https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0499-9109
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ABSTRACT
This article examines user-generated music remix videos critiquing or commenting on Donald Trump throughout the 2016 election cycle. Our aim is to discover not just whether remix was used as a vehicle of critique or support, but how remix affordances have been adapted into a rhetorical language for these purposes. Above and beyond the remixes’ unique qualitative characteristics, we identify four specific rhetorical tactics that appear consistently, which we call “witnessing,„ “pwning,„ “incongruity,„ and “noisification.„ Ultimately, we argue that these tactics yield a complex, nuanced, and yet widely understood and broadly accessible language of critique and commentary through remix.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. One example of this remix meme can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/www.JOE.co.uk/videos/903949506435783/.
10. This work was partially supported by the University of Oslo and the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence scheme, project number 262762, and through the research project MASHED, project number 275441.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen is Associate Professor in Popular Music Studies in the Department of Musicology, and in RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is the author of Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound (with Anne Danielsen, MIT Press, 2016).
Aram Sinnreich
Aram Sinnreich is Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at American University's School of Communication in Washington, DC. He is the author of Mashed Up (U Mass Press, 2010); The Piracy Crusade (U Mass Press, 2013); and The Essential Guide to Intellectual Property (Yale University Press, 2019)