Toward an Understanding of Centralized Intertextual Fortification: The Case of Commercially Oriented Qanon Content Creators

Past research has demonstrated the important role of interactive media and platformed sociality in the production of content, especially regarding content that gives rise to alternative forms of knowledge. In particular, Atkinson and Rosati (2012, 2020) illustrate the communicative strategy of diffused intertextual production, in which the simultaneous presence of intertextuality and interactivity gives rise to the construction of “alternative space.” The interactive media utilized by the community allowed for members to produce content in a bottom-up fashion. In their research, Atkinson and Rosati demonstrate how an interactive forum, anchored to an intertextual frame of the city of Detroit, allowed users to build a new knowledge of that city. This emergent vision allowed for those users to interact with the physical environment of Detroit in new ways. Essentially, the users of this interactive platform came together within the context of a particular frame, shared information, built new knowledges, and altered their pathways and interactions in the world around them. In this study, we initially speculated that the concept of diffused intertextual production could also be used to examine another community that exists across multiple platforms in their work to transform political reality and construct an “alternative politics.”

In particular, we focused on the Qanon conspiracy community, and the ways in which adherents share content and commentary through interactive media platforms. Qanon is a conspiratorial worldview that claims a cabal of Satan worshipping pedophiles controls the world. Adherents to this worldview—often referred to as “anons”—also believe that former President Donald Trump is a heroic figure that is going to end the cabal through a military action called “the storm” (Munn, 2022). Members of this conspiratorial community were visibly involved in the January 6^th riot at the US Capitol, working to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election (Cover et al., 2022). We came to view the direct action at the Capitol as driven by an alternative politics, similar to the alternative knowledge cultivated through the diffused intertextual production observed by Atkinson and Rosati. In order to guide this research, we formulated the following research questions:

RQ1: Is diffused intertextual production utilized by Qanon content creators?

Overall, our research demonstrates that unlike the Detroit based community observed by Atkinson and Rosati, the production of content—and knowledge—was much more centralized. We found that key content creators in the Qanon community, which exists across multiple platforms, engaged in centralized intertextual fortification of the overarching conspiracies at the heart of the community. We find this communicative strategy to be adjacent to diffused intertextual production, as it utilizes the same key simultaneous presence of intertextuality and interactivity. However, in the case of Qanon, there was not a communal effort to expand the alternative knowledge that grew from the intertext. Instead, the interactivity within the community created perceived organizational support for the content creators, and solidified worldviews associated with the intertext for their followers and anons. This process is beneficial to many of the content creators in the community that we observed, as their online work typically has commercial motivation; most (if not all) of the content creators in this research use their platforms to sell products (e.g., dietary supplements) or encourage specific investments (e.g., gold).

We should note at this point that this notion of centralized intertextual fortification is likely not applicable to the larger Qanon community in its entirety. Through this project, we focused on those social media and streaming platforms that were easily accessible and usable by larger audiences. This included mainstream interactive media like Facebook and YouTube, as well as more fringe sites like BitChute and Odysee. We never observed any connections between those sites and corners of the dark web that have often been associated with Qanon, like 4Chan and 8Kun (formerly 8Chan); nor did we ever examine sites or content creators from those darker regions of the internet. Given that we never observed any links to 4Chan or 8Kun on the content creators sites and social media, or within the comments left by their followers, those discussion sites were not a part of our data. The social media, streaming platforms, and websites utilized by the content creators that we observed in this study seemed to be disconnected from those 4Chan and 8Kun origins of Qanon. For these reasons, the concepts developed through this research can only be applied to those more “visible” and commercial content creators in the Qanon community. In the following pages, we provide more insight concerning the concept of diffused intertextual production, and the methods for this project.

Diffused Intertextual Production

Atkinson and Rosati (2012, 2020) demonstrate the communicative strategy of diffused intertextual production through their examination of a web community in Detroit that challenged conventional narratives about the city as “dangerous.” The web community, known as DetroitYES!, was built around two sites: the intertextual Fabulous Ruins of Detroit Virtual Tour, and the interactive discussion forums. In their research, Atkinson and Rosati engaged in qualitative content analyses of both sites (see Atkinson, 2017; Mayring, 2014). In terms of the first component, the intertextual virtual tour allowed users to move through a series of photographs of different urban spaces around Detroit. Intertextuality involves media producers utilizing references, allusions, and appropriations from other texts, so as to “infuse” them into their own text; such a textual strategy broadens the scope of the producers’ text (Ott & Walter, 2000; Warnick, 2007). In the case of the virtual tour, the photographs were followed by captions and descriptions written by the producer that depicted those spaces in terms of ancient ruins, similar to depictions of ruins in Athens or Rome featured in travel brochures or historical textbooks. In this way, the ruined structures in Detroit were framed so that visitors could interpret those spaces in the city as interesting historical sites.

