Political Communication, Social Media and Popular Culture: The Adisucks Facebook Protest Case Study

Abstract

This paper focuses on the question of how new (social) media work as tools of political messages’ distribution within converged media systems. Using a case study of the adisucks Facebook protest organized in Polish social media in March 2011, the author demonstrates how the internet may work as a space of symbolic and participatory engagement in the collaborative creation and dissemination of grassroots political messages. The analysis is framed by a theoretical consideration of recent transformations in political communication patterns caused by changes within the sphere of civic engagement and the transformations of 21-century digital media. The author discusses: narrative or mythical and performative levels of users’ contribution to the protest profile and considers possible changes in the status of modern online activism by recalling the concept of “communicative capitalism”