Cultural Netizenship

<p><b>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? </b><br /><br />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.<br /><br />A fascinating look at the intersection of social media and popular culture performance <i>Cultural Netizenship</i> reveals the logic of remediation that is central to both the internet's remix culture and the generative materialism of African popular arts.</p>