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0000-0002-5812-9785
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La Trobe University
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-07-2020
Publisher: Queensland University of Technology
Date: 17-03-2022
DOI: 10.5204/MCJ.2871
Abstract: Introduction There are many competing explanations for why people are drawn to conspiracy theories. Increasingly, conspiracy theories are mainstream sites of cultural engagement (Barkun). Conspiracy theorising, then, is part of, or at least brushes up against, people’s daily sense-making practices. However, many still think of conspiracy theorising and the communities that form around them as deviant, pathological or deficient (Swami et al.). In this article, we argue that we need to shift from a model of a deficient and deviant understanding of conspiracy theorising to understand these practices as part of our everyday behavioural and social repertoires. We argue that part of this shift means attending to the sensory and felt experience of conspiracy thinking, as a bodily and affective experience, as a site of pleasure. Centring pleasure as an explanatory framework for conspiracy theorising does not foreclose other explanations. Rather we argue that pleasure operates as a broader explanatory framework within which these competing explanations can also offer insight. We do not aim to provide an empirical account of the #FreeBritney movement in this article, but instead use it as an ex le through which we can begin to develop pleasure as a potential explanatory framework for understanding conspiracy theorising. To argue for the centrality of ‘pleasure’ in conspiracy theories, we draw on scholarship from fandom studies to ask, “What can the ‘Free Britney’ movement tell us about the pleasures of conspiracy?” We pay particular attention to how conspiracy theorising can be understood as a site of pleasure and, at times, hope, which in turn transform conspiracy theories into ‘sticky’ cultural sites (Ahmed). The centring of pleasure as a driver of conspiracy theorising also points to possible alternative approaches to countering the affective pull of conspiracy theories. Why #FreeBritney? This article focusses on the #FreeBritney community as an ex le for several reasons. #FreeBritney sits outside many of the political concerns that often characterise conspiracy theories that is, it is neither left nor right in its orientation. Additionally, #FreeBritney was initially written off as nonsense by mainstream media outlets and commentators. For ex le, in the first version of TikToker Abbie Richards’s viral chart that categorises conspiracy theories, #FreeBritney is in the same category as UFOs and not something that ‘actually happened’ (Richards), meaning Richards did not believe the central claim of the #FreeBritney movement, that Britney wished to end an abusive conservatorship, was real. Similar coverage was evident in other press, including by Maria Sherman for Jezebel, which describes the #FreeBritney theory as “dubiously sourced” and as “mak[ing] gargantuan assumptions about mental health without much concrete evidence” (Sherman). Despite the derision, #FreeBritney persisted, and the claims made in the initial, instigating episode of Britney’s Gram (a fan-created podcast) have been borne in court, affirmed by Spears herself, and in numerous pieces of investigative reporting (Stark and Day). The #FreeBritney Context So, how did we get to #FreeBritney? In early 2008, after a string of increasingly erratic public appearances, Britney Spears was placed into a conservatorship arrangement. Conservatorships are typically reserved for the elderly and mentally ill, or those without the capacity to care for them themselves. Spears’s conservatorship meant that she could not make any personal or financial decisions for herself. Spears’s conservatorship was overseen by her father and court-appointed lawyers who benefited financially by allegedly exploiting the arrangement (Day and Abrams). Until 2021, Spears remained under the conservatorship, while continuing to work. These working arrangements included world tours, TV appearances and a long-running Las Vegas residency where she performed a 90-100 minute show several times per week (Jacobs). Rumours marked the beginning of Spears’s conservatorship that it was an attempt to exploit Spears financially while keeping her under parental control (Jacobs). This is evidenced by her thwarted attempt to acquire legal representation, where the court ultimately ruled that she was too unwell to retain her own counsel (Coscarelli et al.). Rumours of a broader conspiracy designed to entrap Spears in the conservatorship only gained widespread traction in 2019, resulting in the birth of the #FreeBritney movement. The growth of #FreeBritney discourse can be traced to an April 2019 episode of the podcast Britney’s Gram (Barker and Babs). Britney’s Gram was initially a ‘close reading’ of Spears’s Instagram focussed on parsing her captions, images, and emoticon use. In the podcast's special ‘emergency’ episode, episode 75, titled “#FreeBritney”, the nature of the conspiracy regarding Spears’s conservatorship took shape. The ‘emergency’ episode of the podcast responded to a tip called into the Britney’s Gram hotline. The anonymous source claims to be a paralegal who worked on legal documents related to the conservatorship throughout their employment. The paralegal claims that the conservatorship is “disturbing to say the least”. The