The discussion forums of DetroitYES! stood as the interactive component of the web community. Atkinson and Rosati took particular interest in those discussions that focused on topographical categories like landmarks, nodes, or paths through the city. The analysis of those discussions demonstrated four roles performed by members of the community: (1) Historians, (2) Indigenous Urban Planners, (3) Storytellers, and (4) Explorers. These roles were an integral component for the DetroitYES! web community, as they allowed for collective acquisition of new information and the emergence of alternative knowledges about crumbling edges and abandoned nodes. Such information was collected and organized within the intertextual frame of the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit Virtual Tour, and the new knowledge of the city expanded that frame. This new knowledge called for exploration and discussion, which influenced the pathways of community members through urban spaces and their performances within them.

Based on this research, a community may re-imagine spaces that have been subjected to the deteriorating effects of austerity policies over the last several decades (Atkinson & Rosati, 2020). However, DetroitYES! is not the only site where we can observe such a communicative strategy in action. There are communities in which users co-construct fictitious national parks (Mystery Flesh Pit National Park), or build fictitious, alternative knowledges about the history of birds (Birds Aren’t Real). Unlike DetroitYES!, these examples are entertainment-oriented, providing users with opportunities to engage in creative co-construction of humorous fictitious worlds. There are other communities, however, where elements associated with diffused intertextuality seem to influence political discourse. The Qanon conspiracy has grown into one such community over the past decade.

Qanon, Intertextuality, and Interactivity

The Qanon conspiracy theory claims there is a cabal of Satan worshipping elites who engage in child trafficking; anons claim these elites use children for sex, blood rituals, human sacrifice, as well as to harvest them for adrenochrome (Kennedy, 2017). The modern version of this conspiracy theory has its roots in the Pizzagate conspiracy theories about one particular restaurant in Washington DC—Comet Ping Pong—that was supposedly a hub in this child traffic network. Essentially, these theories—Pizzagate and Qanon—are really a conglomeration of many past conspiracy theories, like the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as conspiracy theories related to secret government operations that seek to control the citizenry (Uscinski & Parent, 2014). The original Pizzagate conspiracy theory was widely discussed through 4Chan and 8Kun, and spread online through videos posted on YouTube in 2016. The conspiracy theory gained more widespread attention when Edgar Madison Welch attacked Comet Ping Pong with an assault rifle that same year, seeking to rescue children and expose the conspirators (Kennedy, 2017). After the assault on the pizza restaurant, however, the conspiracy theory became much more dynamic, as a shadowy figure called “Q” posted numerous cryptic messages through the 4Chan discussion forum. Q was supposedly a rogue operative within the deep state, who was working behind the scenes to undermine the cabal at the heart of Pizzagate. In these posts, Q explained that then-President Donald Trump would bring about “the storm”, which was a supposed military operation in which key leaders of the cabal would be rounded up and executed (Munn, 2022). In this way, then, adherents to the conspiracy theory came to see Trump as a heroic figure ordained by God to end the tyranny of the Satanic, pedophile cabal.

The presence of Q and the addition of Trump to the larger lore of the conspiracy theory stand as the intertextual frame that grounded all future posts and discussions within the community. In this way, then, Qanon ceased to be a conspiracy theory, and instead a conspiratorial worldview. Uscinski and Parent (2014), as well as other scholars like Stewart (2002), explain that conspiratorial worldviews are lenses through which believers can understand phenomenon and events in the world; this is like the alternative knowledge observed in the DetroitYES! research of Atkinson and Rosati. For instance, Stewart demonstrated how the John Birch Society adopted a conspiratorial worldview about communism and the “new world order.” This worldview helped members of the community to understand significant events like the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, as well as America's failures in conflicts like Vietnam. In the case of Qanon, the worldview helped adherents to understand a variety of events: COVID-19, Trump's loss in the 2020 election, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The first was a pathogen spread by the deep state to turn the public against Trump and allow for additional mail-in ballots in the 2020 election (Mazzei, 2023); this, in part, explained his loss to President Biden. This worldview has also led anons to believe that Trump and Putin are working together to expose and defeat the cabal in Ukraine (Slisco, 2022). What is more, this conspiratorial worldview was strengthened by lack of evidence, which only demonstrated to the community the treachery and cunning of the communists. Indeed, because of the lack of evidence, Cover et al. (2022) claim that “followers feel (even more than usual) personally responsible for political action beyond merely supporting a representative politician” (p. 119); the lack of evidence serves as motivation for taking violent or criminal action.

