Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in English and Writing Studies
Department
English
First Reader/Committee Chair
Karen Rowan
Abstract
This thesis examines how anti-intellectualism, authenticity, and credibility intersect in digital discourse. In contemporary online environments, expertise is increasingly treated with suspicion, while relatability, emotional immediacy, and personal conviction often function as alternative markers of trustworthiness. Under these conditions, intellectual expression may become socially risky, particularly in spaces where speakers must appear authentic without seeming overly serious, pretentious, or out of touch. This study asks how credibility and authority are performed, negotiated, and contested in short-form digital discourse, and how sincerity is reshaped when authenticity itself becomes a rhetorical performance.
This project is grounded in scholarship on anti-intellectualism, platform culture, and the ethics of knowledge. Tom Nichols provides a framework for understanding the cultural instability of expertise, while José van Dijck, Alice Marwick and danah boyd, and Kelley Cotter demonstrate how digital platforms structure communication through visibility, audience management, and algorithmic pressures. bell hooks and Satya P. Mohanty further clarify the distinction between sincerity and performance by emphasizing care, reflexivity, and sustained engagement with complexity. Taken together, this scholarship suggests that digital platforms shape not only what kinds of communication circulate, but also what forms of knowledge appear credible, acceptable, and socially legible.
Using qualitative rhetorical analysis, this study examines a discourse chain composed of three short videos and their responses. The case begins with a brief statement about child free women, mothers, and “internalized misogyny,” then expands through response videos into a larger debate about pronatalism, patriarchy, unpaid labor, and feminist authority. Rather than determining which speaker is correct, the analysis focuses on how each creator constructs authority, frames the issue, and attempts to direct audience interpretation.
The analysis finds that digital discourse frequently transforms a single statement into a larger struggle over meaning, credibility, and interpretive control. Across the discourse chain, authority is established through distinct rhetorical strategies, including moral certainty, investigative framing, definitional correction, emotional intensity, and relatability. In this context, credibility depends less on formal expertise than on a speaker’s ability to appear sincere, socially aware, and emotionally compelling. Ultimately, this thesis argues that digital discourse encourages forms of authority grounded in performance, and that authenticity increasingly functions as a substitute for expertise in shaping what can be voiced, heard, and taken seriously online.
Recommended Citation
Sandoval, Mariaisabel, "ANTI- INTELLECTUALISM, AUTHENTICITY, AND INTELLECTUAL AUTHORITY IN SHORT-FORM DIGITAL DISCOURSE" (2026). Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations. 2512.
https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/2512