show goes on to lay out a timeline of key events that support their assertion that Spears is being kept in the conservative against her will. Their claims are supported by a ‘close reading’ of Spears’s output, including her Instagram account and her public appearances, both official and unofficial. The hosts assemble their theory from a erse range of sources, but their iterative theory building is underscored by the hosts’ empathetic reading, “what if it were me?” Fandom and the Collective Feelings of Conspiracy The #FreeBritney movement offers an opportunity to reflect on the parallels and intersections between fandom culture and conspiracy. It also allows us to consider what contemporary fan practices might tell us about the appeal of engaging in conspiracy. While #FreeBritney as a movement has extended far beyond the reach of the Britney Spears fandom, its roots began in the everyday fan practices that are not unique to the singer's supporters. Identifying as a ‘fan’ of a celebrity, a band, television show, film franchise, or other popular cultural texts has become a mainstream activity in recent decades, moving from a more subcultural or fringe practice (Gray et al.). Fan practices often include developing a repertoire of knowledge of their chosen fandom. This repertoire allows them to conduct close readings of these ‘texts’, which include relevant images and social media content (Hills), and look for patterns, consistencies and inconsistencies — what Jason Mittell (52) calls ‘forensic fandom’. Fans also create their own paratexts drawing on their fandom-specific knowledge to create work such as fanfiction, fan videos (fanvids), blogs, dedicated social media accounts, podcasts (such as Britney’s Gram) and other texts that fans may also analyse (Geraghty). Much like engaging in conspiracy, participating in fandom is also a broad continuum in terms of commitment, and depth of engagement. Some fans are more peripheral to the fandom, casually engaged, and only broadly aware of close reading practices that may be normalised for those within the more engaged inner circle of the fandom. However, these more casual fans may also draw on and consume paratext created by more avid fans. Creators of popular and well-made paratexts can even become renowned in social media spaces within fan communities for their creations (Hills). This mirrors conspiracy thinking, where believers range from curious about the conspiracy to committed and embedded in the conspiracy community. Like fandoms, the more active participants in the conspiracy can become established and well-known in the community for disseminating information and knowledge. For ex le, many followers of the QAnon conspiracy receive most of their information through secondary QAnon social media influencers who interpret ‘Qdrops’ rather than interpret the cryptic message board posts themselves (Conner and MacMurray). Scholarship examining fandom and fan experiences has emphasised the key role of pleasure for fans in developing this fan expertise (McCann and Southerton). In particular, the practices of close textual reading and familiarity with the fandom's texts, symbols, and key players offer a sense of community and collective feeling. As McCann and Southerton report in their study on queer shipping among One Direction fans (when fans invest emotional energy in the relationship, the ‘ship’, between two characters or celebrities), pleasure is collective rather than in idual and emerges from a sense of belonging and shared investment. While, as we have discussed, the differing levels of involvement and investment can create hierarchy, and therefore potential conflict within fandom, scholarship on fandom has argued that fans primarily take pleasure in the feeling of community, support and belonging (McCann and Southerton Geraghty Pearson). Fan spaces are spaces in which collective feelings can be heightened, as participants take pleasure in experiencing something that thousands of others are feeling simultaneously — whether it be in person at a concert or, increasingly, in social media communities. The pleasures of fandom also go beyond momentous occasions like a singer's album launch or a celebrity scandal. Fans can cultivate pleasure in the mundane practices of fandom by building a sense of building and momentum, by using their close reading to predict imminent events (e.g. attempting to discern what Instagram posts might be hinting that a popstar is going to put out a new album) or undertaking rereading of old material to reinterpret meanings in new contemporary light. The pleasures of anticipation are central to these fan practices, with close reading offering endless rewards. Conspiracy theorists operate similarly, even when an anticipated event does not come to fruition. When the predictions of the mysterious Q that tell of mass arrests of prominent enemies of the movement fail to eventuate, rather than lose belief in Q’s prophetic power, the believers find explanation and new events to anticipate (Butler and Martin). Is #FreeBritney a Conspiracy? While it is tempting to situate #FreeBritney firmly within the domain of fan studies, we argue that while later borne out by facts, it can also be understood as a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are united by a focus on and fear of a larger malevolent actor, who uses the power vested in institutions to control the narrative about the conspiracy, and indeed the conspiracy itself (Melley). In #FreeBritney, the stakes are a little