The Reshaping of the New Age Movement in the Digital Sphere Post-Pandemic: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Select 'spiritual Influencer' Content

The ethos of the New Age Movement during the 1960s, according to Theodore Roszak, was deeply rooted in a critique of modern industrial society and the search for alternative modes of consciousness. In his seminal work The Making of a Counter Culture (1969), Roszak situated the rise of the New Age movement to the broader countercultural rejection of materialism, consumerism, and technocratic rationality that dominated after World War II. Decades after, certain facets of New Age practice continue to evolve within the digital landscape. This paper embarks on an exploration, through critical discourse analysis of select 'Spiritual Influencers' content on Instagram, to understand how New Age practices are co-opted into avenues of individualized liberation. By examining how elements of the New Age practice are integrated into digital spaces such as Instagram, this paper aims to shed light on the nuanced ways in which personal liberation is sought post-pandemic, and the broader implications of this phenomenon to our ideation of the 'self' and 'society'.