Looking for Truth in Absurdity: Humor as Community-Building and Dissidence Against Authoritarianism

Abstract

What makes humor an honest and a direct communication tool for people? How do social networking and digital media transmit user- generated political and humorous content (Pearce and Hajizada, 2014: 70)? Our research argues that the way that humor is deployed through digital media during protest action allows protestors to assert humanity and sincerity against dehumanising political manipulation frameworks. Humorous content, to this extent, enables and is indicative of independent thinking and creativity. It causes contemplation, confronts the hegemonic power of the oppressor, and challenges fear and apathy (Lynch, 2002 in Pearce and Hajizada, 2014: 73). In order to conduct this research, we collected and analysed tweets shared during the Gezi Park protests. Gezi Parkı was chosen as the keyword since it was an unstructured and neutral term. Amongst millions of visual images shared during the protests, we concentrate on those that depict humor both in photography and video formats.