Conjuring Online: the application of aesthetics in social media portrayals of Hoodoo

With the increasing amount of users on social media, documentation of personal religious and spiritual practices have proliferated as well, including minority spiritual practices like Hoodoo. Social media provides a public sphere in which Hoodoo practitioners apply aesthetic techniques to their posts to create and maintain their spiritual identity, while attempting to separate themselves from the broader witchcraft communities that operate in similar, or even the same, online communities. This study archives social media posts in online Hoodoo communities, which then were analyzed to account for aesthetic styles, audience engagement, and modern practices and interpretation of Hoodoo. Although Hoodoo practitioners attempt to establish and maintain a separate identity from the broader witchcraft communities, the boundaries between these spiritual groups are blurred. Instead, these communities often share aesthetic techniques, language, and standardized materials, influencing modern concepts of Hoodoo itself. Likewise, social media and the Internet provide a spiritual market-place in which diversity is supported, but these public spaces consequently increase the standardization of religious and spiritual practices overall.