SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The internet and social media are radically changing the very nature of protests in the modern world, allowing people to connect and exchange information through new channels previously unavailable and in virtual rather than physical spaces. As music and sounds have long been an important factor in the way social movements are born, received and remembered, they too are disseminated more widely by this technology and help to motivate protests both online and offline. Through virtual fieldwork and interviews with members of London-based Chilean protest group Asamblea Chilena en Londres, I track the sound of cacerolazo—a form of popular protest involving banging pots and pans. I explore how this noise challenges and defies space, is mediated and disseminated through social media and the internet and connects individuals and communities, mobilising them both locally and globally.