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Download fileLooking for truth in absurdity: humour as community-building and dissidence against authoritarianism
journal contribution
posted on 2022-10-21, 14:22 authored by Umut Korkut, Aidan McGarryAidan McGarry, Itir Erhart, Hande Eslen-Ziya, Olu JenzenWhat makes humour an honest and a direct communication tool for people? How do social networking and digital media transmit user-generated political and humorous content? Our research argues that the way in which humour is deployed through digital media during protest action allows protestors to assert humanity and sincerity against dehumanising political manipulation frameworks. Humorous content, to this extent, enables and is indicative of independent thinking and creativity. It causes contemplation, confronts the hegemonic power of the oppressor, and challenges fear and apathy. In order to conduct this research, we collected and analysed tweets shared during the Gezi Park protests. Gezi Parkı was chosen as the keyword since it was an unstructured and neutral term. Among millions of visual images shared during the protests, we concentrate on those that depict humour both in photography and video formats.
Funding
The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Find out more...History
School
- Loughborough University London
Published in
International Political Science ReviewVolume
43Issue
5Pages
629-647Publisher
SAGE PublicationsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by SAGE under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Publication date
2021-01-04Copyright date
2020ISSN
0192-5121eISSN
1460-373XPublisher version
Language
- en