Mapping Religious and Sacred Ideals in Australian Pseudolaw Narratives (2026-2029)
Abstract
This project aims to analyse how Australian pseudolaw and Sovereign Citizen disinformation, which has potential to spur violence and strain civil justice systems, employs narratives featuring religious and sacred values. Using internet-mediated ethnography and qualitative narrative analysis, it will identify the chief online sources of this disinformation and its most prominent Australian evangelists. Its goal will be to analyse such disinformation¿s overarching themes, interaction patterns, and rhetoric, especially in relation to religion and sacred values; tracing how narratives support authority structures, promote antigovernment attitudes, and act as recruitment pathways. The project aims to identify exemplar narratives, detailing their plotlines and how they tend to cohere around shared religious ideas and sacred ideals. Altogether, the project will generate ethnographic and narrative analytical maps that can be leveraged to counter such disinformation as well as similar threats.
