“It’s Called ‘Giving a Shit!’”
Meanwhile, the audience, mostly representing a slightly older generation, were expressing, via Twitter, their dissatisfaction with what they characterized as a “blacklash” against activism or a denial of the political stakes of these young people’s public expression. One audience member summed up the collective response, “On the semantics front, It’s not called ‘activism.’ It’s called ‘giving a shit.’”
By Any Media Necessary has made the case that what we are calling “participatory politics” constitutes a legitimate and valuable contribution to public culture. Peter Dahlgren has discussed political participation in terms of Trajectories, Modalities, Motivation, Sociality, and Visibility -- and we will be using these concepts in this closing section to summarize some of the key insights we’ve developed through this book’s multiple case studies. Under Trajectories, we will explore the interplay we’ve discussed between audiences and publics, between popular culture, civil society, and institutional politics. We focus on the process by which young people enter into the political realm and acquire knowledge they will need to act meaningfully in civic life. Under modalities, we consider the ways that these groups produce and share content across a range of different media platforms and social locations, from the hyperlocal (their schools) to the transnational (NGOs and human rights organizations). In terms of motivation, we explore the models of personal and social change informing these movements, including what we’ve discussed here as content worlds and mobilizing structures. In terms of sociality, we will discuss the ways political participation fits within young people’s social and cultural lives, becomes part of what they talk about when they are together and part of what solidifies their involvement in interest-based and friendship-based networks. And in terms of visibility, we will discuss the ways their tactics accelerate the circulation of information through diverse publics and the ways that such pushes to shift public attention may also place these precarious publics at greater risk.
Media Referenced in Chapter 7
