The “infogypsyism” phenomenon in the contemporary media

The authors use the methods of social networks content analysis to explore the “infogypsyism” phenomenon. This phenomenon includes the sale of low-quality content by bloggers and other media persons on various media platforms. First of all, it is online training courses, in which success is guaranteed to the addressee in a short period of time and with minimal effort: gaining wealth, a noticeable improvement in health, mastering a profession. “Infogypsyism” has become widespread in the Russian media sphere over the past 10 years, but it especially scaled up during the pandemic. This phenomenon is actively discussed online by journalists and social network users, as well as by buyers of courses deceived in their expectations. It is interesting that bloggers themselves in interviews often engage in self-disclosure, talk about their manipulations and boast that they are “selling air”. At the same time, in the scientific community, “infogypsyism” is poorly understood, and there is no legislative practice to regulate this activity at all. Only in 2022, the State Duma of Russia raised the issue of the need to certify online courses and create a register of coaches. Despite numerous journalistic uncoverings of infogypsies, their courses continue to be in great demand among the population. The authors, using concrete examples of bloggers, examine the manipulative tactics bloggers use to sell the course to the audience and the “results” of their teaching activities. Bloggers' manipulative tactics of communicating with the target audience include the following methods of deception: personal or someone else's example; aggressive offer; big discounts in the first hours of sales; limited number of places; fake installment plan; artificial hype; artificial positive feedback; subscriber's problem areas; manipulations with the topic of health, and others. When such courses are released on offline platforms, unscrupulous coaches use such methods of working with the audience as challenge attempts, “emotional buildup”, training without rest to reduce the audience's criticality, and so on. The authors highlighted the signs of infogypsyism on the example of two bloggers successfully selling courses -Elena Blinovskaya and Lerchik. Both of them earned tens of millions of rubles on the trust of subscribers. The authors emphasize that, in the absence of a legal regulation of sales of online courses in Russia, “infogypsyism” not only deceives a large number of people, but also discredits education in general.

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