“WE ARE IN CONTROL”: INSTAGRAM INFLUENCERS AND THE PROLIFERATION OF CONSPIRACY NARRATIVES IN DIGITAL SPACES

• Authors: Heřmanová Marie
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Female spiritual influencers on Instagram engage with conspiracy content and appeal to the issue of control over female bodies to bridge the gap between mainstream and fringe online spaces. I use the concept of “third space” to analyse the dynamics of Instagram communities around spiritual influencers and highlight how these communities operate as spaces for political discussion while simultaneously appearing apolitical from the outside. Analysing data from participant observation and interviews with six female Czech spiritual influencers, I place their online communication and presentation within the context of the conspirituality movement (Ward, Voas, 2011). Furthermore, I present ethnographic evidence on how the influencers moved from spiritual to conspiritual content within their everyday online performances.

Keywords

EN

INFLUENCERS; INSTAGRAM; CONSPIRACY THEORIES; CONSPIRITUALITY; CZECH

• Publisher: Institute of Ethnology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenský národopis (Slovak Ethnology)
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 70
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 349 – 368

Contributors

author

Heřmanová Marie

• Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, 110 01 Praha, Czech Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2483-1699

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/SN.2022.3.29