lower, with the clearest villains being Spears’s immediate family, who appear to have financially benefited from her conservatorship. Nevertheless, the conspiracy involves elements of control, not only over Spears herself but the media, the criminal justice system, and the medical professionals diagnosing and treating Spears, as well as any close friends and staff. As with other conspiracies, power is exercised through social institutions to ‘cover up’ the conspiracy itself and any damage it is causing (Barkun Melley). If conspiracies are secret, how then are they detected? Key to conspiracy theorising is the ‘close reading’ or ‘forensic’ examination (Mittell) of various texts to spot inconsistencies and gaps in authenticity that disrupt the dominant narrative. This is a hallmark of conspiracy theorising, which relies on “the interpretation of half-hidden cIues, tell-tale signs, and secret messages” (Melley 16). Within #FreeBritney, close reading is most obviously applied to her Instagram account and extends to various court courts, interviews, and media reporting. This analysis allows for these inconsistencies to build an alternative explanation while using a corpus of evidence available to everyone. Where Is the Pleasure? Where can we locate the sources of pleasure in #FreeBritney? To be clear, we are arguing for an understanding of pleasure that is not eroticised but rather found in the arguably mundane practises of conspiracy. The close, detailed sifting through evidence required to build a conspiracy theory is pleasurable in a number of ways. These practices are pleasurable in and of themselves — developing deep knowledge assembling the threads in the conspiracy theory holds the in idual in a continual site of possibility and potential. The space of ‘what if’ where nothing is certain and outcomes can be constantly refigured allows conspiracy theorists to exist in expectation, in ‘looking forward to’ as one would a long-awaited holiday. The pleasure is in anticipating the event, but not necessarily in the resolution of the conspiracy itself. The momentum and anticipation in fan communities are remarkably similar to those of conspiracy theory communities, creating a pleasurable affective atmosphere (Anderson) that circulates in and through digital practices. The ‘close reading’ practice we describe is also pleasurable through proximity and intimacy. Close reading allows for a point of entry and connection to the broader #Free Britney community, where close readings are contributed, the readings of others are affirmed, and these in idual contributions are incorporated into the fabric of the community. Close reading also provides proximity and a sense of intimate familiarity with Spears herself. Close reading is only made possible through deep knowledge, through being able to understand Spears’s self-presentation, mediated through digital platforms like Instagram, as authentic or forced. The Internet also makes close reading more accessible and immediate. Instagram posts can be saved for later perusal, comments screenshotted, and deleted comments captured before they vanish. This work of understanding, interpreting, and building happens both in real time (as soon as content is posted) and retrospectively, using what is now known or agreed upon to go back and reinterpret old material, hunting for clues and signs previously missed. This is evident in a number of TikToks where fans closely interpret Britney’s movement to confirm their theories. In one video, Spears discusses the LGBTQIA+ community. The video is not particularly coherent, and in the comments, a fan writes, “If you need help, wear yellow and blink twice”, and “If you need help do two spins” (ABC News). In her next video, Spears appears wearing a yellow top and holding flowers she blinks twice, then does two spins for the camera. Given what we now know about Spears’s situation at the time, it seems likely she was in dialogue with her fans, counting on their close reading, attention to detail, and emotional investment. While Spears’s abusive conservatorship was obviously of concern to fans, there is also pleasure in the moments of reading, knowing, and dialoguing with Spears, creating a parasocial intimacy (ABC News). These compounding pleasures are overlapping and mutually reinforcing and create what Ahmed would call a ‘sticky’ site of affective engagement. Ahmed’s conceptualisation of ‘stickiness’ often refers to negative affects, but we argue can apply to positive or pleasurable affectivities. Conclusion #FreeBritney began as a fringe fan concern. It was mocked, derided and dismissed, before being ultimately vindicated through legal action and the removal of the conservatorship. Legal action addressing the financial exploitation of Spears is underway (Day). In a video after the end of her conservatorship, Spears speaks to her fans through an Instagram video detailing her next steps (Sky News). She also thanks the #FreeBritney movement, saying, the Free Britney Movement, you guys rock! Honestly, my voice was muted and threatened for so long, and um I wasn’t able to speak up or say anything, and um because of you guys’ awareness and kind of knowing what was going on and delivering that news to the public for so long ... because of you, I honestly think you guys saved my life. Examining the #FreeBritney movement allows us to consider the role of pleasure in conspiracy theorising. Through this reading, we can also begin to understand conspiracy theorists in a more nuanced way. Those