The politics of musical activism: Western YouTube reception of Pussy Riot’s punk performances

Abstract

Various scholars have studied the relationship between music and politics. Most, however, focus on how governments and political parties on the one hand and movements and activists on the other use music for political outcomes and in doing so they often ignore the more latent forms of political participation music can lead to. This article, therefore, focuses on how people give meaning to political music in informal conversational settings by exploring the reception of Pussy Riot on YouTube. New media platforms like YouTube are ubiquitous in the West and as ‘third spaces’ they allow audiences to publicly reflect on everyday newsworthy events and activism. We combine the computerized methods of topic modelling and semantic network analysis to study both quantitatively and qualitatively how Pussy Riot’s punk protests afford political participation by (Western) YouTube users. Results show that the comments mostly address (1) the geopolitical boundaries of activism, (2) the legitimacy and commitment of the activists, (3) the political content of the protests and (4) the relationship between the protests and religion. For the YouTube users in our study, the political music of Pussy Riot thereby serves as a vehicle to discuss politics beyond the protests themselves.