21st Century Barricades: Branding the Revolution
Where does the power to change come from? From inside the belly of the beast or the lone wolf in the dark? As the tools and symbols of dissent move from the brick in the street to the branding of social movements the traditional battle lines between barricades and boardroom are being redrawn. From Occupy to ISIS, radical social actors are presenting themselves as brand managers, infiltrating and appropriating state and corporate media strategies to create a new form of political engagement. Realising that the medium is the means to the message, activists are positioning themselves as Prosumers - distorting the means of information production and consumption. This repositioning raises important questions over the methods and objectives of new radical political movements to either act as agents of revolution or relics from an analogue age.