Volume index - Journal index - Article index - Map ---- Back

Comunicar Journal 68: Networks, social movements and their myths in a hyperconnected world (Vol. 29 - 2021)

The hero and the shadow: Myths in digital social movements

https://doi.org/10.3916/C68-2021-01

Toby Miller

Eva Aladro-Vico

Paula Requeijo-Rey

Abstract

The general subject of this analysis is the presence of myths on social media, a heritage of the previous century’s mass culture, and in particular, for social movements. Social movements within networked communication are particularly endowed with mythologies, which draw on mass culture and on societies’ archetypal and psychological backgrounds. This fact justifies the hypothesis that the most effective and popular social movements resort to deeper mythological forms. The specific objective is to describe concrete myths in the language of digital social movements and to review the aspects of mythology in the scholarly literature on mythology from four fields. After tracing contents and impact, a qualitative analysis, focused on two examples justified by their digital origin, is performed: the “Anonymous” movement and “Je Suis Charlie” social mobilisation. Results show the persistence of two mythological motives: the profound hero’s monomyth, playing an essential identifying role, channelled through social networks, with hashtags as slogans, and the related myth of the shadow, the dark, “Anonymous” and hybrid identity. Connections and analogies with other recent examples are discussed ?such as the “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” cases?. The conclusion is the clear connection between these two myths and the communicative strength of social movements transmitted through social networks.

Keywords

Social movements, digital networks, myths, hero, shadow, activism

PDF file in Spanish

PDF file in English

References

Aladro-Vico, E., & Requeijo-Rey, P. (2020). Interés y participación política de los preuniversitarios madrileños ante el nuevo escenario político. Observatorio (OBS*) Journal, 14(2), 93-120. https://bit.ly/3ulhTN2

Alexopoulou, S., & Pavli, A. (2019). Beneath this mask there is more than flesh, beneath this mask there is an idea: Anonymous as the (super) heroes of the Internet? International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 34, 237-264. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-019-09615-6

Almirón, N., & Jarque, J.M. (2008). El mito digital. Discursos hegemónicos sobre Internet y periodismo. Anthropos.

Barthes, R. (2010). Mitologías. Siglo Veintiuno.

Bauman, Z. (2005). Identidad. Losada.

Borisovna, N. (2019). The human being in the mythological space of media culture. Realities and retrospectives. European Journal of Science and Theology, 5(15), 179-188. https://bit.ly/36yH2Kr

Campbell, J. (2016). El poder del mito. Capitán Swing.

Cassirer, E. (1968). El mito del estado. FCE.

Cassirer, E. (2016). Filosofía de las formas simbólicas. El pensamiento mítico. Tomo II. FCE.

Congosto, M.L. (2015). Elecciones europeas 2014: Viralidad en los mensajes en Twitter. Redes, 1, 23-52. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/redes.529

Coomaraswamy, A. (1947). Atenea y Efesto. The Journal of Indian Society of Oriental Art, 15, 16-20. https://doi.org/10.2307/594649

De-Kerckhove, D. (2010). Inteligencias en conexión. Gedisa.

Deseriis, M. (2012). Improper names: Collective pseudonyms and multiple-use names as minor processes of subjectivation. Subjectivity, 5, 140-160. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2012.3

Eco, U. (1995). Semiótica y filosofía del lenguaje. Lumen.

Eliade, M. (2010). La isla de Eutanasius. Trotta.

Encarnación-Pinedo, E. (2020). Shifting the mythic discourse: Ambiguity and destabilization in Joanne Kyger’s The Tapestry and the Web. Amaltea, 12, 25-35. https://doi.org/10.5209/amal.66717

Feliú-Albadalejo, A., & Moltó-Berenguer, C. (2019). Los movimientos sociales en las agendas mediática y política en España: El caso de la PAH. Obets, 11, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.14198/OBETS2016.11.1.07

Fish, A. (2015). Mirroring the videos of Anonymous: Cloud activism, living networks, and political mimesis. The Fibreculture Journal, 26, 85-107. https://doi.org/10.15307/fcj.26.191.2015

Frye, N. (1996). Poderosas palabras: La Biblia y nuestras metáforas. Muchnik Editores.