who believe in conspiracy theories are often characterised as fearful, anxious, and paranoid. However, there are pleasurable affectivities also associated with conspiracy theorising. While conspiracy theories most often circulate through and coalesce in online spaces, #FreeBritney demonstrates that theories also drive practice with fans protesting outside of Spears’s court hearings and taking steps to dismantle the conservatorship system more generally (Rolling Stone). Focussing on pleasure can also explain the derision directed towards conspiracy theories and their subscribers. Anti-fan communities provide a language to discuss the gleeful debunking and mocking of conspiracy theories. Pleasure is also a core part of anti-fandom, that is groups mobilised around their hate of something or someone (usually a celebrity with a fan following), and this anti-fandom mirrors many core fan practices (Pinkowitz). The anti-fan is smarter and more discerning than the fan and has the ‘right’ way of thinking, reasoning, and appreciating. The rational anti-fan understands that any clue in Spears’s videos is coincidental and that fans are over-involved, overreacting and out of touch. However, the pleasure of anti-fandom, and debunking more generally, cannot exist without the fan and the conspiracy theory. Thus, the pleasure of the anti-fan only exists in dialogue with the fan, or in this case, the perceived conspiracy theorist. Attending to conspiracy theories as a site of pleasure allows us to construct a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the seemingly magnetic pull of conspiracy theories. References ABC News. “Britney Spears’s Fans Claim She Is Pleading for Help through Her Social Media Videos.” 24 July 2020. www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-24/britney-spears-fans-claim-she-is-pleading-for-help/12488754 . Ahmed, Sara. Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh UP, 2014. Anderson, Ben. “Affective Atmospheres.” Emotion, Space and Society 2.2 (2009): 77–81. Barker, Tess, and Grey Babs. “75 #FREEBRITNEY.” Britney’s Gram, podcast, 75 (16 Apr. 2019). ser-405122914-411166228/74-freebritney . Barkun, Michael. “Conspiracy Theories as Stigmatized Knowledge.” Diogenes 62.3-4 (2015): 114–20. Butler, Josh, and Sarah Martin. “Australian Online Anti-Vaccine Groups Switch to Putin Praise and Ukraine Conspiracies.” The Guardian 1 Mar. 2022. ustralia-news/2022/mar/02/australias-anti-vaccine-groups-switch-focus-to-putin-praise-and-ukraine-conspiracies . Conner, Christopher T., and Nicholas MacMurray. “The Perfect Storm: A Subcultural Analysis of the QAnon Movement.” Critical Sociology (Nov. 2021). .1177/08969205211055863 . Coscarelli, Joe, et al. “Britney Spears Can Hire a New Lawyer of Her Choice, Judge Rules.” The New York Times 14 July 2021. /07/14/arts/music/britney-spears-conservatorship-lawyer.html . Day, Liz. “Britney Spears Fights Father’s Fee Claim, Alleging Financial Misconduct.” The New York Times 19 Jan. 2022. /01/18/business/britney-spears-father-fees.html . Day, Liz, and Rachel Abrams. “Investigation into Britney Spears Conservatorship Will Look into Her Finances.” The New York Times 2 Nov. 2021. /11/02/us/britney-spears-father-deposition.html . Geraghty, Lincoln. “Introduction: Fans and Paratexts.” Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences and Paratexts, ed. Lincoln Geraghty. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. 1–14. Gray, Jonathan, et al. “Why Still Study Fans?” Fandom, Second Edition: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, ed. Jonathan Gray et al. NYU P, 2017. 1–27. Hills, Matt. “Fiske’s ‘Textual Productivity’ and Digital Fandom: Web 2.0 Democratization versus Fan Distinction.” Participations 10.1 (2013): 130–53. Jacobs, Julia. “What Is Actually Happening with Britney Spears?” The New York Times 17 May 2019. /05/17/arts/music/britney-spears-conservatorship-mental-health.html . McCann, Hannah, and Clare Southerton. “Repetitions of Desire: Queering the One Direction Fangirl.” Girlhood Studies 12.1 (2019): 49–65. Melley, Timothy. Empire of Conspiracy. Cornell UP, 2016. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. NYU P, 2015. Pearson, Roberta. “Fandom in the Digital Era.” Popular Communication 8.1 (2010): 84–95. Pinkowitz, Jacqueline M. “‘The Rabid Fans That Take [Twilight] Much Too Seriously’: The Construction and Rejection of Excess in Twilight Antifandom.” Transformative Works and Cultures 7 (2011): 1–17. Richards, Abbie. “The Conspiracy Chart.” Twitter 3 Oct. 2020. bbieasr/status/1312512066071060480 . Rolling Stone. “#FreeBritney Rallies around the World.” 14 July 2021. ulture/culture-pictures/freebritney-rallies-britney-spears-conservatorship-photos-1197458/buk_1491/ . Sherman, Maria. “A Guide to the #FreeBritney Theory That Britney Spears Is Being Held against Her Will.” Jezebel 23 Apr. 2019. -guide-to-the-freebritney-theory-that-britney-spears-1834216480 . Sky News. “Britney Spears Thanks Fans in Instagram Video after Conservatorship Ends.” 17 Nov. 2021. ideo/video-im-not-here-to-be-a-victim-britney-spears-speaks-after-end-of-conservatorship-12470545 . Stark, Samatha, and Liz Day. “‘Controlling Britney Spears’ Reveals Details of Her Life under Conservatorship.” The New York Times 2 Nov. 2021. rticle/controlling-britney-spears.html . Swami, Viren, et al. “Associations between Belief in Conspiracy Theories and the Maladaptive Personality Traits of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5.” Psychiatry Research 236 (2016): 86–90.
