Marianna Spring, The Power of New Media
By Shon-Shon de Peyer
In a deep dive of her book, Among the Trolls, Spring shows us Conspiracyland.
Sure, Marianna Spring is a writer. But this evening, I view her as a painter.
Across an hour, Marianna Spring takes out her brush, and paints. We get sketches of Conspiracyland – the amplifying effect of the algorithmic echo chambers of social media, the engulfing theory abyss… She talks of how people are quickly “embroiled” in a world they otherwise would have nothing to do with as a result of social media’s integration into modern life. “Pandora’s box is wide open” she says, and I feel like I’m listening to the Pythia’s final prophecy.
Spring also paints a portrait of the “true believers” of Conspiracyland. And it is nothing less than a mosaic of what it is to be human.
With each swab of oil paint, each story, a clearer picture appears on the canvas of her words. Spring characterises the “true believer” as someone who “cares deeply about other people”, “doesn’t like sitting with uncertainty” and “can’t accept that terrible things just happen randomly”. And theories offer control – in the words of one of her interviewees, “if I can explain it like this, then maybe it won’t happen to me.” She describes the starting point of the conspiracy theory believer as fundamentally natural – a want for more information, to “question the narrative” – and discusses the sense of self-empowerment that these theories can offer.
Thus, in the midst of all the whispers and fear of Conspiracyland, Spring’s far-reaching empathetic investigative work brushes out this mottle of fallible human colour to us. A true believer could be anyone. Any one of us who trips down a rabbit hole.
Amongst the war-zone of disinformation, Spring reminds us that we’re all human, in the greatest verbal art exhibition known to history.