Gramsci, A. (2018). Notas sobre Maquiavelo, sobre la política y sobre el Estado. Comares.

Jung, C. (2009). La vida simbólica. Trotta.

Kendall, L. (1998). Meaning and identity in cyberspace: The performance of gender, class, and race online. Symbolic Interaction, 21, 129-154. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1998.21.2.129

Kerényi, K. (2012). La religión antigua. Herder.

Kerényi, K., Neumann, E., Scholem, G., & Hillman, J. (2004). Arquetipos y símbolos colectivos. Círculo Eranos 1. Anthropos.

Kermode, F. (2000). El sentido de un final. Gedisa.

Landers, C. (2008, April 19). Serious business. Baltimore City Paper. https://bit.ly/35cLgqw

Lanier, J. (2018). Diez razones para borrar tus redes sociales de inmediato. Debate.

Leporini, N. (2015). The transculturation of mythic archetypes: Margaret Atwood’s Circe. Amaltea, 7, 37-55. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_AMAL.2015.v7.48348

Lévi-Strauss, C. (2005). Mitológicas. FCE.

Losada, J.M. (2015). Mitocrítica y metodología. In J.M. Losada, & A. Lipscomb (Eds), Nuevas formas del mito. Logos Verlag (pp. 9-27). https://bit.ly/3rfgAxg

Lovink, G., Rossiter, N., & Ippolita (2017). El supuesto digital. Diez tesis. Cuadernos de Información y Comunicación, 22, 13-18. https://doi.org/10.5209/CIYC.55953

Maxwell, R., & Miller, T. (2012). Greening the media. Oxford University Press.

McChesney, R. (2012). Digital disconect: How capitalism is turning the Internet against democracy. New Press.

Miller, T. (2020). How green is your smartphone? Polity Press.

Miller, T., & McHoul, A. (1998). Popular culture and everyday life. Sage.

Morin, E. (2008). L’esprit du temps. Colin.

Morozov, E. (2012). El desengaño de Internet. Los mitos de la libertad en la red. Destino.

Mosco, V. (2011). Sublimidad digital. Ciberespacio, mito y poder. Universidad Veracruzana.

Nugier, A., & Guimond, S. (2016). Je suis Charlie: New findings on the social and political psychology of terrorism. International Review of Social Psychology, 29, 45-49. https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.60

Otto, W. (2005). Las musas y el origen divino del canto y del habla. Siruela.

Pelletier, P., & Drozda-Senkowska, E. (2016). The Charlie Hebdo terror attack in Paris: Follow-up of French citizens’ terrorist threat perception and its aftermath. International Review of Social Psychology, 29, 85-98. https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.51

Pinazo-Calatayud, D., Nós-Aldás, E., & Agut-Nieto, S. (2020). Positive or negative communication in social activism [Comunicar en positivo o negativo en el activismo social]. Comunicar, 62, 69-78. https://doi.org/10.3916/C62-2020-06

Provost, L. (2015, January 7). Je suis Charlie: Qui est à l'origine de l'image et du slogan que le monde entier reprend par solidarité?», Le Huffington Post. https://bit.ly/3dkUUrK

Riechmann, J. (2020, September 7). Decrecer, desdigitalizar. Quince tesis. 15-15-15. https://bit.ly/2GCFQeV

Robinson, L. (2007). The cyberself: The self-ing project goes online; symbolic interaction in the digital age. New Media & Society, 9, 93-110. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444807072216

Sorel, G. (2005). Reflexiones sobre la violencia. Alianza Editorial.

Titley, G. Freedman, D., Khiabany, G., & Mondon, A. (2017). After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, racism and free speech. Zed Books. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350218260

Treré, E., & Barranquero, A. (2013). De mitos y sublimes digitales: Movimientos sociales y tecnologías de la comunicación desde una perspectiva histórica. Redes.Com, 8, 27-47. https://doi.org/10.15213/redes.n8.p27

Zuckerman, E., Matias, J., Bhargava, R., Bermejo, F., & Ko, A. (2019). Whose Death Matters? A quantitative analysis of media attention to deaths of Black Americans in police confrontations, 2013–2016. International Journal of Communication, 13, 4751-4777. https://bit.ly/39LAdXZ