In this first chapter of By Any Media Necessary, Henry Jenkins introduces the core concepts necessary for the reader to understand the book. He reviews the literature available on the main themes, explains the title and presents the team of researchers who wrote the book and how it has been curated. Five main concepts emerge all related to youth activism.
Key Ideas
- Culture Jam: Distorting well known cultural material in order to “disrupt the flow, block the signal, and hijack the signs coming from Hollywood and Madison Avenue” (p.)
- Civic Imagination: “the capacity to imagine alternatives to current social, political, or economic institutions or problems” (p.)
- Imagined Community: Coined by Benedict Anderson in 1983, this term is used to describe ” one of the core mechanisms shaping strong nationalist movements in the 19th and 20th centuries” (p.)
- Paticipatory Politics: defined by researchers Cathy J. Cohen and Joseph Kahne as “interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern” (p.)
- Fandom and legitimacy: How is fandom helping social change ? How did it gain legitimacy ?
I chose this magnet from Live Action because it is an example of cultural jamming. Indeed here, the magnet represents a woman, on a yellow background, showing her bicep, with a red bandana and blue overalls. This illustration is reminiscent of Rosie the Riveter, the famous World War II American allegory and cultural icon. The magnet, which also used to exist as a bumper sticker, uses all of the visual codes known to Americans, yet, changes the message of Rosie the Riveter from “we can do it” to “we can end abortion”. It subverts the message of a cultural icon to push its pro-life ideology.
The magnet also exemplifies the point made by Jenkins in the chapter. He quotes Jenkins, Ford, and Green (2013) in Spreadable Media, “he past few decades have seen dramatic increases in grassroots access to resources for cultural production and circulation and improvements to the infrastructure required for collective action”. Indeed the versatile nature of magnets and bumper stickers allows a message to be spread to a large amount of people.
This Instagram post was made by an account held by a feminist group. Those collages started in 2016, at first by denouncing domestic violence and raised awareness on the high number of women killed by their male partner or ex-partner. The messages conveyed then evolved to broader feminist messages, for example this one in reaction to the overturn of Roe v. Wade. With the years the movement has grew and further organized in cities all over France such as Marseille or Bordeaux, and even worldwide.
It relates to the reading as I think it is an example of movement which developed and organized through social media, and which has a concrete action. It is also mostly the work of women acting at night in mostly women-only groups and whose work aims at re-appropriating the public space. It contributes to the empowering of women and also to the creation and production of a voice.
Finally, this meme and carousel of testimonies was published by Anna Toumazoff, an activist and author known on social media under the username of @memespourcoolkidsfeministes. Over the years she was the creator of many hashtags (#ubercestover, #doublepeine) which became viral and were used both to gather testimonies of victims of sexist and sexual violence, and to call the attention of the media and of higher administrative powers. She also creates memes on a regular basis sometimes not related to those hashtags but always with a feminist stance.
It illustrates the reading because through her memes, she has created a community which is more likely to gather and act when she raises awareness on certain topics.
This post denounces the impunity of rapists and assaulters as well as the widespread rape culture in what could be called a French Ivy League. The creation of the hashtag #SCIENCESPORCS enabled a number of victims to testify publicly while keeping their anonymity, which is also reminiscent of Jenkins insistence on the power of testimonies,
Similarly to the other hashtags created by Toumazoff, the important number of alarming testimonies and the massive sharing of her posts by other social media pages caught the attention the newsmedia and Toumazoff was interviewed in the TV-news. It is also interesting to see that her creating the hashtag had more impact than some of the school associations which were already denouncing the issue but were dismissed by the school’s administration. The administration of the school tried to deny the existence of any type of sexist violence at the school, yet the president of the school resigned a few weeks later.
I make sense of the creator’s intent as her trying her best to bring light to unacceptable behaviors which have been unpunished and kept quiet for too long. She also offers a platform for victims and survivors to testify and have their experience heard and acknowledged.
Media x Social Change 