ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

The Hungarian social movement, noÁr, has been using its online presence to heighten their agenda in recent months featuring recurring liberal, progressive themes as a response to illiberal legislative policies passed during recent years. This thesis explores the work of noÁr, throughout the lead-up to the 2022 parliamentary elections in Hungary. The reason for this research concerns both its academic and societal relevance due to the fact that the explosion of online social movements for political purposes has only reached its advent in Hungary, not to mention the remarkable fact that noÁr started out by using art and music as its core mobilization tools. By conducting a concept-driven dispositif analysis, the thesis answers the research question: How does the dispositif of the noÁr movement engage its audience to be members of a community of practice, and how is that linked to the liveness of the movement’s liberal agenda in regards to upcoming parliamentary elections of April 2022? The theoretical framework consists of concepts within the themes of internet activism, dispositif, and liveness in terms of a property of technology, an audience affect and an industry discourse. Moreover, social identity formation, imagined communities, and the concept of communities of practice are applied to the case. The three distinct, but interlinked levels of noÁr’s screening situation, such as the ontological, the rhetorical, and the phenomenological level, are discussed with the central argument being that the social movement manages to create a live community of practice, which not only shares a collective identity of individuals but also mobilizes its members to participate in active citizenship practices such as voting in the upcoming 2022 elections.