Publisher: Queensland University of Technology
Date: 17-03-2022
DOI: 10.5204/MCJ.2892
Abstract: Conspiracies have been a cultural mainstay for decades (Melley). While often framed as an American problem (Melley), social media has contributed to their global reach (Gerts et al.). Bruns, Harrington, and Hurcombe have traced the contemporary movement of conspiracy theories into the cultural mainstream from fringe conspiracist groups on social media platforms such as Facebook through their greater uptake in more erse communities and to substantial lification by celebrities, sports stars, and media outlets. Consequently, conspiracy theories that were once the product of subcultural groups have increasingly mixed into popular and authoritative media (Marwick and Lewis) and entertainment (Hyzen and van den Bulck van den Bulck and Hyzen). Over the past five years conspiracy theories, whether they be anti-vaccination, politically motivated, or pop-cultural artefacts, have found their way into mainstream cultural discourse. Increasingly, conspiracy theories, once regarded as the domain of largely harmless eccentrics, are having real, material effects. These real-world harms are evident across a number of domains of social life, from the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 (Moskalenko and McCauley) to the effects of vaccine refusal and resistance which continue to stymie attempts to control the global COVID-19 pandemic (Baker, Wade, and Walsh). Digital spaces and communities have made conspiracy theories more accessible and transmissible. Conspiracies are persistent, resistant, and pervasive. The illusion of neat segmentation between the sites of conspiracy theorising and mainstream media content generation has vanished. However, our understanding of what motivates those engaging with and disseminating conspiracy theories is still partial and incomplete. While there is a large corpus of social psychological research into conspiracies, much of this research is focused on deficits in logic, reasoning, and/or personality traits. The focus of the ‘deficits’ of those draw to conspiracy theories is also reflected in popular discourse, where those believing in conspiracy theories are described within a variety of synonyms for the word ‘stupid’ (Chu, Yuan, and Liu). In this issue, we approach the topic of conspiracy from a different standpoint, exploring the sociological conditions that enable conspiracies to flourish. We have assembled a variety of articles, both empirical and conceptual, from which a more complex social picture of conspiracy emerges. To begin examining the complex social life of conspiracy theories, our feature article by Brownwyn Fredericks, Abraham Bradfield, Sue McAvoy, James Ward, Shea Spierings, Troy Combo, and Agnes Toth-Peter cuts through the conspiracy frame to a very real world ex le of the consequences of conspiracy. They examine the specific social contexts and media ecologies through which COVID-19 conspiracies have flourished in some (not all) Indigenous communities in Australia. Their analysis highlights the detrimental impacts of unresolved elements of settler colonialism that propagate conspiracist thinking within these communities. Through research conducted with stakeholder participants from the Indigenous health sector (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) they outline a series of recommendations for how we can constructively address the demonstrated impact of circulating misinformation upon Indigenous communities in Australia. In their recommendations they reinforce the need to centralise Indigenous voices and expertise in our social and political life. Other articles in the issue explore how to theorise conspiracism, present ex les of contemporary conspiracism in digital media, unpack methods for how to conduct research in this socially contentious space, and highlight the consequences of conspiracies. They draw ex les of communities entangled with conspiracy theories and media environments across the world. Absence and presence (of evidence) are both important elements in conspiracy theorising. In contrast to scholarship that focusses on the spread of conspiracy-style misinformation, Tyler Easterbrook’s examination of dead links or ‘link rot’ online demonstrates how the absence and removal of information can be a powerful motivator of conspiracy rhetoric. Easterbrook’s work demonstrates the potential complexities of moderation models that emphasise the removal of conspiratorial content. The absence of content can be as powerful as its presence. Scott DeJong’s and Alex Bustamante’s article uses novel methods to interrogate the analogies we frequently use when discussing the spread of conspiracy theories online. In designing their own board system to model how conspiracy theories might spread, they speak to a growing body of work that likens conspiracy theories to game systems. DeJong’s and Bustamante’s article highlighted the powerful capacity of creative methods to speak to social problems. Echoing Easterbrook’s warning about the power of content removal to fuel conspiracy theorising, in their simulating DeJong and Bustamante found that there is an “interplay between the removal of content and its spread” and argue that “removing conspiracy is a band-aid solution to a larger problem”. With current attention focussed on the problem of moderating conspiracy and misinformation in digital ecologies, these articles are important considerations about the relative success of such a strategy. In their commentary examining so-called COVID-19 ‘cures’, Stephanie Alice Baker and Alexia Maddox explore how hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin shifted from potential COVID