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<p>This article studies the <bold>Norwegian Students and Academics’ International Assistance Fund</bold>’s (SAIH) hoax advocacy campaign, Radi-Aid. The paper distinguishes between advocacy campaigns that are designed as fund-raising and awareness campaigns targeted at changing political attitudes towards humanitarianism. The article argues that Radi-Aid is a mediatized activist awareness campaign that negotiates participatory development ethics. The focus is thus on Radi-Aid’s engagement in an ethics that explores the functionality of celebrities and lifestyle posthumanitarianism and the participation of local communities. While posthumanitarianism might simply be dismissed, for instance, through notions of low engagement participation such as clicktivism and lifestyle activism, the article argues that Radi-Aid is itself a form of posthumanitarianism. This posthumanitarianism is crucial because it works as a form of détournement that simultaneously shames participants and makes existent humanitarian communities present to one another and turns them into political collectives. As such, Radi-Aid can be interpreted as a reconfiguration of posthumanitarianism that offers the shamed a remedy by means of the participatory development ethics.</p>
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This article studies the Norwegian Students and Academics’ International Assistance Fund’s (SAIH) hoax advocacy campaign, Radi-Aid. The paper distinguishes between advocacy campaigns that are designed as fund-raising and awareness campaigns targeted at changing political attitudes towards humanitarianism. The article argues that Radi-Aid is a mediatized activist awareness campaign that negotiates participatory development ethics. The focus is thus on Radi-Aid’s engagement in an ethics that explores the functionality of celebrities and lifestyle posthumanitarianism and the participation of local communities. While posthumanitarianism might simply be dismissed, for instance, through notions of low engagement participation such as clicktivism and lifestyle activism, the article argues that Radi-Aid is itself a form of posthumanitarianism. This posthumanitarianism is crucial because it works as a form of détournement that simultaneously shames participants and makes existent humanitarian communities present to one another and turns them into political collectives. As such, Radi-Aid can be interpreted as a reconfiguration of posthumanitarianism that offers the shamed a remedy by means of the participatory development ethics.

Mediatizing Shame: Posthumanitarianism and Participatory Development Ethics in Radi-Aid’s Activist Awareness Campaigns

assistant professor at the Department of Communication and Culture

Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne

Conjunctions

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

This article studies the Norwegian Students and Academics’ International Assistance Fund’s (SAIH) hoax advocacy campaign, Radi-Aid. The paper distinguishes...

Mediatizing Shame: Posthumanitarianism and Participatory Development Ethics in Radi-Aid’s Activist Awareness Campaigns

Published Online: Mar 30, 2021

Page range: 153 - 175

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/tjcp.v2i1.22275

Keywords
Activism, participation, advocacy, awareness, development, ethics, posthumanitarianism, clicktivism, mediatization, shame

© 2021 Camilla Møhring Reestorff, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mediatizing Shame: Posthumanitarianism and Participatory Development Ethics in Radi-Aid’s Activist Awareness Campaigns

Published Online: Mar 30, 2021

Page range: 153 - 175

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/tjcp.v2i1.22275

KeywordsActivism, participation, advocacy, awareness, development, ethics, posthumanitarianism, clicktivism, mediatization, shame

© 2021 Camilla Møhring Reestorff, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Activism, participation, advocacy, awareness, development, ethics, posthumanitarianism, clicktivism, mediatization, shame