Tuters and Willaert (2022) explain that the emergence of interactive media platforms, like 4Chan, Rumble, or Instagram has allowed many separate conspiracy theories to come together; they claim that Qanon is a community based on the convergence of multiple conspiracy narratives. What is more, they note that these interactive media platforms allow for individual conspiracies to shift or change when they are proven false. For instance, there were initial predictions in the Qanon community that Joe Biden would not be inaugurated because Trump was still in charge. When Biden was in fact inaugurated, members of the community declared that the inauguration was fake, and that Trump would be inaugurated in March of 2021, as per the original text of the Constitution. And when that did not happen, stories circulated in the community that Trump was engaged in covert operations to initiate the storm. According to many mainstream journalists, anons have been integral in such transformations of the Qanon lore: JFK Jr.'s imminent return to aid Trump in instigating the storm (Dickson, 2019), as well as the code words supposedly used by the cabal in child sex trafficking—like pizza or hot dog (Aisch et al., 2016). According to such reports, these ideas first appeared in 4Chan or 8Kun posts and were quickly circulated among the larger community through social media, as well as appropriated for videos that were uploaded by anons to streaming platforms like BitChute and Rumble. Initially, then, we felt that Qanon was a multi-platform community constructed through diffused intertextual production, like the DetroitYES! community explored by Atkinson and Rosati. However, given the findings of our research, we have come to understand that there is a significant portion of the Qanon community that is driven by work of specific content creators who engage in a process we call centralized intertextual fortification.

Cyber-Archaeology

In order to conduct our study, we engaged in a process called cyber-archaeology, which was originally developed by Jones (1997, 2003) as a lens to examine interactive media technologies and platforms used by communities for their online endeavors. Essentially, this method can be utilized to explore the social networking and user-generated content sites used to construct platformed sociality by groups or networks (Van Djick, 2014). This approach to the study of online materials was later expanded by scholars like Harrison (2009), who notes cyber-archaeology can also be used to examine objects created within such online environments. According to this research, blogs or images shared within in the community stand as objects that can be possessed, passed from one member to another, or shared.

In order to initiate the research, the first author conducted a pilot study to find key Qanon content creators. The first author took note of specific channels on BitChute that were most active in the days following the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. In that initial process, the first author examined and mapped the online presence of three of the most prolific Qanon content creators shortly after January 6^th: Charlie Ward, Mel K, and RedPill78. Later, the research team scoured the content of those creators to find additional individuals who appeared on their respective streaming programs between September 1 and October 1 of 2022. In order to conduct our research, we structured the cyber-archaeology to include four steps that allowed for coding of data: (1) research plan (seeking out primary, secondary, and auxiliary documents), (2) slow-crawling through primary documents, which involved close reading of sites, and coding for general characteristics (e.g., interactive vs. intertextual); (3) refinement of coding for specific categories that address the research question (e.g., types of interactivity, accessibility); (4) search for patterns in the data, and collection of descriptive data through qualitative content analysis. The first of these steps involved searching for primary documents within the community built by the various content creators (e.g., websites and YouTube, Twitter, Rumble, BitChute, etc., accounts). This also included a search for secondary documents that provided more information about the content creators, and auxiliary documents that provided more explanation about Qanon, Q, or other details relevant to the research (see Altheide & Schneider, 2013).

