‘Žít Brno’: Czech online political activism from jokes and tactics to politics and strategies

Investor logo

Warning

This publication doesn't include Faculty of Economics and Administration. It includes Faculty of Social Studies. Official publication website can be found on muni.cz.
Authors

MACKOVÁ Alena MACEK Jakub

Year of publication 2014
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Cyberpsychology: Journal of psychosocial research on cyberspace
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Web Full version of the article.
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/CP2014-3-5
Field Mass media, audiovision
Keywords online activism; political participation; culture jamming; electronic repertoire of contention
Attached files
Description The paper presents a case study of the Czech online activist group Žít Brno. The group that challenges local representatives and employs tactics of political satire, parody and culture jamming, evolved from a spontaneous one-off event to an ongoing political project and eventually became an institutionalized political actor. The case study, based on interviews with group members, content analysis of the project website, longitudinal observation of the group's activities and other additional material, enables us to research the limits and the potential of online tactics and the way online practices are intertwined with a more traditional repertoire of collective action. Building on debates about online political participation and the broadening concept of the political, we interpret the group's protest as a reaction to the crisis of institutionalized local politics and we discuss the actual role of new media in such a protest. The conclusion is that online protest and new media, despite their criticized action-less character, could enable a functional bridge to “real” politics but at the same time they do not play an exclusive role in successful protest politics and have to be interpreted within the context of a particular political action.
Related projects:

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.