Ok, yes today’s meme is kind of lame but I mean, shit! You try finding a meme that is funny, relates to music and activism. The meme is from the Don’t Kill Live Music rally that I touched on in my last post (https://junkee.com/dont-kill-live-music-rally/194933?fbclid=IwAR0976e5dYsBv6TYgtCNP6Eek_h1TgxtrmZVzBg-H9-iguwaxNE0UBX5pu8) and today’s topic is closely related, activism and protest in the digital age. To explore this, I want to talk about a fairly grim revolution that took place in Tunisia in 2011 and the self-immolation of a local Tunisian, so I suppose I should apologise for the lack of music based content. In regions such as Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia in 2010 had become victim to heavy censorship and police repression in order to silence the protests of the oppressive government (https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/01/2011126121815985483.html). On the 17th of December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest which was the spark that the people of Sidi Bouzid used to break the censorship, taking to twitter and social media with the hashtag #sidibouzid. The Tunisian government attempted to shut this coverage of the protests and riots; however, it was far too late at this point. The rest of the world had been exposed to the injustices within Tunisia and people from all around the world offered to post on behalf of Tunisians to ensure the coverage continued (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAuxNXmAbyY). On social media, the world showed solidarity towards Tunisia. But what exactly does solidarity achieve? According to academic, Mary Joyce, there are three positions towards social media as a tool for activism and protest: https://www.arifyildirim.com/ilt510/marcos.sivitanides.vivek.shah.pdf
1. Optimists who believe that digital activism will alter existing political hierarchies
2. Pessimists who believe digital activism can be constructive or destructive
3. Persistents who may be optimistic or pessimistic about digital technology, but they do not believe the internet to be exceptional. The same rules of politics apply and technology won’t change that.
Eventually, the protests and riots that took place in Tunisia led to the ousting of president Ben Ali and the implementation of free and democratic elections, so you be the judge of the role social media played in the saga.
Now, it would be remiss of me to post about online activism without talking about ‘culture jamming’ and given it’s a far more lighter topic to talk about than riots and people setting themselves on fire, it is a welcome change of pace. According to Wikipedia (which I generally wouldn’t rely on for definitions, however, this is quite a neat way of putting it), culture jamming “is the act of using existing mass media to comment on those very media themselves, using the original medium's communication method.” In other words, taking a brand icon or slogan and modifying it in an often sarcastic way in order to critique brands, politics, etc. the most common form of culture jamming that you’re probably already aware of are memes (http://politicalmemes.com/lets-get-back-to-that-wall-talk/). There are however, many forms of culture jamming. Check out Ad Busters for example. Ad Busters is an organisation that produce not only culture jamming online content, but also produce products such as clothing that attempts to combat the branded clothing (https://www.adbusters.org/). For more on culture Jamming visit https://depts.washington.edu/ccce/polcommcampaigns/CultureJamming.htm which has a decent overview of culture jamming.
