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- Convenors:
-
Abdelaaziz El Bakkali
(University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah)
Shadi Hijazi (General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs-Dubai ( Emirates academy ))
Elhassane El Hilali (LALITRA Research Laboratory, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Mohammedia, Hassan II University, Casablanca, Morocco)
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Short Abstract
Given the specificities of the youth context, understanding the dynamics of youth subcultures is crucial to understanding alternative cultures in politics of changing patterns of political participation, within meanings related to young people's digital experiences in new geographies
Long Abstract
A critical engagement with youth subculture theory suggests that digital political
participation as a subculture in opposition to mainstream culture goes beyond what is
commonly understood as forms of defiance, resistance, lifestyle difference, and digital identity construction into what has been associated with the geography and nature of the global south. It involves an exploration of the meanings related to young people's folkloric digital experiences in new geographies. As the relationship between youth subcultures and their alternative political cultures remains under-researched, this panel advocates for a novel investigation into the reasons behind the remarkable transition to digital activism among youth within certain geographical contexts of the South. The aim is to understand the nature of youth's digital experiences and their intentions towards a new world order. This panel shows how young people's political subcultures shape their views and understanding of politics. It shows how young people's political participation practices through digital media explain their inclination towards an alternative political culture for a counter-political discourse to have a political and/or folkloric civil impact within the specificities of southern geographies. As an attempt to analyse and discuss the interplay of new digital-computational folklore, culture, politics, and youth, the present proposal is theoretically guided by global and local research to critically review the existing literature to show how the constant challenges and pressure of technological innovation and globalism are putting on many countries’ democratic conditions and such impact on the global south.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Sunday 14 June, 2026, -Paper short abstract
This paper examines the way Moroccan youth, especially women, transform silence into digital folklore. Through veiled critique, coded symbols, fragmented narratives, and strategic ambiguity, silence becomes a powerful mode of activism, reshaping political expression in the Global South.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the way Moroccan female content creators transform Instagram into dynamic sites of digital folklore and subtle activism. Using netnography, visual analysis, and discourse analysis, it investigates reels, memes, storytelling, and humor as tools to critique social norms, governance, and inequality. It highlights gendered strategies, participatory publics, and inventive modes of resistance, showing how traditional folkloric practices, such as satire, coded expression, and embodied storytelling, are remixed in digital spaces to negotiate visibility, agency, and political expression in the Global South. Using netnography, visual analysis, and discourse analysis, this paper shows the way Moroccan female content creators transform Instagram into dynamic sites of digital folklore and activism. Findings reveal inventive strategies: reels and memes function as humor and satire remix traditional folkloric forms, hashtags operate as shared digital proverbs, and visual codes, such as emojis, filters, and symbolic imagery, enable veiled dissent. Women also employ strategic silences and fragmented narratives, creating a poetics of discretion that negotiates visibility and safety. Through embodied gestures, dance, and performative storytelling, ephemeral posts become enduring cultural commentary, producing participatory publics that critique social norms, governance, and inequality. This study introduces the concept of folkloric feeds which refer to online spaces where folklore, gendered agency, and political expression intersect, highlighting the way youth invent new modes of resistance, solidarity, and creativity in the digital Global South.
Paper short abstract
This study examines how digital technologies reshape reading practices among Moroccan CPGE students, linking them to youth subcultures, identity, and political agency. Using surveys and interviews, it explores digital vs. print preferences and their socio-cultural meanings.
Paper long abstract
The study investigates how digital technologies are reshaping reading practices among CPGE students in Morocco, situating these practices within broader debates on youth subcultures, digital participation, and the cultural specificities of the Global South. Moving beyond conventional concerns of format preferences, the research explores how Moroccan youths’ digital reading practices intersect with identity, political subcultures, and folkloric digital experiences that contribute to emerging counter-discourses. Employing a mixed-methods design, the study will survey approximately 200 CPGE students across multiple disciplines using a validated online questionnaire. Quantitative data will capture reading frequencies, device usage, format preferences, and areas of interest. A stratified random sample of 10 participants will then be invited for semi-structured interviews to examine deeper motivations, strategies, political orientations and socio-cultural meanings attached to digital reading. Descriptive findings are expected to reveal the prevalence of digital versus print reading and contextual preferences for particular devices, while inferential analyses will assess how political orientations and reading practices vary across formats. Thematic analysis of qualitative data will highlight subcultural aspects of reading behaviors, including screen-skimming, multitasking, attention shifts, and context-driven choices that reflect broader negotiations with global technological pressures. By connecting everyday digital reading practices to larger issues of youth cultural participation and political agency, this research aims to contribute to critical discussions of youth digital subcultures and their impact in southern geographies.
Keywords: Digital reading practices - Youth subcultures - Identity construction - Political subcultures - CPGE students
Paper short abstract
Moroccan youth use digital activism to resist hegemonic discourses, counter portrayals of disengagement, and create alternative narratives. Drawing on Castells’ counter-power theory, this study of 20 youth shows how online strategies reshape participation, amplify voices, and influence opinion.
