User:Tash/grad thesis outline1

04.10.2018 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

• Memetic dialogues have become an important form of alternative political discourse in Indonesia, offering new avenues of connection for young people in the nation’s urban centres.
• For a country whose mainstream media is becoming more and more sensitive to dissent, meme culture – with its polyvocal and participatory quality – represents a valuable space for political debate and commentary.