Cultural Jamming: Taking back the Public Sphere

Cultural Jamming is when people rework or repurpose corporate logos or advertisements as a means of protest. Cultural jammers are anti-consumerism and believe that corporations no longer see citizens as people but merely consumers. As such, they believe that these corporations should not be allowed to infiltrate our public space with their corrupt consumer messages. As a means of creating a dialogue with both the public and corporations, cultural jammers dustup or subvert advertisements to point out how these corporations are trying to dictate and influence our cultural and social lives.

Their are many different forms of cultural jamming that can rang from remaking advertisements, to pranking politicians and celebrities, to creating commercial parodies. No matter what the form, cultural jammers attempt to make citizens think about what these advertisements, organizations, and high profile people, are saying and how the messages and images they are conveying are harmful to our society.

Cultural jamming is a useful way for citizens to talk back to advertisers and corporations. These organizations pay to advertise in our public sphere and we, as citizens have no say in deciding what is and is not acceptable. If the public sphere is suppose to be that which belongs to the people, then those people should have a voice in determining what images are being shown and what messages are being conveyed. Corporations have infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives and whether we noticed it or not, these advertisements are sending us messages about how we should look, how we should act, what we should wear, what we should buy and what happiness and success look like.

Society needs more cultural jammers. We cannot let corporations take over our public sphere. Cultural jamming tells corporations that we are not just consumers and we will not just blindly accept their messages. If there is no one fighting against these corporations then they win, and we risk losing our voices within the public sphere, and possibly the the public sphere itself.