‘Žít Brno’: Czech online political activism from jokes and tactics to politics and strategies

Alena Macková; Jakub Macek

doi:10.5817/CP2014-3-5

‘Žít Brno’: Czech online political activism from jokes and tactics to politics and strategies

Vol.8,No.3(2014)
Special issue: New Media and Democracy

Alena Macková Jakub Macek

https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2014-3-5

How to Cite:

Macková, A., & Macek, J. (2014). ‘Žít Brno’: Czech online political activism from jokes and tactics to politics and strategies. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 8(3), Article 5. https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2014-3-5

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Abstract

The paper presents a case study of the Czech online activist group Žít Brno. The group that challenges local representatives and employs tactics of political satire, parody and culture jamming, evolved from a spontaneous one-off event to an ongoing political project and eventually became an institutionalized political actor. The case study, based on interviews with group members, content analysis of the project website, longitudinal observation of the group's activities and other additional material, enables us to research the limits and the potential of online tactics and the way online practices are intertwined with a more traditional repertoire of collective action. Building on debates about online political participation and the broadening concept of the political, we interpret the group's protest as a reaction to the crisis of institutionalized local politics and we discuss the actual role of new media in such a protest. The conclusion is that online protest and new media, despite their criticized action-less character, could enable a functional bridge to “real” politics but at the same time they do not play an exclusive role in successful protest politics and have to be interpreted within the context of a particular political action.

Keywords:
Online activism; political participation; culture jamming; electronic repertoire of contention

Author biographies

Alena Macková

Mgr. et Mgr. Alena Macková works as junior researcher at the International Institute of Political Science and the Institute for Research on Children, Youth and Family at Masaryk University in Brno. She also contributes to a research project at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. She is a PhD student of political science (Masaryk University) and her research focuses on new media and politics, especially on political communication and cyberactivism.

Jakub Macek

Mgr. Jakub Macek, Ph.D, is a senior researcher at the Institute on Research of Children, Youth and Family and an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Journalism, both at Masaryk University. His research focuses on the sociology of new media. He currently works on a post-doctoral research project entitled “New and old media in everyday life: media audiences at the time of transforming media uses”. Full bio: http://is.muni.cz/osoba/14931?lang=en;setlang=en#cv

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