Analysing Politics and Protest in Digital Popular Culture
A Multimodal Introduction
- Lyndon Way - University of Liverpool, UK
We now increasingly encounter and do politics not through news or broadcast media, but when we scroll through social media feeds, open apps, compose and like posts, and comment on or share videos.
This book explores how to analyse politics and protest in the places we experience it most in our everyday lives – on our phones, tablets and laptops.
It provides a hands-on analytical toolkit, showing you how to critically analyse language, image, video and audio in a way that reveals the discourses, ideologies and power that run through digital popular culture.
From the authoritarianism of Donald Trump, to the protests of Gezi Park, to the campaigns of Extinction Rebellion, to angst against Brexit, Lyndon Way shows you how to analyse the politics in digital everyday life across media including:
- Online comments
- Memes
- GIFs and mash-ups
- Music videos
- Parodies and satire.
It is an essential guide for students and researchers across media and communication, politics and discourse studies.
Fostering critical insight remains as important an educational goal as ever. This highly accessible and engaging book gives students the tools they need to uncover for themselves the hidden politics of today's digital infotainment labyrinth.
This is the methods book I have been waiting for! Way's book provides the examples I need to connect to my students' lifeworld and interests: YouTube comments, memes, mash ups, music videos and parodies related to a wide range of political protests and issues. With each example, he builds a useful toolbox for conducting systematic, rigorous and transparent critical analysis of digital popular culture... This an accessible introduction to those unfamiliar with the field, but also a very useful starting point for those aiming to brush up on their knowledge of critical theory and methods... providing students with the means to analyze and tease out power and the political in the glittering world of popular culture.
Analyzing Politics and Protest in Digital Culture was adopted in 2021. The textbook, with its current case analysis, resonated with the students. In 2021, the world was still grappling with the George Floyd case, the 2020 election, and COVID-19. The book's concise handling of case studies allowed students to understand the connection between politics and media.
