Violence expressive, e-participation et mouvements sociaux: le caractère identitaire des revendications politiques

Abstract

While expressive violence as a disruptive event is an instrument used in social movements, the changing media landscape has renewed the methods linked to this form of action and the investigation possibilities of its sociological origins. This double evolution is grasped here: the article observes how participatory media co-determine political messages when expressive violence serves as a vector for social movements and then considers the sociological roots from which this form of action stemmed and developed. The phenomenon of school shootings serves as a case study. A three-year ethnographic study of the e-participations published by authors of expressive violence and their public on YouTube serves to show how participatory media renew forms of adherence and social protest. It also unveils the reasons for this type of action. The author demonstrates how these media usages are exploited as a means of individuation, this use prevailing over their political dimensions. The expressive violence is actually used by some social movements not to promote ideals or political aspirations but rather to glorify individuality, sometimes posthumously, and to send a message of vengeance, demanding recognition as an individual from an imaginary enemy.