from non-conspiratorial content. We apply hierarchical clustering on these embeddings to perform topic modeling over 553,648 Telegram messages, producing seven topic clusters: General Legal Topics, Medical Concerns, Media Discussions, Banking and Finance, Contradictions in Authority, Group Moderation, and General Discussions. Our method substantially outperforms standard embedding-based clustering approaches (cDBI = 8.38 vs. 13.60–67.27), with manual evaluation showing 88% inter-rater agreement in cluster interpretation. The results show that conspiratorial content appears across multiple everyday topics, including finance, law, and daily life, rather than forming isolated thematic communities.