-What are the characteristics of culture jamming?
Culture jamming is a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It attempts to “expose the methods of domination” of a mass society to foster progressive change. In the book, it said that over the past few decades, techniques of culture jamming have transformed considerably as activists have come to adapt them to different contexts and deploy them via rapidly changing communication media. Whereas early jammers used spray paint and photocopiers, today most of them carry digital recording devices in their pockets and use social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to aid in the logistical coordination of actions and the rapid dissemination of content. Activists today no longer confront a monolithic broadcast media behemoth that targets passive, unwitting audiences; rather, they operate within what Henry Jenkins (2006) has called “convergence culture,” where top-down and bottom-up culture intersect and where media consumers are also media producers. Furthermore, the targets of culture jamming have expanded from advertising and consumerism to include numerous other social and political issues.
-How can it be a social critique?
Social criticism is a form of academic or journalistic criticism focusing on sociological issues in contemporary society, in particular with respect to perceived injustices and power relations in general. It often refers to a mode of criticism that locates the reasons for such conditions in a society considered to be in a flawed social structure. It may also refer to people adhering to a social critic’s aims at practical solutions by way of specific measures either for consensual reform or powerful revolution. The book told us jammers typically remix existing cultural forms, poaching an image, corporate logo, ads, billboard, city wall, or retail space. The culture jamming is having question to the authority so that they can maintain the motivation to criticize the issue.
-What are its strengths and weaknesses?
Strength:
Clever
Weaknesses:
illegally, it violates laws governing copyright and ownership
