New Frontiers
Hip Hop Music as a Counter-Hegemonic Potential in Challenging the Power
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ramin Chaboki Darzabi
In this paper, I study how hip-hop music is used as a tool to resist against the power and cultural hegemony in Iran and what themes hip-hop musicians use in their songs to challenge this cultural hegemony and power. It is difficult to find the beginning of hip-hop music in Iran since the government in Iran punished producers of western music especially hip-hop. Hip-hop in Iran was available on the black market, and it began to grow after the 2000s. The internet provided an excellent opportunity for music especially hip hop in Iran. Before the internet, hip-hop musicians could not access to the audience, and the internet helped them to solve this problem. Musicians in Iran must get official approval from the Ministry of Culture to operate legally in the music market, and hip-hop musicians cannot get this approval because hip-hop is considered against the Islamic values. These limitations encouraged youngsters and teenagers to use hip-hop music as an alternative media to challenge the power and cultural hegemony. They recorded music in private studios or their homes and shared them online. During the time, Iranian hip-hop developed its own identity and themes that mainly challenged the authority in Iran. In this research, I used thematic analysis to study themes in Iranian hip-hop songs, and examine the most frequent themes that hip-hop musicians discussed in their songs.
Emotional Truth, Historical Fact, and the Alternative Media of Literature
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laura Fasick
“Alt-media” today often whips up strong emotions by spreading “alternative facts” but as a literary scholar I have long prized a different kind of emotion-inducing, not entirely factual media. Like most literature teachers, I have believed that stories about fictional characters living through real-life events convey the emotional truth behind history’s dry facts. After all, if reading literature makes us more empathetic, then what better way to make vivid to students the magnitude of things as South Africa’s one-time apartheid system or China’s Cultural Revolution? Both apartheid and the Cultural Revolution ended decades before today’s students were born, but surely powerful literature captures for anyone the devastating effect of these movements, effects that linger even now. In recent years, however, I have been increasingly troubled by student reactions when I teach such novels. Students undeniably are moved by the narratives. They are also undeniably educated, since almost all of them declare that they had not previously known about the real-life horrors detailed in the books. However, their interest in the narrative arc involving the fictional characters quickly overshadows their interest in the historical context. Does the protagonist improve during the story? Then they ignore what state of society the novel shows. Students have repeatedly dismissed politics as “superficial” compared to family dynamics and individual happiness. Literature as a virtuous “alt-media” that sensitizes us to others’ challenges? I am no longer sure that it is.
Memes and Modi: A Content Analysis on the Role of Social Media in Politics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Afshana Parveen Hoque
Social media has emerged to be a new frontier in the communication world. It facilitates the dissemination of information in milliseconds. It reaches a large audience in a short time. Politicians have identified the value of social media and are now exploring its potentials. One of the social media tools that both politicians and the public are currently exploring are memes. Memes are visual tools that are used to convey a message. The power of social media communication facilitates easy sharing of information and gives politicians a chance to engage with their supporters at a personal level. The paper discusses some of the widely-known instances in history, that witnessed the use of social media for a political change. To understand, the role memes play, in circulating political messages, the 2014 Indian general election is taken as an example. An attempt was made to analyze the widely circulated political memes during the Indian general elections. The results highlighted the importance of humor in the memes, that seems to give these messages the ability to go viral within a short period. Considering the increasing use of new media tools in the social reforms of a country, the results of the study draws attention to the creative ways of triggering a passive audience. Efficient use of social media tools provides a platform upon which politicians can understand the needs of their people and hence respond in their manifestos to appeal the electorate.
