curated by Steve Anderson, Merlyna Lim, Marc Tuters

Combining established Agitprop techniques of reappropriating stock video for political ends with easily-available contemporary technologies of production and distribution, political remix videos reach millions, providing often-humorous but pointed commentary on political topics.

curated by Steve Anderson, Merlyna Lim, Marc Tuters 

Combining established Agitprop techniques of reappropriating stock video for political ends with easily-available contemporary technologies of production and distribution, political remix videos reach millions, providing often-humorous but pointed commentary on political topics.

Bushwacked 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlDsk56-5vE/a> (00:04:07)

Reading between the lines of George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech in 2002, Chris Morris's elegantly edited video reveals the true intentions behind the President’s political platitudes and generalizations.

George Bush Don't Like Black People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGRcEXtLpTo&feature=player_embedded (00:03:51)

Franklin Lopez (video) and The Legendary K.O. (music).

Franklin Lopez’s video enigmatically mimics the form of a silent-era film, complete with title cards and convulsive black-and-white images of the devastation that followed Hurricane Katrina, all set to the tune of The Legendary KO remix of Kanye West's Golddigger.

Bush for Peace

http://www.bushforpeace.us/bushforpeace.mov (00:01:56)

Jen Simmons and Sarah Christman

Jen Simmons and Sarah Christman’s Bush for Peace offers a wistful look at what a presidential speech might look like if America had actually become the kinder, gentler nation it once proclaimed itself to be.

Imagine This

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7meAXUguTQo (00:04:38)

John Callaghan (video) and Wax Audio (music)

Although the first Gulf war was supposed to have erased our collective memory of Vietnam, parallels between Vietnam and the current war in Iraq are growing increasingly difficult to deny. This video mashup by John Callaghan makes its point with sobering clarity, combining an audio track from WaxAudio, John Lennon’s Imagine, speeches by George W. Bush, and horrific images from Iraq.

My article entitled "Cyber-Urban Activism and Political Change in Indonesia" has just been published in Re:Activism issue of the Eastbound. Eastbound, a peer reviewed journal published in print and online, aims to create an international platform for Western and Eastern European researchers engaged in the multidisciplinary field of media and cultural studies. It features articles, reviews and interviews dealing with social and political implications of the rise of entertainment media and mediated popular culture, the appearance of global media players, and the spread of new forms of politics and information technologies.

The Re:Activism issue is actually a selection of papers followed up from Re:Activism conference held last year in Budapest.

My own article deals with the politics of space and spatiality of politics by looking at the interaction between cyberactivism and urban activism and how cyber-networks are extended to social networks in urban setting.

If you're interested to download my article or the whole issue, just go online. All articles are published under creative-commons license.

Re:activism conference addressed "what role social activism can play in the broad process in which emerging new media technologies transform existing structures of cultural, economic and political power."

Net browsing used to be mostly about just surfing site after site for information. But in the last few years, people have also used the Internet to be networked to each other as well as to produce and share things within [w:networks]. Flock, the latest open source [w:Web 2.0] browser that has just been launched (still in developer preview version, though), seeks to address this new social phenomenon.

Reporters Without Borders or Reporters sans frontiéres has just released a handbook for bloggers and cyberdissidents who want to protect themselves from recrimination, censors and surveillance. The handbook, partly funded by French government, is meant help cyberactivists with handy tips and technical advice on how to get round censorship and surveillance by strategizing the uses of blogs for various situations.