  The disruptive offline mobilization of participants in online conspiracy
theory (CT) discussions has highlighted the importance of understanding how
online users may form radicalized conspiracy beliefs. While prior work
researched the factors leading up to joining online CT discussions and provided
theories of how conspiracy beliefs form, we have little understanding of how
conspiracy radicalization evolves after users join CT discussion communities.
In this paper, we provide the empirical modeling of various radicalization
phases in online CT discussion participants. To unpack how conspiracy
engagement is related to radicalization, we first characterize the users'
journey through CT discussions via conspiracy engagement pathways.
Specifically, by studying 36K Reddit users through their 169M contributions, we
uncover four distinct pathways of conspiracy engagement: steady high,
increasing, decreasing, and steady low. We further model three successive
stages of radicalization guided by prior theoretical works. Specific
sub-populations of users, namely those on steady high and increasing conspiracy
engagement pathways, progress successively through various radicalization
stages. In contrast, users on the decreasing engagement pathway show distinct
behavior: they limit their CT discussions to specialized topics, participate in
diverse discussion groups, and show reduced conformity with conspiracy
subreddits. By examining users who disengage from online CT discussions, this
paper provides promising insights about conspiracy recovery process.