treatments to objects embroiled in conspiracy during the pandemic. Baker and Maddox highlight the interwoven nature of the conspiracy landscape illustrating the roles that public figures and influencers played in lifying conspiratorial discourse and knowledge about these drugs. Importantly, as with DeJong and Bustamante, and as also highlighted by Easterbrook, they highlight how tackling conspiracy theories is not as simple as providing “accurate” facts to counter false and misleading information. Baker and Maddox argue that, paradoxically, the process of debunking which included mockery and derision “reinforces the audience segmentation that occurs in the current media ecology by virtue of alternative media with mockery and ridicule strengthening in and out group dynamics”. When debunking succumbs to ridicule, they suggest that critics may be strengthening people’s commitment to conspiratorial narratives and alternative influence networks. Tresa LeClerc’s article explores the increasing entanglement of health and wellness with alternative right (or alt-right) conspiracies, focussing on underlying themes of white nationalism within these communities. LeClerc’s piece compellingly traces the ideological underpinnings of purity within the paleo diet that already blend pseudoscience and conspiracy, highlighting the ways wellness spaces have cultivated modes of thinking that are conducive to alt-right conspiracies. Also delving into the intersections of wellness and conspiracy, Marie Heřmanová explores conspirituality and the politicisation of spiritual influencers during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the case of prominent Czech lifestyle Instagrammer Helena Houdová who became an outspoken anti-vaxxer and COVID denialist. In a rich case study, Heřmanová examines the ways Helena blends her feminine aesthetic and aspirational and in idualistic take on spirituality with conspiracy messages informed by QAnon and political messaging that speaks to both national history and global trends. Heřmanová astutely observes that the rise of conspirituality reveals the capacity of these influencers to bridge the gap between the everyday and personal, and the collective narratives of conspiracies such as QAnon. Continuing to explore how conspiracy theories intersect with embodied and digital environments, in her article on ‘Coronaconspiracies’ Merlyna Lim examines the role algorithms and users play in facilitating conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Lim contends that social media provides a fertile environment for conspiracies to flourish, while maintaining that “social media algorithms do not have an absolute hegemony in translating the high visibility or even the virality of conspiracy theories into the beliefs in them”. As Lim explains, human users retain their agency online it is their “choices” and “preferences” that are informed by the algorithmic dynamics of these technologies. Extending research into the relationship between conspiracy and algorithms, the impacts of labelling are foregrounded in the work of Ahmed Al-Rawi, Carmen Celestini, Nicole Stewart, and Nathan Worku. Their article presents a reverse-engineering approach to understanding how Google’s autocomplete feature assigns subtitles to widely known conspiracists. Google’s algorithmic approach to labelling actors is proprietary knowledge, which blackboxes this process to researchers and the wider public. This article provides a technical peek into how this may work, but also raises the concern that these labels do not reflect what is publicly known about these actors. Their work provides an insight into the ways that the Google autocomplete subtitling feature may further contribute to the negative real-world impacts that these conspiracists, and other such toxic actors, have. Stijn Peeters and Tom Willaert take us into the fringes of the online ecosystem to explore ways to research conspiracist communities on Telegram. They extrapolate on Richard Rogers‘s edict to repurpose the methods of the medium and take us through a case-based examination of how to conduct a structural analysis of forwarded messages to identify conspiracy communities. In weighing up the results of applying this technique to Dutch-speaking conspiracist narratives and communities on Telegram they highlight the methodological gains of such a technique and the ethical considerations that doing this style of data gathering and analysis can raise. Moving away from the fringes, Naomi Smith and Clare Southerton take us into the belly of popular culture with their examination of the #FreeBritney movement and raise the proposition of conspiracy as a site of pleasure. They turn on its head the assumption that conspiracy thinking is because of a deficient and deviant understanding and point to the appeal and pleasure of engaging in the chase of partial threads and leads found in social media that could be woven into an explanation, or conspiracy. Drawing from fan studies, they highlight that pleasure is not a new site of motivation and that a lot can be learned by applying it as an explanatory frame for why people engage with conspiracies. The erse body of scholarship assembled in this special issue illustrates the complex nature of contemporary conspiracies as they find expression in digital spaces and media. There are a variety of approaches to understanding this phenomenon that highlight how strategies of control and technological intervention may not be straightforwardly successful. The contributions to this issue demonstrate, from a range of perspectives, the importance of understanding how and why conspiracy theories matter to the communities that embrace them if we are to address their social consequences. References Baker, Stephanie Alice, Matthew Wade, and Michael James Walsh. "The Challenges of Responding to Misinformation during a Pandemic: Content Moderation and the Limitations of the Concept of Harm." Media International Australia 177 (2020): 103-07. Bruns, Axel, Stephen Harrington, and Edward Hurcombe. “‘Corona? 