DAY 10: Anti-Censorship Tactics in Contexts of Political Control

by Lorenzo Gerbi, Eindhoven, yhe Netherlands, 27 May 2017

“Mark Zuckerberg announces he will run as a candidate for the US presidency. This news comes right after a series of new measures taken by Facebook to stop specific contents shared by the users. And we should expect even tighter measures to be applied in the next months. Indeed as many international commentators declare in these hours, Zuckerberg’s candidacy ends up turning Facebook into the proper emanation of a political party. New sensible topics are already under the evaluation of an External Committee. The Facebook team wants to understand techniques to limit the spread of negative comments or news which could irritate the lobbies backing the CEO’s candidacy. “- The New York Times, January 1st, 2020

During the workshop, participants were asked to concentrate on this scenario and react on one of the sensible topics identified by the External Committee.

By using and applying different tactics presented to them, they developed practical strategies to share comments on the topic through memes and escape censorship methods such as image recognition control, word targeting and data crossing.

Participants were asked to play on the different levels of memes which include text, image, pop culture references and irony. The strategies developed will be drawn from examples of internet activism against digital censorship, as it is happening in China or Russia. Other inspirations will be provided by a general historical collection of activist and anti-censorship tactics developed in contexts of political control.

A workshop by Memedom of Expression, developed in collaboration with the Asociación de Arte Útil.

This event is also kindly supported by Creative Tracks, a pilot project entrusted to a consortium of eight partners from five different European countries, active worldwide. Creative Tracks is co-funded by the European union and seeks to enhance international exchanges of experience, improving access of local culture practitioners and creative professionals to networks around the world. Read more…

Exploring the potential of internet memes as postmodern digital folklore, MoE speculates about them as the new arena of bottom-up expression that can mix pop culture, politics and participation in unexpected ways. The memes produced will be collected at the end of the workshop and filed in the ongoing archive of Memedom of Expression.