When protest humor is not all fun: The ambiguity of humor in the 2017 Romanian anti-corruption grassroots mobilization

Abstract

This article focuses on the ambiguous ideological work of citizen-produced humor in protest. Using the case of the 2017 Romanian anti-corruption protests as empirical data, the article shows how humor can simultaneously signal grassroots creativity and resistance to power structures, and reproduce conservative gender and class hierarchies. Unlike other types of texts, humor presents itself as an innocent and light message, absolved of the need for critical scrutiny. However, protest studies need to engage in a more nuanced way with the ideological articulation of democratic politics via protest humor by asking not only how humor helps protest communication, but also how it achieves shared enjoyment, for whom, and to what consequences for the ideological articulation of democratic politics. The article concludes by proposing that researcher reflexivity can afford a new sensitivity to the ambiguousness of protest humor.

Legal analysis of freedom of expression and online humour in Indonesia

“…Humour has been recognized as a tool for expressing and disseminating opinions, and it is intricately linked to other fields of knowledge (Alkiviadou 2019). Scholars have examined humour as a component of social, political, and cultural phenomena (Ridanpää 2014), as well as within the domains of psychology (Franzini 2001), psychotherapy (Dimmer et al 1990;Valentine & Gabbard 2014), neurology (Rodden 2018), and education (Banas et al 2011), etc. On the other hand, humour has been recognized as a means of resistance against oppression and slavery (Barber 2021), and as a tool to resist authoritarian rule (Lampland & Nadkarni 2015) in undemocratic states where power is distributed unequally (Bozzini 2013;Bruner 2005;Davies 2007;Dumitrica 2022;Salmi-Niklander 2007). Going back as far as the classical playwright Aristophanes, humour has been used to ridicule those in public office (Schutz 1977).…”

“…On the other hand, humour in contemporary political developments, previously identified as a grammar of resistance, has the power to transgress and evolve through laughter. It serves as a medium for freedom of self-expression (Wilson 1990) and functions as an arena for citizen production in shaping protests (Dumitrica 2022). At the same time, it is also considered the politics of liberation for individuals (Holm 2017, p. 15).…”

“…On the other hand, in the realm of digital media, the freedom of expression afforded to online humour is captivating and has even emerged as a dominant factor in the dissemination of humour (Shifman & Blondheim 2010). Additionally, protest humour within the confines of freedom of expression and the provocation of laughter can render protests more accessible to different audiences (Dumitrica 2022), while simultaneously engaging individuals or groups that may be unreachable, marginalized (Graefer et al 2019), or dismissive of mainstream issues. Furthermore, in contemporary times, expressions conveyed through the internet have an extensive reach, enabling the freedom of expression, particularly in the form of humour, to be accessible to over 5.3 billion internet users, accounting for 66 percent of the world's population (ITU 2022).…”

“…Contemporary methods of understanding humour proliferation organize several theories into a tripartite structure -Relief, Incongruity, and Superiority (Holm 2017). The superiority theory approach, which essentially regards humour and laughter as part of perceiving others as inferior, is especially used to explain humour with offensive language (Billig 2005;Dumitrica 2022;Pérez 2017). Although the theory of superiority was already present in the time of Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle who briefly described humour as a way to find solace from the misfortunes of others (Dumitrica 2022;Ford et al 2014), world history also records many rulers who use humour to ridicule or show malice towards their less fortunate citizens (Dmitriev 2005).…”

Outcomes of Democratic Innovations: Horizontalism as Inclusive Participation Spillover, but Fragile under Hierarchical Attacks

“…Significantly, even though corruption was the trigger that enabled the wide waves of street action, the underlying general claim resembled the social disappointment with representative democracy (Kioupkiolis, 2021(Kioupkiolis, , 2018. There were no calls for more powerful institutions of force, to come strong and clean the perceived vicious political ecosystem, as it happened, for instance, in Romania, during the anti-corruption protests of 2017-2019 (Dumitrica, 2022). The different labeling of corruption and its causes reflects a divergent cultural understanding over political processes and their enablers.…”