5G? Or Both?’: The Dynamics of COVID-19/5G Conspiracy Theories on Facebook." Media International Australia 177 (2020): 12-29. Chu, Haoran, Shupei Yuan, and Sixiao Liu. "Call Them Covidiots: Exploring the Effects of Aggressive Communication Style and Psychological Distance in the Communication of Covid-19." Public Understanding of Science 30.3 (2021): 240-57. Gerts, Dax, et al. “‘Thought I’d Share First’ and Other Conspiracy Theory Tweets from the Covid-19 Infodemic: Exploratory Study." JMIR Public Health Surveill 7.4 (2021): e26527. Hyzen, Aaron, and Hilde van den Bulck. "Conspiracies, Ideological Entrepreneurs, and Digital Popular Culture." Media and Communication 9 (2021): 179–88. Marwick, Alice, and Rebecca Lewis. "Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online." New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2017. 7-19. Melley, Timothy. Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America. Cornell University Press, 2016. Moskalenko, Sophia, and Clark McCauley. "QAnon: Radical Opinion Versus Radical Action." Perspectives on Terrorism 15.2 (2021): 142-46. Van den Bulck, Hilde, and Aaron Hyzen. "Of Lizards and Ideological Entrepreneurs: Alex Jones and Infowars in the Relationship between Populist Nationalism and the Post-Global Media Ecology." International Communication Gazette 82.1 (2020): 42-59.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 13-02-2021
Abstract: In the context of recent controversies surrounding the censorship of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer online content, specifically on YouTube and Tumblr, we interrogate the relationship between normative understandings of sexual citizenship and the content classification regimes. We argue that these content classification systems and the platforms’ responses to public criticism both operate as norm-producing technologies, in which the complexities of sexuality and desire are obscured in order to cultivate notions of a ‘good’ lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer sexual citizen. However, despite normative work of classification seeking to distinguish between sexuality and sex, we argue that the high-profile failures of these classification systems create the conditions for users to draw attention to, rather than firm, these messy boundaries.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 18-03-2022
DOI: 10.1177/14614448221083992
Abstract: Digital self-tracking devices increasingly inhabit everyday landscapes, yet many people abandon self-trackers not long after acquisition. Although research has examined why people discontinue these devices, less explores what actually happens when people unplug. This article addresses this gap by considering the embodied and habitual dimensions of self-tracking and discontinuance. We consider the potential for digital data – and their unanticipated affects – to linger within habitual practices even after the device is abandoned. We draw on the philosophies of Felix Ravaisson and Gilles Deleuze to understand habit as a capacity for change, rather than a performance of sameness. We trace how self-tracking prompts new embodiments that continue to unfold even after people disengage. In decentring the device as our object of attention, we trouble the logic that self-tracking simply ‘stops’ in its absence. This holds implications for theorizing human–digital relations and for how self-tracking health interventions are implemented and evaluated.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 24-08-2017
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 16-07-2023
DOI: 10.1177/14407833231185852
Abstract: This editorial explores how misinformation is expressed across a range of health practices and contexts.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Date: 03-2019
Abstract: Like other fangirls, fans of former boyband One Direction (“Directioners”) have often been represented in media discourse as obsessive and hysterical, with fan behaviour interpreted as longing for heterosexual intimacy with band members. Subverting this heteronormative framing, a group of Directioners known as “Larries” have built a sub-fandom around imagining a relationship (“ship”) between two of the band members, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. Representation of the Larry fandom has gone beyond pathologizing fangirls to framing their shipping practice in terms of “fake news.” The conspiracy theory panic around Larries misses the complex ways that subtext and queer reading are mobilized within the fandom to invoke feelings of queer intimacy and belonging. Drawing on a digital ethnography conducted on Twitter with Larries, we argue that these fans engage in queer reading strategies to explicitly imagine and interrupt dominant heterosexual narratives, and thus queer the figure of the fangirl.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 04-2020
