The European Journal of Humour Research

Vol 4, No 3 (2016)

Digital politics on Facebook during the Arab Spring in Morocco: Adaptive strategies of satire relative to its political and cultural context

Mohamed Mifdal

Abstract

When the Arab Spring began, a growing number of Moroccan Facebookers flaunted their dissent in the face of the regime and used subversive satire to question its legitimacy or push for more freedoms.  However, this expression in the form of satire waned after the situation became settled and the satirists had to adjust their satire to the new political reality. This article explores the adaptive strategies of satire in a repressive context during settled and unsettled periods. By scrutinizing satiric posts on Facebook for over four years, I argue that satire, as critique and resistance, adjusts itself to the context,  either by taking advantage of  increased political space and freedoms or by resorting to indirection, self-censorship or tactical play with power. In both instances, the satiric performance is bound to stay within consensual cultural and political norms even when it is most subversive as these norms profoundly shape its creation and public reception.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and His World. Transl. by Iswolsky, H. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Bergson, H. (2014). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Transl. by Brereton, C. & Rothwell, F. Available online: www.templeofearth.com/ [Accessed on 4 June 2014].

Bogel, F. V. (2001). The Difference Satire Makes: Rhetoric and Reading from Byron to Jonson. New York: Cornell University Press.

Cohen, S. (2002). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers (3rd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.

Davies, C. (1998). Jokes and their Relation to Society. Berlin, New Yok: Mouton de Gruyter.

Davies, C. (2001). ‘Humour is not a strategy in war’. Journal of European Studies 31: pp. 395–412.

Davies, C. (2010). ‘Jokes as the truth about Soviet socialism’. Folklore 146: pp. 9–34.

Davies, C. (2011). Jokes and Targets. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Draitser, E. (1998). ‘Folk humor in post-Soviet Russia: A survey’. SEEFA Journal 3 (1): pp. 5–13.

Frye, N. (2000). Anatomy of Criticism (15th ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gardiner, M. E. (2000). Critiques of Everyday Life. London, New York: Routledge.

Gray, J., Jeffrey, P. J. & Ethan T. (eds.). (2009). Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York, London: New York University Press.

Griffin, D. H. (1994). Satire: A Critical Reintroduction. Lexington: University Press of

Kentucky.

Hammoudi, A. (1997). Master and Disciple. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Knight, C. (2004). The Literature of Satire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.,

Kuipers, G. (2008). ‘The sociology of humor’, in Raskin, V. (ed.), The Primer of Humor Research, Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 365–402.

Kuipers, G. (2011). ‘The politics of humor in the public sphere: Cartoons, power and modernity in the first transnational humor scandal’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 14 (1): pp. 63–80.

Mansouri, N. (2013). The Sociology of the Internet (in Arabic). Beirut: Muntada Almaarif.

Milner, R. (2013). ‘Hacking the social: Internet memes, identity antagonism, and the logic of lulz”. The Fibre culture Journal 2: pp. 63–92.

Noelle-Neuman, E. (1974). ‘The spiral of silence: A theory of public opinion’. Journal of Communication Spring: pp. 43–51.

Noelle-Neuman, E. (1991). ‘The theory of public opinion: The concept of the spiral of silence’, in Anderson, J. A. (ed.), Communication Yearbook, Newbury Park: Sage, pp. 256–287.

Oring, E. (2003). Engaging Humor. The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Quintero, R. (ed.). (2007). A Companion to Satire: Ancient to Modern. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

Rose, M. A. (1993). Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-modern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sater, J. N. (2007). Civil Society and Politcal Change in Morocco. London: Routledge.

Sater, J. N. (2010). Morocco: Challendes to Tradition and Modernity. London: Routledge.

Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Ann Arbor: Yale University Press.

Shehata, S. (1992). ‘The politics of laughter: Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarek in Egyptian political jokes’. Folklore 103: pp. 75–91.

Shifman, L. (2012). ‘An anatomy of a YouTube meme’. New Media and Society 14 (2): pp. 187–203.

Sperber, D. & Wilson. D. (2012). ‘Explaining irony’, in Meaning and Relevance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 123–145.

Waterbury, J. (1970). The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite – A Study

of Segmented Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Zeghal, M. (2009). ‘On the politic of sainthood: Resistance and mimicry in postcolonial Morocco’. Critical Inquiry 35 (spring): pp. 587–610.