Satire as counter-discourse: Dissent, cultural citizenship, and youth culture in Morocco

Abstract

This article explores user-generated satirical YouTube videos as forms of citizen-made, participatory cultural production in the context of post-protest Morocco. Using a combined method of textual and critical discourse analysis, I map out the issues most satirized in these alternative cultural forms, then examine their counter-discursive ideological positions, and last explore the consequences of online satire on political culture in Morocco. I argue that the emergence of the web as a participatory medium and a competing cultural form is giving rise to new articulations of dissenting political culture through the enabling of (counter)publics, and the invitation of global, cosmopolitan practices of cultural citizenship.