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Unruly Women and Carnivalesque Counter-Control: Offensive Humor in Mediated Social Protest

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Media and the Politics of Offence

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Abstract

At the Women’s March in January 2018, many protest posters featured offensive jokes at the expense of Trump’s body and behaviour. Such posters were shared widely online, much to the amusement of the movement’s supporters. Through a close analysis of posts on Instagram and Twitter, we explore the role of “vulgar” and “offensive” humour in mediated social protest. By highlighting its radical and conservative tendencies, we demonstrate how we can understand these practices of offensive humour as a contemporary expression of “the carnivalesque” that is complexly intertwined with social change.

A version of this chapter has been previously published in: Journal of Communication Inquiry, Online First, https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859918800485.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

    Anne Graefer

  2. Lecturer in Media & Communication, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Allaina Kilby

  3. Independent Researcher, Oslo, Norway

    Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore

Authors
  1. Anne Graefer
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  2. Allaina Kilby
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  3. Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore
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Correspondence to Anne Graefer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

    Anne Graefer

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Graefer, A., Kilby, A., Bore, IL.K. (2019). Unruly Women and Carnivalesque Counter-Control: Offensive Humor in Mediated Social Protest . In: Graefer, A. (eds) Media and the Politics of Offence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17574-0_4

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