Abstract: Drawing on findings from qualitative interviews and photo elicitation, this article explores young people’s experiences of breaches of trust with social media platforms and how comfort is re-established despite continual violations. It provides rich qualitative accounts of users habitual relations with social media platforms. In particular, we seek to trace the process by which online affordances create conditions in which “sharing” is regarded as not only routine and benign but pleasurable. Rather it is the withholding of data that is abnormalized. This process has significant implications for the ethics of data collection by problematizing a focus on “consent” to data collection by social media platforms. Active engagement with social media, we argue, is premised on a tentative, temporary, shaky trust that is repeatedly ruptured and repaired. We seek to understand the process by which violations of privacy and trust in social media platforms are remediated by their users and rendered ordinary again through everyday habits. We argue that the processes by which users become comfortable with social media platforms, through these routines, call for an urgent reimagining of data privacy beyond the limited terms of consent.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 26-01-2021
Abstract: Facebook is the most used social media platform globally, despite frequent and highly publicised criticism of some of its practices. In this article, we bring together perspectives from vital materialism scholarship – and particularly Jane Bennett’s concept of ‘thing-power’ – with our empirical research on Australian Facebook users to identify what they find important and valuable about the platform. Findings are presented in the form of seven case studies of Facebook use, identifying lively affective forces, relational connections and agential capacities that drive people to continue to use Facebook, moderate their use or take a break. We argue that this theoretical perspective allows for a nuanced understanding of the distributed and relational agencies generated with and through Facebook assemblages that motivate people to stay on this social media platform.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-11-2023
DOI: 10.1177/14407833221135209
Abstract: Health misinformation on social media has largely been examined from a harms-focused perspective, with scholars seeking to identify what impacts misinformation has on public health and a popular focus on removing it from platforms. The act of debunking is one response wherein misinformation is corrected with knowledge from scientific sources. To date, little research exists examining how experts and the public engage with misinformation beyond a focus on harm. Using Karen Barad's concept of diffraction, we examine the iterative relationships between misinformation, obstetrician-gynaecologists (OBGYNs) and the educational content they generate on the short-form video platform TikTok. Though misinformation and debunking content have been seen as oppositional, they are brought into productive dialogue with one another using diffractive techniques and platform affordances. We conclude that through the educational content created by the OBGYNs of TikTok, misinformation becomes diffractively integrated into debunking content and is generative of new knowledge, rather than cleansed away.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-12-2023
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X211064646
Abstract: There is a pressing need to facilitate sensitive conversations between people with differing or opposing views. On video-sharing app TikTok, the erse experiences of donor-conceived people and recipient parents sit uneasily alongside each other, coalescing in hashtags like #donorconceived. This article describes a method ‘Situated Talk’ which uses TikToks to facilitate a reflexive encounter, drawing on three areas of scholarship: media ethnography and elicitation, researcher reflexivity and duoethnography/collaborative autoethnography. We describe how we, as a donor-conceived adult (Giselle) and a queer woman who would need donor sperm to have a child (Clare), employed TikToks from #donorconceived as prompts to facilitate a sensitive conversation and elicit situated insights. We explore three central insights from applying our method: (1) discomfort as a productive tension (2) unresolved dilemmas and (3) discovering parallels in experience. Using TikToks as stimuli, ‘Situated Talk’ contributes an innovative method for generating grounded social media insights.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-03-2010
Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
Date: 2018
Publisher: Intellect
Date: 06-2021
DOI: 10.1386/JFS_00038_1
Abstract: This article explores the queer practices of a subgroup of One Direction fans known as Larries. The Larries believe that former One Direction boyband members Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson (referred to by the portmanteau ‘Larry Stylinson’) were, or are, in a relationship. This article draws on a digital ethnography with the Larry fandom conducted on Twitter across 2018 and argues that their digital practices involve queer reading strategies to disrupt heterosexual narratives and create space for queer desire. While Larries are invested in the ‘reality’ of the ship, we also suggest that their fan practices are oriented towards challenging dominant heterosexual logics. Larries do not simply seek representations of queer desire in popular culture but rather, through shipping Larry, create a community online that celebrates queer sexuality, whether actualized in popular culture or not. Our findings challenge typical representations of fangirls as heteronormatively ‘boy-crazy’. Far from understanding fangirls as a single monolithic group primarily motivated by heterosexual longing, this article argues that Larries encourage us to rethink gender, desire, the queer potential of fan practices and even the relationship between power and ‘truth’ in a ‘post-truth’ world.
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 05-09-2019
No related grants have been discovered for Clare Southerton.