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I love culture jamming. I've even done my fair share of it. But I've never believed that it, or protests (the original and non-subtle, non-ironic culture jamming), are effective for solving problems.

Of course, this begs the question of what "solving problems" means. Culture jamming must be good for something other than making activists feel all clever and hip for their satires on the dominant paradigm, right? I'd say there are multiple things it's useful for.

Culture jamming is useful to the extent that it catalyzes outreach and solidarity. These are necessary (though not sufficient) ingredients for a successful movement.

It can help outreach by functioning as normal advertising does, influencing viewers to change their ideas and behaviors, or reinforce the attitudes of those who already agree. (As a result, it can even be somewhat useful for making change directly for issues the public has scant awareness of.) Advertising is a numbers game, where repetition wins the day, and culture jammers don't have the budget to saturate society with their images like commercial advertisers do. Small cheap ads (like bumper stickers) can be rolled out fairly ubiquitously without too much expense, and the Internet has helped to level the playing field somewhat, but in the end jammers will never approach the scale of commercial advertising.

Culture jamming can help solidarity both by functioning as normal advertising for the viewers (helping those who already agree with the message to feel like an "in" crowd), and also by functioning as a group project for the creators (helping build community and a sense of involvement). Group projects are underestimated as a way of building social capital in a community, and it often doesn't matter what the project is, as long as it gets people together on a regular basis. Robert Putnam's books Bowling Alone and Better Together describe the value of group activities in building civic involvement, tighter social fabric, and even better personal health.

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(Posted by Jeremy Faludi in The Means of Expression - Media, Creativity and Experience at 12:28 AM)