User:Tash/grad thesis outline1

Thesis Outline Draft 1

Format:

2) An analytical essay exploring related artistic, theoretical, historical and critical issues and practices that inform your practice, without necessarily referring to your work directly.

• plus annotations written from a personal point of view, to situate the research within my own context and practice

Key topics:

• Social & networked media as democratic or emancipatory tools
• Freedom of speech / freedom of connection / freedom of religion
• The rise of alternative media / pop culture and its role in contemporary nation-building
• (Self-)censorship, cultural regulation and revisionism (“New media, Old wounds”)
• Meme culture as a mode of civic engagement, a way of imaging dissent
• Archiving as an active political practice (and post-colonial tool?)
• Alternative ways of sharing knowledge, and their social aspects (“We publish to find comrades!”)
• Weaponization of the internet, propaganda wars in the comments section

Thesis statements

• While in Indonesia today – where free speech is still limited – social media has had generally positive effects on the democratic process, deliberate digital activism (including the likes of critical memetics, progressive propaganda, trolling and culture jamming) can be used to turn these spaces of reaction into meaningful platforms for political discourse.
• For a country whose mainstream media is becoming more and more sensitive to dissent, meme culture – with its polyvocality, and capacity for both critique and humor – represents a valuable space for young Indonesians to engage and experiment with alternative political discourse.