In the second step, the research team split up the different content creators, and moved methodically through each of their websites and social media accounts. This slow-crawl involved coding each according to characteristics from Atkinson and Rosati's research concerning diffused intertextual production. Slow-crawling stands as an alternative to the use of web crawlers discussed by Zimbra et al. (2010), which they recommended to conduct cyber-archaeology. However, such web crawlers often cannot scrape data from social media sites like Truth Social or Rumble. Some, like Instaloader, can scrape from one specific platform (in the case of Instaloader, it scrapes data from Instagram), but not multiple platforms (e.g., Rumble, Telegram, Odysee). For these reasons, each member of the team would engage in a close reading of websites or social media sites, coding them as intertextual, interactive, mix of the two, or neither. In this way, the research team was able to produce a list of sites and illustrate connections between interactive and intertextual materials produced by content creators.

In the third step, the team came together to review and discuss the findings from the initial slow-crawl through the data. During these discussions, we refined our coding to address more specific characteristics. We decided that interactivity was the most relevant element in regard to our guiding research question; each member would, then, return to the primary texts and code the interactivity in three ways: type of interactivity, number of comments left by users, and accessibility. In reference to the first, McMillan (2002) identified three different ways in which interactivity is understood and described in media and communication research: user-to-system, user-to-user, or user-to-document. User-to-system refers to interactions with a platform interface (e.g., purchasing items on Amazon.com); user-to-user refers to interactions between people (e.g., direct messages on Twitter); user-to-document refers to the capacity for an audience to change and add to a document (e.g., adding information on Wikipedia). All these forms of interactivity were integral to the analysis conducted by Atkinson and Rosati in their DetroitYES! research. In addition, the research team also coded each creator's site for the number of comments generated by users: few (10 comments or less), moderate (11 comments to 50), or several (over 50 comments). Finally, accessibility was a reference to the connection of social media to main websites of content creators, the number of social networking and user-generated platforms each used, and the number of links within each. The research team coded content creators online presence as accessible (e.g., a main website, use of five or more social networking or user-generated content platforms) or less accessible (no main website, less than five platforms). Essentially, we were interested in whether content creators had a large, well-structured online presence, or one that seemed smaller or more disorganized. Structure and organized online presence would make content creators more accessible when anons sought them out, while disorganization or small presence would make them less accessible and difficult to find.

In the final step, the research team worked together to find patterns in the data. This step included working to collect descriptive data through qualitative content analysis of commentary left for the content creators by way of the user-to-user interactivity on all of the different sites. Sampling involved examining all of the comments from sites that had “few” comments left by users, and randomly selecting one comment from each post or video from sites that had “moderate” or “several” until 10 had been collected. In this way, then, the research team coded 761 comments left by users to the content creators between November of 2022 until February of 2023. The content analysis involved two parts: a deductive application of pre-existing categories (e.g., Mayring, 2014), and an inductive construction of categories (e.g., Altheide & Schnieder, 2013). In reference to the first, we utilized three categories for online commentary that had been developed in past research by Scrivens et al. (2021) concerning online right-wing extremism: expressions of ideology, grievance, and mobilization. The first of their categories involves discussions that referenced known ideological assumptions (e.g., Christian lore, deep state). The second category was “based on the posters’ use of language that was expressive of their personal grievance” (Scrivens et al., 2021, p. 6); for instance, complaints that gay people use schools to prey on “our children.” The third deductive category involved efforts to mobilize others to take a specific action (e.g., rise up against the government). In addition, the team also coded for two categories based on Geddes and Linneham's (1996) research concerning feedback in organizations: positive and negative feedback. In their research, they note “positive feedback tends to produce mindless thinking patterns during decision making, in contrast to the mindful information processing following negative feedback” (p. 339). Essentially, positive feedback are simple comments about content, like “I loved it” or “I hated it.” Conversely, negative feedback are comments that draw attention to problems in the content, or provide supplemental information or ideas for future content. These two categories were also open to interpretation, so that they allowed for the inductive construction of subcategories of feedback that content creators received.

These different steps in this project allowed us to achieve the kind of “rigor” that scholars like Tracy (2010) claim is integral for the establishment of reliability in qualitative research. According to Faulkner and Atkinson (2024), “Researchers can be rigorous by considering theory; demonstrating time spent in the field; taking attention and care with sample, data collection, and analysis procedures; and doing rich writing” (p. 166). In the case of our work, there was considerable attention to connecting the data to a specific theory (diffused intertextual production) or building onto theory. More importantly, we spent considerable time meeting and discussing our findings to ensure that we were all coding the data in the same ways. Meetings occurred after the initial slow-crawl, as well as after the revised slow-crawl. Each of these meetings demonstrated that the team were all coding in similar fashions, as well as the need for more data and new coding schemes. Such triangulation by the researchers helps to build credibility for the findings (Faulkner & Atkinson, 2024). In this case, it also facilitated the third and fourth steps discussed above.