Paper long abstract
In an era shaped by social networks, Moroccan youth are redefining political communication through grassroots, bottom-up forms of expression. Their digital activism challenges top-down hegemonic discourses and resists portrayals of youth as politically disengaged, apathetic, or alienated. Through digital counter-discourse, they construct alternative narratives and cultivate a participatory subculture that contests institutional hierarchies and reshapes the political landscape. This study examines how both activist and non-activist youth, through horizontal networking, youth forums, and coalition-building, subvert traditional political structures, blur the boundaries between discourse and practice, and develop hybrid, digital grassroots forms of political activism and practice politics from below. Grounded in Castells’ (2007) theory of communication, power, and counter-power in the network society, the study explores how social networks introduce new actors, rhetorical styles, and innovative forms of activism into the virtual public sphere. Through thematic analysis of rhetorical and visual strategies used by 20 influential Moroccan youth, the study shows how their online content drives a discursive shift in youth mobilization and influences public opinion. The Z Generation movement protest illustrates how Moroccan youth amplify grievances, address social concerns, and wield influence as agents of change beyond traditional channels. More broadly, the study situates these practices within the Global South, revealing how local cultural forms are reimagined through digital networks. The findings challenge conventional understandings of activism and dismantle binary narratives of youth political exclusion and inclusion.
Keywords: Political activism; network society; discourse and counter-discourse; social networks; Moroccan youth
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how Serbian youth use internet memes to shape environmental narratives and activism. Through digital ethnography (2018 - present), it analyzes memes on hydropower and lithium protests, revealing critiques of extractive capitalism and visions of ecological justice.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how young people in Serbia use internet memes to construct environmental narratives and engage in digitally mediated activism. Internet memes, as a vernacular form of communication, enable youth to express opinions, frame debates, and participate in public discourse on ecological issues. A digital ethnography of social media content related to local ecological struggles has been conducted from 2018 to the present. Most of the collected internet memes refer to grassroots resistance to small hydropower projects and mass mobilisation against lithium extraction. Both struggles reveal contradictions between ecological protection and foreign-backed “greenwashed” investments. Within this corpus of internet memes, the paper identifies key narrative elements: characters (heroes and villains), settings, plots, and themes, which articulate dichotomies and negotiations between crisis and progress, and justice and corruption. Special attention is given to how memes encode critiques of extractive capitalism in the context of the European green transition while offering alternative imaginaries of nature and community in the local context. The paper emphasises the role of youth digital activism in broader struggles for ecological justice in Serbia.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines memes from ongoing Serbian student protests as digital folklore, functioning both as forms of political resistance and as an emotional valve, helping youth release tension, anger, and frustration while shaping counter-discourses.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the role of memes as a form of digital folklore that has emerged within the ongoing student protests in Serbia, which have been unfolding for nearly a year. Positioned at the intersection of humor, resistance, and digital creativity, protest-related memes reflect how young people construct and communicate an oppositional political subculture in both online and offline spaces. By analyzing the mechanisms of humor that characterize this folkloric genre, the paper investigates how memes not only satirize the ruling political order but also serve as symbolic tools of solidarity, mobilization, and the articulation of dissent.
Through the lens of folklore and youth subculture theory, I argue that these digital artifacts represent more than ephemeral jokes: they embody a sustained counter-political discourse that parallels street-level activism and reinforces it in the digital sphere. In doing so, Serbian student protest memes exemplify how young people's political subcultures actively shape their views of politics and their imaginaries of alternative political futures.
By situating the case study within the broader framework of digital folklore in the Global South, the paper contributes to the panel’s critical engagement with youth digital activism. It demonstrates how the interplay of humor, political culture, and digital media under conditions of democratic erosion in Serbia reflects the pressures of technological globalism while simultaneously highlighting the potential of youth-led digital subcultures to generate folkloric civil impact and resist dominant political narratives.
Paper short abstract
The paper examines the ways in which Moroccan women leaders utilize digital platforms to construct their identities, challenge patriarchy, and amplify their political influence. It demonstrates how their online activism alters leadership while subjecting them to new risks in the Global South.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores how Moroccan women leaders use digital platforms to shape their cultural and political identities within the Global South. While youth subcultures and online activism have been extensively studied, the digital practices of women leaders are still underexplored. This study contends that their online engagement goes beyond symbolic resistance or visibility; it transforms leadership practices, fosters counter-discourses, and challenges patriarchal norms. By placing Moroccan women leaders within discussions on digital subcultures, feminism, and political participation, the paper demonstrates how technological innovation and globalization create both opportunities and limitations. Digital spaces enable women leaders to amplify their voices and broaden their influence, but they also leave them vulnerable to harassment and structural inequalities. The analysis shows that Moroccan women are not passive participants in digital transformation but active agents reshaping leadership and identity, providing new perspectives on power, gender, and political engagement in the Global South.
Paper short abstract
Based on a nationwide survey of 421 Moroccan teachers, this paper shows how students created peer-to-peer online study circles during COVID-19 school closures, revealing everyday civic activism interpreted through digital folklore and youth subculture theory within Morocco’s Global South context.
Paper long abstract
March 2020 marks the month when Morocco closed schools and millions of students and teachers had to switch to online education overnight. This paper is based on a nationwide survey of 421 teachers. It lays out the structural and socio-economic challenges, such as unreliable internet, high costs, and lack of training that affected that transition.
Despite the aforementioned barriers, teachers remarked that Moroccan students quickly formed informal study groups and created new ways to communicate in order to continue learning. Interpreted through the lenses of digital folklore and youth subculture theory, these emergent practices constitute a vernacular digital culture that initiated the recreation of Morocco’s longstanding oral and communal study traditions into a virtual format.
Rather than outward protest, these adaptive forms of cooperation represent an everyday civic activism: a subtle yet impactful way for Moroccan young people to sustain education and assert agency despite limited infrastructure and institutional support.
By bringing folklore and youth-culture perspectives to a large empirical dataset, this paper positions Morocco as an under-examined Global South case where crisis schooling became a site of cultural production and subtle political participation. It broadens understandings of how educational disruptions can foster creative, socially significant digital folklore and extend the concept of political engagement beyond conventional activism.