Suchergebnisse

Introduction : creative play and collective imagination / Amber Day -- Opening up utopia / Stephen Duncombe -- Imagination and a useless map / Catherine D'Ignazio -- Implausible futures for unpopular places / Rob Walker -- Repair events and the fixer movements : fixing the world one repair at a time / Lorenzo Giannini -- Our knowledge is our market : consuming the diy world / Jeremy Hunsinger -- DIY radio utopia : what is so funny about the tragedy of the commons / Linda Doyle and Jessica Foley -- Remaking street corners as "bureaux" : DIY youth spaces and shifting urban ontologies in Guinea / Clovis Bergère -- Whose city? : art and public space in Providence / Martha Kuhlman -- Livestream production and livestream community in the Black lives matter movement / Chenjerai Kumanyika -- Making do and mending - domestic television in the age of austerity : Kirstie Allsopp's Kirstie's homemade home / Deborah Philips -- Everyday utopias, technological dystopias, and the failed occupation of the global modern : Dwell magazine meets unhappy hipsters / Joan Faber McAlister and Giorgia Aiello -- Change your underwear, change the world : entrepreneurial activism and the fate of utopias in an era of ethical capital / Lisa Daily

Annotation

In the fall of 2010, Chevron released an ad campaign designed to respond to consumer worries about the conduct of oil companies. Each ad depicted "customers" voicing rather nonspecific concerns about oil companies, answered by the "We Agree" slogan and information about something positive the company is doing in particular communities. Just before the campaign's official roll-out, the anti-corporate activist group known as the Yes Men produced a series of sophisticated parody ads that spoke in more detail about the damage the company has done in specific countries. Designed to be mistaken for the real, the dummy campaign was distributed with a fake press release purporting to be from Chevron. It was indeed picked up by the press, followed by a cascade of confused articles quoting alternately from the company's real retraction and a subsequent fake retraction. The Yes Men succeeded in temporarily "throwing their voice" into the body of the Chevron corporation, using a savvy form of ventriloquism as a means of directing the public conversation. Although it is normally the powerful (like large corporations) who are heard in public life, often speaking both for themselves and others, the tactic of ventriloquism temporarily reverses that flow. The case study provides a compelling example of a method of capitalizing on the democratic potential of new media, wielding parody and play as a weapon of the crowd.

Stephen Colbert's announcement in 2011 that he was starting his own Super PAC oneupped The Colbert Report's already substantial commitment to boundary muddling. By raising real money, producing commercials, and exploring the nuances of campaign finance regulations, Colbert acted out his critique of current law in tangible form. The novelty of the experiment created anticipation amongst fans and commentators that the project would have a direct effect on attitudes about campaign finance, or that Colbert would veer into clear advocacy work. Indeed, expectations matched the standard assumptions about satire: that efficacy should be gauged by measurable influence on individual opinions. In reality, the PAC's commercials likely did not influence many outside his existent fan group. However, the project as a whole did work to license journalistic attention and to impact the wider debate about campaign finance. The example demonstrates that the more grandiose expectations of political entertainment are often misdirected, as they are premised on the prospect of instant audience malleability. Rather the most interesting possibilities involve more incremental shifts in the public conversation.

Stephen Colbert's announcement in 2011 that he was starting his own Super PAC one-upped The Colbert Report's already substantial commitment to boundary muddling. By raising real money, producing commercials, and exploring the nuances of campaign finance regulations, Colbert acted out his critique of current law in tangible form. The novelty of the experiment created anticipation amongst fans and commentators that the project would have a direct effect on attitudes about campaign finance, or that Colbert would veer into clear advocacy work. Indeed, expectations matched the standard assumptions about satire: that efficacy should be gauged by measurable influence on individual opinions. In reality, the PAC's commercials likely did not influence many outside his existent fan group. However, the project as a whole did work to license journalistic attention and to impact the wider debate about campaign finance. The example demonstrates that the more grandiose expectations of political entertainment are often misdirected, as they are premised on the prospect of instant audience malleability. Rather the most interesting possibilities involve more incremental shifts in the public conversation.

A new breed of political activist has begun to appear on the streets and in the news. They are no longer trying to out-shout their opponents, but are agreeing with them instead, enthusiastically taking their adversary's position to exaggerated extremes. It is a practice here termed "identity-nabbing," in which participants pretend to be someone they are not, appearing in public as exaggerated caricatures of their opponents or ambiguously co-opting some of their power. This paper focuses on three groups in particular: The Billionaires for Bush, Reverend Billy, and the Yes Men. Each group stages elaborate, ironically humorous stunts as a means of attracting public attention to particular political/social issues. The ironic frame not only provides entertainment value, but also contains its own community-building function, as it requires the participation of the audience to actively read it ironically. Banking on the pre-existence of communities that share their assumptions and get the joke, these groups attempt to turn what Linda Hutcheon refers to as "discursive communities" into political communities (or counterpublics), urging people to actively identify with the importance of the issue at hand, and to continue circulating the critique. They rely on the co-participatory workings of irony to spur people into viewing themselves as a collective with collective power. None of these groups are aiming for revolutionary change, but by turning laughter over a shared joke into anger and engagement they work to attract attention, get others involved, and slowly shift debate.