Findings

The cyber-archaeology revealed significant similarities and differences from the diffused intertextual production of Atkinson and Rosati's original research. The key similarity was the simultaneous presence of intertextuality and interactivity utilized by the content creators. The use of intertextuality is like that in the DetroitYES! community, as the Qanon lore of pedophiles, Satanism and Donald Trump effectively frames much of the discourse in the content about modern American politics. However, there were also key differences, particularly regarding the interactivity. Although there were attempts by followers to engage in user-to-document interactivity, which was integral to the diffused intertextual production in the DetroitYES! community, most comments and discussions were user-to-user. Such comments were typically directed to the content creators, rather than other members or the larger Qanon community.

Overall, the findings demonstrate a communicative strategy adjacent to diffused intertextual production: centralized intertextual fortification. This communicative strategy incorporated the same key components as diffused intertextual production, but in a manner that allowed for reinforcement of the intertext rather than expansion. Content creators were reinforced through positive feedback that praised them, and anons’ belief in the intertext could be reinforced as they expressed ideologies and shared virtual objects. This proves important as these content creators were all engaged in some commercial activities through their social media and streaming programs; they sold dietary supplements, cures that would remove COVID vaccines from people, precious metals, and merchandise. It appears these content creators were less interested in building new knowledge through interactive media platforms, and more focused on cultivating a following that would be suspicious of mainstream society and politics. The fear and outrage that they seemed to stoke through the intertext would ensure a community willing to purchase their products so as to keep them safe or healthy until “the storm” arrived. Three primary types of content creators were involved in this strategy: intertextual curators, interactive accumulators, and interactive confederates. The first two are what we called “core creators” who were well organized in their content creation and commercial endeavors, while the latter exist outside of that core.

Core Creators

The production of Qanon content across the different platforms examined involves a core comprised of intertextual curators and interactive accumulators. Both types of content creators maintained well-organized presence across different social networking and user-generated content platforms, often connected to a main website; each utilized at least five platforms including social networking sites (e.g., Twitter, Gettr) and user-generated streaming sites (e.g., Rumble, BitChute). The main websites were typically where these content creators’ commercial endeavors were the most evident. For instance, Charlie Ward's main website (charlieward.tv) provided links to sites where followers could invest in silver (e.g., goldbusters.co.uk), as well as a link where users could purchase his books. Similarly, RedPill78's main website (redpill78news.com) included links to his “merch” (e.g., t-shirts, hats). Such a large presence online made all the core creators quite accessible to anons and larger, mainstream audiences. That is not to say that these content creators were linked together. Rather, each one incorporated links to all or most of the other sites and platforms that they used. The only way that these creators were linked was through appearances on one another's streaming programs, or through reposting comments or memes from one another on social networking sites. One activity that was shared by both curators and accumulators was “boosting.” Essentially, many of the videos that that these creators posted to streaming sites, like Rumble and BitChute, included guest appearances by other content creators. For instance, Radix Verum appeared on RedPill78's streaming program via platforms like Rumble and BitChute; both were interactive accumulators. However, there were also many guests who were newer, less organized—and less visible—content creators. These were the interactive confederates, who are described in greater detail below.

The intertextual curators involved two of the initial content creators from the start of the research: Charlie Ward and Mel K. This duo can be understood in terms of the lack of direct interactions with their followers and tight control over the intertext woven through their content. Their followers could not engage in direct interactions with them, as both had muted the comments sections for the platforms they utilized; there was no way to express ideologies, call for mobilization, or provide feedback. Rather, this was a one-way relationship in which Ward and Mel K presented videos and memes that stood as an intertext for their followers, which was previously discussed in this manuscript. The relationship between the curators and their followers is constructed through user-to-system interactivity; followers could find various media objects provided by these curators through their social media. For instance, Mel K shared the following image on her Gettr account (Figure 1). Virtual objects such of these were regularly taken by the intertextual curators from others in their networks, and made available to their followers.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

An image of Trump saving children from evil forces, posted by Mel K on Gettr.

