Friday, April 15, 2011

Culture Jamming and Meme-based Communication


"Growing numbers of observers contend that the dominant public role of our time has shifted from citizen to consumer. Indeed, respondents in polls typically cite entertainment, shopping, and other consumer activities as their top free time preferences. Commercial media and public entertainment venues offer environments carefully constructed to avoid politics and real world problems that might disturb these consumer impulses."

"As people in global societies increasingly enjoy the freedoms of private life, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate about many broad public concerns. The personalized society enables people to choose individual lifestyles and identities that often lead to disconnection from politics. Many citizens become receptive only to consumer-oriented messages about tax cuts, retirement benefits, or other policies targeted at particular demographic social groups."

"Culture jamming is an intriguing form of political communication that has emerged in response to the commercial isolation of public life. Practitioners of culture jamming argue that culture, politics, and social values have been bent by saturated commercial environments, from corporate logos on sports facilities, to television content designed solely to deliver targeted audiences to producers and sponsors. Many public issues and social voices are pushed to the margins of society by market values and commercial communication, making it difficult to get the attention of those living in the "walled gardens" of consumerism. Culture jamming presents a variety of interesting communication strategies that play with the branded images and icons of consumer culture to make consumers aware of surrounding problems and diverse cultural experiences that warrant their attention."

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Many culture Jams are simply aimed at exposing questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture so that people can momentarily consider the branded environment in which they live. Culture jams refigure logos, fashion statements, and product images to challenge the idea of "what's cool," along with assumptions about the personal freedoms of consumption. Some of these communiqués create a sense of transparency about a product or company by revealing environmental damages or the social experiences of workers that are left out of the advertising fantasies. The logic of culture jamming is to convert easily identifiable images into larger questions about such matters as corporate responsibility, the "true" environmental and human costs of consumption, or the private corporate uses of the "public" airwaves."

"The basic unit of communication in culture jamming is the meme: the core unit of cultural transmission. Memes are condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others culture jamming and meme-driven communication offer interesting windows on the transformation of politics and communication in our time. We are interested in studying these developments and learning how they may be useful in striking a balance between commercial values and other human interests in society." This was from an article I found and thought it would be an interesting article to read how design can create social change.

I feel that design involves emotions and how people react to any type of artwork. Culture jamming plays with the viewers emotions. These emotions include shock, shame, fear, anger or on the other hand others may not care, but these emotions are believed to create for social change.

14 comments:

  1. Nice post. The things you are talking about are a topic that are personally very important. It seems like many designers and marketing groups have forgotten what it means to be truthful and honest. The statement that you mentioned "Culture jamming plays with the viewers emotions" is a big part of the research that I have done in investigating where brand loyalty comes from. From the studies done on brand loyalty, it seems clear that using an individuals emotional response is the best method for creating loyalty. It seems that there is a fine line between using the emotional response of the audience for selling a product (sometimes that product comes in the form of a political campaign) verses using emotions to help provide crucial information allowing the individual to make their own choice as to where they stand on an issue. This topic is just one more reason why it is so important to maintain honesty in marketing.

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  2. Don't get me started.

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  3. I agree with your statement about the notion that design involves emotions and how people react to any type of artwork. The particular emotion(s) that the artist/designer attempts to express through their work causes the target audience to react with their emotions as well to persuade them to take action on the particular issue that is being addressed. It can also motivate them to get involved in a program or organizations that advocate the particular problem being addressed with ways to improve the situation that is taking place (ex: consumerism and over-excessiveness).

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  4. When talking about memes ("Memes are condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others culture jamming").."learning how they may be useful in striking a balance between commercial values and other human interests in society."

    I think that finding a balance between these two is such a challenge but I think there is a definite way. Sometimes commercial advertising can be insensitive to social issues. A lot of the time it is used solely to increase profits for a company...the world would be a better place if we could somehow introduce these two concepts together.

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  5. I think one of the issues with culture jamming is whether it will actually get viewers to act upon a new mindset. Or maybe it's enough to just introduce the new mindset and let it percolate over time? Baby steps are sometimes the best way to introduce changes, if not always the desired way.

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  6. Interesting topic to blog about. I never really noticed that the pastimes of our culture are isolated from real world problems but at the same time boost the consumerism market. I guess that is what people want when they go out, to forget about the problems around them. This is definitely a different way to put reality and emotion straight into people's faces using design. I second Monica's post.

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  7. I had a long discussion with my friend about internet memes... she had to explain them from me since i had never heard the term before! This article brings up a very integral point about our society... we are very consumerist and very individual. We give precedence to the "few" with money rather than to the "many", the population at large. Indeed, this does affect how politics attempt to gain support from our generation. They are forced to appeal to our values (or lack thereof) in order to get a vote. Sad but true!

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  8. I agree with the quote that people only pay attention to politics when it directly affects their ability/inability to consume products.

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  9. http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Jam-Americas-Suicidal-Binge--/dp/0688178057/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303238920&sr=8-1

    This is the book that I said I had on the first day that is very interesting and about Culture Jam. It's in my bag if you want it!

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  10. This reminds me of a book I read called "Buy Buy Baby," a book about marketing towards toddlers (and their parents). One thing struck me in that book that relates very much to the idea of "consumer before citizen"; the author contended that the common heritage of Gen Xers (many of which were latch key kids raised on television in the absence of their working parents) is based on shopping. In a country that has so many "culture wars" over politics and values in general, brand loyalty is actually a sort of social glue that won't cause a dire dispute if disagreed upon in public. It may not be what we want, but it's often true. Pop culture and material goods are our small talk.

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  11. Well, in all honestly I have my own opinions on this sort of thing...but the quotes you provided go along well with your topic. Thanks for sharing them.

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  12. Awesome post! I was first exposed to Cultural Jamming in Mark's class while exploring the paper topic (yeah that paper we had to write).

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  13. I was at the airport a few weeks ago and I saw some serious culture jamming it was everywhere even on the escalator railings, a little too much for my taste.

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  14. After reading this, it's hard not to see it everywhere I look!

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