- This work builds on the author's journal article in the Journal of African Cultural Studies, which won the 2017 African Literature Association best article award. This research has been useful since in framing discussions on the importance of a participatory Web and cultural productions in Africa. - There is currently no book on the intersections of performance, popular culture, and social media in the context of African studies and digital media scholarship in Africa. - This book contributes to the international and cross-disciplinary scope of IUP's media studies list by building off companion strengths in African studies. The book also contributes to strong areas of our African studies list, including popular culture and performance. - This is a book for scholars, reaching graduate students, in media studies and African studies. Target those interested in new media studies, African popular culture, and African digital humanities.
How does social media activism in Nigeria intersect with online popular forms-from GIFs to memes to videos-and become shaped by the repressive postcolonial state that propels resistance to dominant articulations of power?
James Yékú proposes the concept of "cultural netizenship"-internet citizenship and its aesthetico-cultural dimensions-as a way of being on the social web and articulating counter-hegemonic self-presentations through viral popular images. Yékú explores the cultural politics of protest selfies, Nollywood-derived memes and GIFs, hashtags, and political cartoons as visual texts for postcolonial studies, and he examines how digital subjects in Nigeria, a nation with one of the most vibrant digital spheres in Africa, deconstruct state power through performed popular culture on social media. As a rubric for the new digital genres of popular and visual expressions on social media, cultural netizenship indexes the digital everyday through the affordances of the participatory web.
A fascinating look at the intersection of social media and popular culture performance, Cultural Netizenship reveals the logic of remediation that is central to both the internet's remix culture and the generative materialism of African popular arts.
