The Meaning of the Feminist T-Shirt: Social Media, Postmodern Aesthetics, and the Potential for Sociopolitical Change
Trine Kvidal-Røvik
Additional contact information
Trine Kvidal-Røvik: Department of Tourism and Northern Studies, UiT—The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Media and Communication, 2018, vol. 6, issue 2, 210-219
Abstract:
This article examines the potential for political or social change as part of postmodern cultural expression in consumer culture. Throughout the article, I discuss the way sociopolitical messages, circulating in contemporary culture, represent an interesting element in terms of their intertextual referencing and postmodern blurring. Postmodern aesthetic features merge commodifying, resistive, and identifying processes, which can enable sociopolitical messages to spread into new arenas of resistance and fly under the radar, so to speak. In particular, I claim that new forms of engagement in social media communication produce an alternative venue for politics—one created by neoliberalism itself. I explain that sociopolitical messages presented via postmodern aesthetics in consumer culture, particularly when circulated using social media, can function counter-hegemonically, even while using hegemonic structures to gain commercial success. With this, the potential for change can come about; power lies in the hands (or social media accounts) of consumers.<
Keywords: consumer culture; postmodern aesthetics; resistance; social media; sociopolitical change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/1302 (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:meanco:v6:y:2018:i:2:p:210-219
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v6i2.1302
Access Statistics for this article
Media and Communication is currently edited by Raquel Silva
More articles in Media and Communication from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().