Young and Creative: Dissent, Youth Citizenship and Participatory Media on the Moroccan Social Web

This dissertation examines the role of producing and circulating participatory media content in shaping the identities and political subjectivities of amateur producers of user-generated culture in post-Arab Spring Morocco. The chapters of this dissertation take digital media platforms as an entry point to examine digital media practices of creative citizenship and the agents/subjects/producers of a user-generated media culture. Looking through the prism of identity and political subjectivity as sites of social transformation, this dissertation investigates the import of youth's digital media practices for social and political change in the Maghreb. In keeping with this line of inquiry, the dissertation explores the dynamics through which participatory media and user-generated culture enable participatory politics in authoritarian contexts and the implications of such politics for youth identities and social change in Morocco.;In addition to its focus on contentious expressions and practices of creative citizenship, this dissertation also examines ostensibly apolitical dimensions of user-generated cultural production in Morocco. First, in focusing on the entrepreneurial dimension of user-generated cultural production this dissertation identifies a confluence of the emotional, political and economic forces that motivate creative expression and participatory media production. Second, in exploring the gendered aspect of youth digital media practices, this dissertation argues that while patriarchy's shadow looms large in female practices of user-generated content production, emerging spaces of female participation in digital public culture allow for contesting the very patriarchal norms that define online gender-segregated spaces of UGC production.;Methodologically, this dissertation makes use of three qualitative research methods: textual analysis, semi-structured in-depth interviews, and critical discourse analysis. While the contentious dimension of creative citizenship is excavated through textual and critical discourse analyses, the dissertation also delves into other emotional, entrepreneurial and gendered dimensions of creative youth citizenship that emerge from interview data. In grappling with questions about the emotional, micro-economic processes and the gendered character of creative digital media practices, this dissertation also focuses on less politically contentious forms and practices of user-generated culture.