ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I frame the independent political cartoonist as a figure rendered redundant within their traditional “old media” workspace and whose professional survival has become dependent on their participation within the emergent technological and cultural spaces provided by convergence. Using Ben Garrison (https://grrrgraphics.com) as an example, I configure the political cartoonist as a creative insurgent who seeks to inflict visual damage (i.e., delegitimization) as a means of manipulating public opinion and disrupting institutional ideologies (Brinkman, 1968; Coupe, 1969; Woolley, 2016). Structured around Bar-Tal’s (1990) five channels of delegitimization, the chapter showcases the ways in which Garrison functions as a creative insurgent to enact visual damage upon institutionalized mainstream media and the technological platforms that currently dominant the world of online communication. Through creating and disseminating a satirical brand of visual damage within the emergent technological and cultural spaces provided by convergence, the political cartoonist functions as an autonomous participant free from the institutional controls inherent within “old media” contexts. The analysis demonstrates how political cartoons, as an “old media” mode of communication, have been reconfigured and reestablished within the culture of convergence, a space where “old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways” (Jenkin, 2006, p. 2).