In this case, Mel K provided a pic that followers could take and share. Essentially, these were the kind of virtual objects described by Harrison (2009). Indeed, this was a media object that she had taken from another Gettr account, and reposed to her own. The lack of direct user-to-user or user-to-document interactions from their followers suggests that these two curators maintained strong control over the intertext, unlike in the case of the DetroitYES! community.

The second type of core content creator was the interactive accumulators. This was a similarly small group that included three key content creators: RedPill78, David Sumerall, and Radix Verum. These content creators were understood in terms of the open commentary allowed across all their social networking and user-generated content sites; unlike the curators, these three allowed followers to post comments. We deemed these content creators to be “accumulators” as many of the interactions we observed involved their followers posting virtual objects through user-to-user comments. Followers were not leaving materials (e.g., pics, quotations, links) that could be used by other followers. Rather, these were direct communications intended for the accumulators themselves. The analysis of comments posted to these creators’ content illustrated primarily positive and negative feedback. In reference to the first, the members of the community regularly posted praise for the content, or provided encouraging remarks to the content creator. For instance, David Sumerall posted a picture of a wounded January 6^th rioter to his Truth account; he sarcastically noted to followers that it was “very cool” that Truth had censored the photo (the photo is initially blurred, with a notation that it may not be suitable for all audiences). One user posted the following comment: “I agree! Why is this censored on Free Speech platforms?” In another instance, one user made the following comment to a selfie posted by Radix Verum on her Instagram on January 31: “Beauty & brains are a lethal combination.”

In reference to negative feedback, several followers regularly provided the kind of feedback that Geddes and Linneham (1996) claim might create “mindful information processing” (p. 339) for the recipient. Through our inductive analysis, we found that there were five types of negative feedback provided to the interactive accumulators that had potential for such mindful processing: supplemental material, content critique, requests for more information or future content, suggestions for the utility of the platform, and pushback against the intertext. We found that most of the negative feedback was supplemental materials in the form of links, pics and gifs, quotations, and personal stories; such materials served as the kind of virtual objects described by Harrison (2009). These were the virtual objects that made these three content creators “accumulators.” For instance, following a video on Odysee posted by Radix Verum on January 25^th about supposed connections between Elon Musk, Twitter, and child trafficking, one user left commentary that included both a quotation and a link to an anti-Semitic website:

Do you mention the root cause already?

Quotes about jews by the Founding Fathers

“They {the Jews} work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in… It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pests to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America.” (George Washington, in Maxims of George Washington by A. A. Appleton & Co.) https://archive.org/details/1001QuotesAboutJews ¹

The quotation and link stand as virtual objects that had been shared by the follower with Radix Verum. In another instance, a follower posted a personal story after a BitChute video about the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election by RedPill78:

Voter ID, One day voting, on paper!! Where I live you have to have a photo ID, usually drivers license. Even though I have lived in this area since I was a child and most of the workers at our voting station know me, I’m proud to say they still make me show my license to vote!!! They strongly adhere to the rules.

The personal story similarly stands as a virtual object. In yet another instance, RedPill78 posted to Telegram on February 22 a link to the latest episode of his streaming program, which entailed conspiracy theories about the train derailment outside of East Palestine, Ohio. In the comments section, one user posted the following image of Trump departing Air Force One when he was President (Figure 2). Virtual objects such as this one were often provided to the the interactive accumulators through follower comments.

Overall, our cyber-archaeology revealed a small group of core content creators who were well organized in their work and commercial endeavors. We found all these key content creators were responsible for boosting the visibility of one another, as well as numerous, less known content creators. In addition, the lack of interactivity with curators indicated that they did not rely on their followers for new material to expand or change the intertext. Such supplemental virtual objects flowed from the followers to the accumulators. However, we did not observe any instances in which those content creators used such virtual objects in their work. Radix Verum and RedPill78 never reposted those virtual objects noted above through any of their content.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

An image posted by a community member to RedPill78's telegram.

