What Was Guerrilla Media

This article examines the highly contested term guerrilla media and charts its development from an element of guerrilla warfare, via examples of ludic and DIY experimentation such as Guerrilla Television and Punk fanzines, to question its relevance to the present. Drawing on research for my book Guerrilla Networks (AUP, 2018), I argue that it is important to trace its origins in the ascendancy of guerrilla warfare in mid 20th century, and how this then mutates into more ludic but still politically charged practices such as those influenced by the Situationist International which would inform movements from Italian Autonomia to media activism more generally. It also examines the more politically ambivalent experience of guerrilla television in the 1970s, which involved a slippage of meaning towards mere DIY entrepreneurialism, as well as the use of media during the punk explosion including records, radio and especially fanzines. It concludes that while guerrilla media could be considered a debased and almost meaningless term in the present, its more ludic instantiations still offer resources for political movements in the present.