Written by Juliette Dee, Kaptan co-authored the chapter, “Laughing with Tear Gas in Our Eyes: Use of Satirical Humor in the Gezi Park Social Movement in Turkey,” with Indiana University Bloomington professor emerita Christine Ogan, Ph.D.
The chapter highlights the use of political humor in social media posts of dissatisfaction with Turkish leadership during the Gezi protests that took place in 2013. Kaptan and Ogan illustrate how humor becomes a popular communication tactic in social movements due to lack of options to those oppressed.
“I am interested in (both personally and scholarly) understanding resistance and social bases of injustice. Gezi protests, similar to Occupy Wall Street movement, the Arab Spring and other protests in Europe such as Occupy London/Paris etc. tell us a lot about practices of power and resistance strategies of people to these practices,” Kaptan said. “It was a timely analysis to understand resistance phenomena in depth.”