Alt. Health Influencers: how wellness culture and web culture have been weaponised to promote conspiracy theories and far-right extremism during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article examines the proliferation of alt. health influencers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I analyse the self-presentation strategies used by four alt. health influencers to achieve visibility and status on Instagram over a 12-month period from 11 March 2020, when the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation. My analysis reveals the ways in which these influencers appeal to the utopian discourses of early web culture and the underlying principles of wellness culture to build and sustain an online following. While early accounts of micro-celebrity treat participatory culture as democratising and progressive, this article demonstrates how the participatory affordances of social media have been exploited to spread misinformation, conspiratorial thinking and far-right extremism. These findings develop previous work on ‘conspirituality’ by demonstrating how wellness culture and web culture can coalesce for authoritarian ends.

Experiencing Relative Deprivation as True Crime: Applying Cultural Criminology to the Qanon Superconspiracy Theory

“…QAnon content migrated from YouTube to Reddit, and FaceBook groups, and Diaz became one of the first QAnon entrepreneurs who raised funds on YouTube channels, through Pateron and PayPal, or by publishing books or videos. This facilitated the spread of the narrative as the income-generating activities in other online communities intersected with QAnon (Baker 2022). Qdrops also spread over apps such as Parler, TikTok and Telegram.…”

“…These elements of gamification (Deterding et al 2011) drive adherents' continued participation because as participants "bake" or decode the Qdrops, they receive rewards in the form of positive feedback from other QAnon followers. This feedback leads to deeper investment and further participation in the theory and the community (Baker 2022).…”

Politicisation of the Domestic: Populist Narratives About Covid-19 Among Influencers

“…On the one hand, various political actors from all sides of the political spectrum often used narratives about the origins and impact of Covid-19 to support their ideological views (Fuchs, 2021;Lyu et al, 2022). On the other hand, a new group of actors, opinion leaders, and influencers emerged within the domain of health communication on social media (Baker, 2022). Heřmanová (2022aHeřmanová ( , 2022b and Baker (2022), among others, have explored how the Covid-19 pandemic was discussed among predominantly female influencers on Instagram and other platforms.…”

“…On the other hand, a new group of actors, opinion leaders, and influencers emerged within the domain of health communication on social media (Baker, 2022). Heřmanová (2022aHeřmanová ( , 2022b and Baker (2022), among others, have explored how the Covid-19 pandemic was discussed among predominantly female influencers on Instagram and other platforms. Online influencers play an increasingly important role in political communication.…”

“We Are in Control”: Instagram Influencers and the Proliferation of Conspiracy Narratives in Digital Spaces

“…Selectively and instrumentally, they mix elements from positive thinking, esoteric systems of knowledge and mediate them through folk culture" (Baker, Rojek, 2020: 390). In her analysis of "alt-health influencers", Baker (2022) further analyses how influencers with significant followings across platforms build on the wellness industry practices of drawing upon personal experiences and anecdotal evidence as well as concepts of intuition and positive thinking to proliferate misinformation and conspiracy theories. According to Baker, the emphasis on subjective experience (in opposition to expert knowledge) enables the spread of conspiracies.…”