CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Janotová, Lucie |
|---|---|
| Title | Laughing Our Way to the Public Sphere: Humorous Contentious Performances of Social Movements |
| Summary | Humorous contentious performances are very popular with social movement activists, despite being relatively understudied and undervalued in the field of political science. Moreover, if scholars focus on them, it is usually in the context of democracies. Inspired by the cultural tradition of social movement studies, this thesis explores the perceived effectiveness of the use of humorous contentious performances in environments where the access to the public sphere is limited, making protest participation difficult. Through an analysis of the mobilization of the public, recruitment, internal group dynamics and relations with the authorities, the perceptions of the use of humour by the activists are assessed as effective, ambiguous and not effective. The nature of this research is exploratory and is based on a comparative study of three movements: The Polish Orange Alternative; The Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party; and a recently formed Serbian Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own movement. Through a discourse analysis of conducted semi-structured interviews and available interview excerpts, it was discovered that in three out of four indicators, the use of humour is perceived to be effective, regardless of whether the movements managed to reach their tangible goals or not. This enhances our knowledge of direct civic action and helps to legitimize humour as an important protest tool. |
| Supervisor | Dimitrijevic, Nenad |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/janotova_lucie.pdf |
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