culture jamming

English

Etymology

From culture jammer, coined by sound collage band Negativland in their album JamCon '84 (1984), by metaphor to jamming a radio signal.

Noun

culture jamming (usually uncountable, plural culture jammings)

1. Any of various methods of modifying mass media (especially advertisements) to convey a different message.
   • 1999, Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies‎^[1]:

     A growing number of activists believe the time has come for the public to stop asking that some space be left unsponsored, and to begin seizing it back. Culture jamming baldly rejects the idea that marketing — because it buys its way into our public spaces — must be passively accepted as a one-way information flow.

   • 1999, Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America, New York: Eagle Brook, →ISBN, →OL, page 107:

     Culture jamming is, at root, just a metaphor for stopping the flow of spectacle long enough to adjust your set.

   • 2008, Margaret E. Farrar with Jamie L. Warner, “Spectacular Resistance: The Billionaires for Bush and the Art of Political Culture Jamming”, in Polity, number 40, →DOI, pages 273–296:

     Instead of simply using non-spectacular or non-ironic factual information, rational argumentation, legal strategies, and traditional political tactics to oppose capitalist institutions directly, culture jamming turns the commercial techniques of image and emotion back on themselves through what Umberto Eco called “semiological guerrilla warfare.”

   • 2010, Carole M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith, Surrey, Burlington: Ashgate, →ISBN, →OL, page 111:

     Although its numbers remain small, the contribution of the Church of the SubGenius is influential; the aggressive culture jamming of the COSG is a strikingly original innovation in contemporary religion, and the penetration of its teachings concerning J.R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs, the Conspiracy, Mutantis and the ancestral role of the Yeti (and more) into underground publishing and guerrilla media (both online and offline) has been remarkably stimulating and fruitful.