Online Video Activism and Political Mash-up Genres

Abstract

This article situates contemporary forms of video activism in online environments within a historical trajectory of radical film recruited for Left thinking and action. Focusing on the remix ethos and aesthetics of political mash-up videos, the article suggests how revisiting the analogue precursors of digital video may help contextualise and understand new forms of video activism, and politically committed media practices more generally. In the first part of the analysis, I engage with some of the principal conceptual themes and aesthetics that shape the various hybrid genres of the kind of visual activism we see emerging in YouTube and similar video platforms today. For these purposes, I propose a typology for understanding the motley array of video documentary and documentation available online as a hybrid and diverse range of media forms for political investigation and portrayal. The second part of the analysis demonstrates how such mash-up practices play out on three distinct levels when digital videos are put in circulation online. First, political mash-up is understood as a set of material practices in which online content is mixed and repurposed, second, in terms of a convergence between different styles, genres and modes of address, and finally, the concept of mash-up opens up for an understanding of the blurring of boundaries between different political actors and motives in online media environments.

Movimiento estudiantil en Chile, aprendizaje situado y activismo digital. Compromiso, cambio social y usos tecnológicos adolescentes

“…Por su parte, las 8 dimensiones de caracterización del videoactivismo de Mateos y Rajas (2014) y los 5 formatos identificados por Askanius (2013), permiten señalar los siguientes hallazgos:…”

“…Siguiendo la categorización de Askanius (2013), hay una diversidad de géneros de presentación: los videos a, b y c corresponden a videos de documentación (iii): el video d corresponde a un ejemplo de remezcla política (v) y el video e es un video testimonio (ii).…”

“…For the analysis of the videos were considered Mateos & Rajas (2014) and Askanius (2013). Both provide categories to characterize video activism practices online.…”

“…Diversidad de formatos: construyen relatos en diversos formatos, documentales o de ficción 8. Implicación / conciencia: remite a la idea del compromiso personal Dentro del apartado sobre diversidad de formatos (7), hemos profundizado en el análisis a partir de las categorías establecidas por Askanius (2013), para quien "la convergencia, hibridez y la reapropiación de obras previas están definiendo las características del videoactivismo online contemporáneo y el discurso político en la era digital en general" (Ibid., 1). Así, si bien las formas y formatos contemporáneos de videoactivismo tienen una raíz o un origen en las formas del video analógico, están situadas cada vez más dentro de la lógi-ca de entretención de los medios sociales, de la cultura de la remezcla y de los contenidos generados por los usuarios.…”

10 Music Videos as Protest Communication: The Gezi Park Protest on YouTube

“…This research, focusing specifically on YouTube videos that have been circulated on Twitter during the Gezi Park protests, forms part of the larger Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded 'Aesthetics of Protest' project which has explored visual protest culture and communication. 2 The protest music video, we argue, draws on already established genres of video activism such as witness documentation (Askanius 2013), rally call, and political remix videos (Conti 2015), which, when combined with a musical soundtrack, communicates across intellectual and emotional registers (Mirzoeff 2015).…”