Panel: RELIGION, ALGORITHMS, AND INEQUALITIES OF VISIBILITY



482.5 - PLATFORMED PROPHECY: PERFORMING CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY IN DIGITAL RELIGIOUS NETWORKS

AUTHORS:
Deysson J. (Université de Strasbourg / Universität Heidelberg ~ Strasbourg ~ France)
Text:
This paper examines how digitalization transforms religious authority through an analysis of "digital prophets", Independent Charismatic Networks leaders in the United States. These leaders combine local or multi-sited congregations with a strong presence on digital platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Rumble, and podcasts. Drawing on a multi-sited methodology that combines online ethnography, on-site fieldwork, and critical discourse analysis, this study traces how digital infrastructures reconfigure the performance, production sites, and legitimacy conditions of religious authority. Charismatic authority constitutes the dominant form within these networks, and its recognition is closely tied to processes of audience-building and to the capacity to sustain visibility and engagement across digital environments. Charisma is thus increasingly embedded in mediated dispositifs that simultaneously enable and constrain its performance. Particular attention is paid to the institutional and governmental dimensions of these translocal networks. Access to recognition is structured by relatively stabilized repertoires (prophecy, premillennialism, "signs and wonders," spiritual warfare, conservative moral order, geopolitically inflected prophetic narratives), as well as by implicit norms governing the performance of charisma. These dynamics enable both the consolidation of authority and processes of symbolic exclusion. Drawing on Paolo Gerbaudo's theories of digital populism and the "digital party", this paper further highlights the emergence of "hyperleaders" alongside processes of "hypercentralization" of visibility within networked publics. It argues that digital infrastructures drive a simultaneous de-institutionalization and re-institutionalization of religious authority.