About the project:

I started researching conspiracy theories on Instagram in early 2020, thinking about how Instagram is a vehicle for aesthetically driven politics. It’s not a dark corner of the internet- but something that is very much used by people across the globe. What kinds of conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation would I find?

I saw QANON and conspiracy theories are being repackaged in clean fonts, and retouched photos, with white teeth, and white skin about white concerns and white issues. Anti-vaccine and anti-mask posts were popular; a lot of these posts feature misinformation and disinformation but are still online. Some posts focus on covid-denial, or how masks help make children ‘unidentifiable’ and thus more likely to be trafficked (note: this was a common fear in the #savethechildren universe). Some misuse statistics, saying a child in America is 66,667 times more likely to be sold to human traffickers than die of COVID19. Others are images of Christian organizations educating children across Africa missing the hashtag (but not reflecting on imperialism or colonialism).

In August 2021, I scraped a small portion of the #savethechildren hashtag on Instagram. I started following the hashtag September 2020. There’s more than 700,000 posts online, but some posts get removed, more often because the poster’s account was deactivated. But it’s the same kind of content; children are missing, masks hide children, why are we so concerned about COVID when so many children are trafficked, etc. Some of the content feels very designed, other content is grabbed from other sites, with lower resolution or cropped in an awkward way for Instagram. Some of the posters feel very social media savvy, and others don’t. But regardless, they are all there, under this hashtag, heavily concerned about this pink elephant of a cause.

Hashtags can be messy. In a few seconds of scraping, I collected 2,000 posts and displayed nearly 1,000. Some posts are racists, most are fear mongering about an issue that isn’t really an issue. Some posts are highlighting Afghanistan and Palestine with the general plight of refugees, but those posting to stop the attacks against Palestians in Sheikh Jarrah aren’t intending for their posts to digitally rub shoulders with QANON. We see a pendulum swing from legitimacy to conspiracy in these posts- from highlighting a real humanitarian issue (Palestine) to a pretend one (QANON posts). There aren’t millions of children sold into child slavery or child trafficking. But how do you argue with the concept of ‘saving the children’- it’s an argument you can’t argue with. After all, who wouldn’t want to save children, and protect them? That’s what makes this conspiracy theory so infectious and so spreadable, playing upon a term I call ‘emotional malware.’

The hashtag spans transphobia, refugees, perceived ‘neutrality’ on abortions, prolife, QANON rhetoric, the deep state, MAGA, and others. But it’s important to point out that while #savethechildren originated from QANON, aspects of it’s factions are anti-Q and, at times, anti-Trump to center their own values. For example, in the COVID groupings, some posts say they aren’t Q supportive but want ‘everyone to wake up’ and realize the ‘scandemic’ we are in. Even with these discursive factions, I’m grouping the following as semi- related, of pulling from or supporting conspiracy theories peddled by QANON and QANON adjacent groups. Those sections are:

• #savethechildren---MAGA overlapping with QANON and sex trafficking
• #savethechildren--COVID
• #savethechildren---religious rhetoric
• #savethechildren---politics (pro-life, anti-trans, general conservatism, not directly child trafficking)

The following hashtags still use #savethechildren but in a much more literal sense. They are often advocating for child refugees and human rights (albeit, with a very white savior and neo-imperialism, and somewhat problematic bent):

• #savethechildren---afghanistan
• #savethechildren---palestine
• #savethechildren---white saviors helping a ”a far away place”
• #savethechildren--used by religious groups and orgs

263 images used #savethechildren hashtag, but referenced a variety of topics, from cancer awareness, to pro- COVID19 awareness, to climate change. These images are not shown in the visual project, but can be accessed in the link folders below.

I debated about allowing anyone to see what I had scraped but I believe it’s important to see more of the images, and read their captions. View the images and metadata about the hashtag I scraped here and here.

About the artist:

Caroline Sinders is an artist and researcher, usually living between London and New Orleans.