MESA Banner
Youth "Cyber-Noise": YouTube, Political Activism, and the Festivalization of Dissent in Morocco
Abstract by Dr. Aomar Boum On Session 156  (Harnessing Online Media)

On Monday, November 23 at 2:30 pm

2009 Annual Meeting

Abstract
For Moroccan youths, cyberspace has emerged as a useful tool where political, social, and economic grievances are publicly circulated without state censorship. YouTube has, at least partially, helped rural and urban Moroccan youth reclaim the counter hegemonic spaces traditionally regulated by the state. Hip-hop music has become a common form of expression among the youth. Through hip-hop music, posted on YouTube, young artists contest their socio-economic marginalization and challenge state subjugating policies. YouTube dissolves the barriers of traditional state media allowing individuals to participate in a virtual public sphere that benefits from the global discourse of human rights and transcend the traditional regulation of the Moroccan media. I argue that despite the fact that YouTube is thought to be a counter hegemonic force, its threat to state’s control of youth resistance is minimal. For the state, this youth movement is not as threatening as it looks. Like Nass El Ghiwane and Lamchaheb, two contesting popular musical movements of the 1970s which relied partly on cassettes tape to disseminate its message, the emerging appropriation of young hip-hop singers by government agencies limits the power of YouTube as a space of contestation given the change of hip hop culture from a cyber protest to a business choice governed by global marketing strategies. This capitalist domestication engineered by state as integral part of its culture of festivalization would transform the styles and themes of the contesting discourse of Moroccan hip hop, its production, and its circulation.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Saudi Arabia
Sub Area
Maghreb Studies