Frequency and distribution of protest stickers

An ethnographic study at a university city in the south-west of England

Abstract

Protest stickers, as a form of street art, can be located in city areas of high footfall. Individualised interpretation of protest stickers relies on the conflation of semiotics and active subjectivity. This paper outlines the results of an ethnographic study detailing the frequency and distribution of stickers around a university campus. The paper draws on cultural criminology’s verstehen to subjectively explore four stickers from differing political domains describing how their presence is interwoven with the societal and geographical landscape of the site of study. The limitations of the work are discussed and possibilities for future studies to address these are provided.