"Will you please let us have our memes": The Digital Politics of Youth Climate Publics
Topics: Political Geography
, Digital Geographies
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Keywords: Youth, Climate Politics, Political Geographies, Digital Geographies, Humor
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 46
Authors:
Mark Ortiz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Abstract
This paper considers how young climate activists involved in the global Fridays 4 Future network and Sunrise Movement formulate a generational digital politics evident in memes and other digital content. I illustrate how political affects and aesthetics which emerge in this digital politics, including humorous and tragicomic sensibilities, are critical to the formation of online and offline youth climate publics and expressive of a generationally-shared, albeit geographically differentiated, critique of adultist institutions and politics, particularly around the issue of climate change. Engaging with work on the political geographies of humor (Clark and Fluri, 2019), new media studies (Warfield, Abidin and Cambre, 2020), and pop-cultural understandings of nature (Bosworth, 2021), I argue that political geography must take seriously the remaking of political influence(rs) across digital and social media platforms. Through the case study of youth climate movements' digital content creation, I suggest a few key considerations for advancing understandings of political influence(rs) that will help to understand the (inter)generational politics of climate change.
References:
Bosworth, K. (2021). The bad environmentalism of ‘nature is healing’ memes. Cultural Geographies. https://doi.org/10.1177/14744740211012007
Clark, J. H., & Fluri, J. L. (2019). Everyday political geographies of humor. Political Geography, 68, 122–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.12.006
Warfield, K., Abidin, C. & Cambre, C. (2020). Introduction to Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media. In Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media. K. Warfield, C. Abidin & C. Cambre (Eds.).
"Will you please let us have our memes": The Digital Politics of Youth Climate Publics
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Virtual Paper Abstract
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