Discussion

Through our cyber-archaeology, we did not discover diffused production in which members of the community engaged together within the framework of an intertext, adding to an alternative knowledge. That is not to say that such user-to-document interactivity between anons and content creators does not exist somewhere. As noted at the beginning of this essay, our observations never revealed any connections between these content creators and forums like 4Chan or 8Kun; neither the content creators nor the audiences of their content ever provided links to those forums, or even mentioned them. The Qanon conspiracy community is large and sprawling, and we only managed to capture one segment or branch—this one seemingly populated by commercially oriented content creators and their fans. It seems to be the case that these content creators are appropriating narratives and virtual objects that they find in sites like 4Chan and making them available to a wider audience for the purpose of generating income and profit. This branch of Qanon is particularly important, then, as it seems to make the conspiracy theories accessible to people outside of those darker corners of the internet.

Centralized intertextual fortification, then, is a communicative strategy in which a core group of content creators display an intertextual framework that can be used to make sense of the world; in the case of Qanon, this intertext is used to make sense of modern American politics. Unlike in the case of diffused intertextual production, however, this communicative strategy does not involve working together through user-to-document interactivity to grow or expand that intertext. Any growth or change to the intertext is the result of actions or content creation by key individuals (as in the case of the Q figure, or even the core content creators themselves). Rather than calling on the community to engage in dialogue, core creators boosted confederates so that they were visible to that larger community. Followers and anons, then, provided positive feedback to all the interactive content creators. Atkinson (2008) notes that such feedback “constitute an important element necessary for the establishment of perceived organizational support. Perceived organizational support occurs when members of an organization feel that their efforts and loyalty are worthwhile” (p. 239). This positive feedback is particularly necessary for the confederates, disorganized and scattered as they are, so that they feel they are doing something substantive and worthwhile. What is more, the expressions of ideology and provision of supplemental virtual objects by anons prove equally important. Such actions, even online, can shape political identity and harden worldviews or ideological assumptions (e.g., Atkinson, 2017; Meikle, 2002). Through this process, then, the agents responsible for the creation and maintenance of the intertext received positive support for their work, while followers engage in online activities that solidify a worldview based on the intertext. For many—content creators and followers alike—creating content or sharing virtual objects serve as the political actions noted by Cover et al. (2022).

We find that such use of intertextuality and interactivity is strategic, as the central goal of many of these content creators was not building new knowledge or alternative politics, but rather advancing their commercial interests. Almost all of the content creators that we examined in this study were selling something through their online endeavors. Charlie Ward began all his videos by telling viewers about the necessity of investing in silver and directing them to specific websites where they could invest in such commodities. RedPill78 frequently started many of his videos by directing followers to purchase pills, dietary supplements, and MREs (meals ready to eat) to prepare for future societal collapse. Many content creators sold books, while others sold health supplements to combat COVID-19, in lieu of vaccines. Given the commercial interests of all of these content creators, there seemed to be little incentive to create dialogue and grow alternative knowledge. Instead, we see a process here in which content creators, particularly those who were in the core group, boost one another in order to make the intertext spreadable (e.g., Jenkins et al., 2013); interactivity, then, is a means to reinforce that intertext—not to grow or expand it. The reinforcement is crucial, as followers and anons who believe wholeheartedly in the intertext would be more likely to create perceived organizational support that helps reinforce the intertext, and purchase items or make investments.

This concept should prove particularly important as we see the growth of a media environment that entails automated media (i.e., social media and streaming platforms). According to Volcic and Andrejevic (2023), such media have played an integral role in the rise of populism in modern politics. They claim that automated media have constructed a new media ecosystem that is characterized by elevation of content by provocation of outrage encouraged through algorithms, as well as a false sense of engagement produced by the automatically generated content lists produced by those algorithms. This kind of ecosystem is ripe for exploitation by content creators like Charlie Ward and RedPill78, who seek to harness the outrage and false engagement of their followers. Unless more is done to reign in the power of automated media and the algorithms that dictate content, we suspect that such centralized intertextual fortification will become more prevalent in the years to come—there will be more communities like Qanon in the future.

Looking ahead, we feel that it is important to uncover interconnections between such commercially oriented producers and dark web sites like 4Chan. Future research should seek to identify those interconnections. In addition, we posit that the newer confederates will either become more sophisticated in their use and maintenance of social networking and user-generated platforms, or they will fade away and disappear. Those who do learn to use such interactive media in more sophisticated ways will eventually integrate into the core. What is more, as anons become more comfortable expressing their ideology, as well as building and sharing virtual objects, they will engage in content creation themselves and become interactive confederates. We intend to take these issues up in our continuing research concerning this topic.