Dissent at a Distance

The contribution by The Janissary Collective argues that while protest movements and civic groups may indeed benef it from ‘mediatization,’ their playful character is less the result of a conscious strategy than the outcome of the performativity of means-over-ends focused engagement. This manifests itself in the ‘slacktivism’ inherent in participating online only. The Janissary Collective takes a skeptical stance towards generalizing the transformative role of new media tools, and proposes to regard today’s political and social movements as thriving on the unruly and affective ecologies of media that mostly emphasize the feeling of belonging to a community instead of actually being part of one. Participation in these movements is an expression of a playful way of being and therefore a mode of being human.