What is culture-jamming?
What are its forms?
What do you think of it as a tool for activism?
Culture jamming is defined by dictionary.com as: a form of political and social activism, by means of fake adverts, hoax stories etc, that draws attention to and at the same time subverts the power of the media, governments, and large corporations to control and distort information that they give the public. So um...what does THAT mean? I need a definition for the definition. They best way to really describe what culture jamming is, is to provide an example.
One of the largest and most widespread examples of culture jamming occurred in Europe entitled Brandalism. Over a five day period, hundreds of billboards. Check out this site to see some of the billboards:
http://sobadsogood.com/2012/07/23/22-brilliant-examples-of-culture-jamming/
Web Urbanist states that there are three types of culture jamming, political, commercial, and social. Commercial culture jamming is more easily recognized as subvertising or using anti ads. Political culture jamming is less common but when it is used, it usually is targeting war or other national issues. Social culture jamming usually is geared toward making a person rethink reality or even just to laugh at how ridiculous a mainstream idea actually is.
I think that it is a good tool for activism but not a great one. Some people wouldn't take it seriously at all, and it is also rather expensive to rent out billboards. Also, some of their tactics are a bit illegal not matter how humorous they are.
This site has a bunch of cool videos and images of culture jamming:
http://weburbanist.com/2007/10/03/watch-urban-street-art-in-action-from-reverse-graffiti-to-train-tagging/
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