Humor and Social Movements

Abstract

At first glance, humor and politics may appear oppositional. Politics is often understood as serious, important, and grave, while humor is perceived as lighthearted and frivolous. Beneath the surface, however, it is evident that humor and politics are actually inextricably linked and have been throughout political history. This paper interrogates the tensions between humor and seriousness, importance and frivolity, and legitimate and dismissible to examine the manifestations of humor in social movement protest. I discuss how humor is used as a communicative and emotional strategy for social movement activists and organizations and focus on two constellations of movement humor: humor directed outside the group in the forms of tactics and frames, which I term external humor, and the role of humor in leadership, collective identity, and emotional labor, termed internal humor. To illustrate the role of humor in protest, I integrate examples from scholarly research, media depictions, and participant observation data to provide examples of how humor is manifest as an external tactic, social movement frame, and its potential role in strengthening ties to leadership and collective identity. The essay concludes by highlighting some potential paths for future study about the relationship between humor, ideology, identity, and power.

Twitter: Among Humor, Religious, and Political Issues in Indonesia

“…As Billig argues that the effectiveness of criticism in humor is because humor is not straightforward [9].Besides, humor is a cultural product where sharing ideas and norms take place. The success of humor can occur when the joker and audience both recognize and understand the cultural symbols and ideas that are in it [10]. Therefore, this study looks at how both accounts use Twitter as a public sphere to criticize political and religious issues by using humor.…”

Humor and satire in politics: Introducing cultural sociology to the field

“…To begin with, humor can be understood as a feature of “being amusing or comic” (Oxford University Press, 2019a), or as a “comic effort to stimulate joy or amusement” and consequently as an outcome of such endeavor (Kutz‐Flamenbaum, 2014, p. 294). Considering that both definitions highlight amusement as an aspect of humor, we can conclude that entertainment is one of its core desired results.…”

“America First, the Netherlands Second” on YouTube: “spoofing” destination marketing with political satire

“…Political humour has long been recognised as having important functions in society (e.g., Nilsen 1990). It is often a means of political activism, expressing dissent by those in less powerful positions (Kutz-Flamenbaum 2014;Sørensen 2017). Satirical humour is found to have a particular ability to break the power of dominant political discourses, because their ambiguity makes them ideal as "guerrilla attacks" in the ongoing discursive guerrilla war the activists are waging (Sørensen 2017).…”