NEW GENERATION OF MEDIA SAVVY ACTIVISTS: CULTURE JAMMERS

My knowledge and understanding of the media is integral to all of my work. As a media lecturer I have a acute awareness of how the media operate to create messages, values and ideologies in the texts that they produce. Using the key media concepts representation, audience, ideology, language, institution, narrative and genre (RAILING) it allows the unpicking and analysis of these messages.

In his book Sign Wars: The Culture Jammers Strike Back, David Cox states "Global media power is linked to global political power. Media magnates today can actually partly advise government, or at least negotiate at election time with heads of state for positive press coverage for politicians and other officials during elections."

These themes really interest me and whilst it is something I was obviously aware of this I can now see how it directly relates to the area I am operating in with my Global Warming pieces. What is exciting is to discover that my work is part of a movement of media savvy activists. to quote Cox again "Media activism borrows heavily from from the legacies of the beat movement, the punk scene and other bohemias, which privilege self expression as a form of social and political empowerment. Culture Jamming, like media activism, stems also directly from the DIY sensibility and owes much to DIT's sense of immediacy, intimacy and personal empowerment. To publish ideas yourself is to be empowered with the ability to communicate in the sphere of media, the philosophical air we breathe in the early 21st century."

Culture jamming (sometimes guerrilla communication) is a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of a mass society to foster progressive change. Culture Jammer filmmakers include Craig baldwin, Micheal Moore and Morgan Spurlock all people whose work I admire.

I see myself as being part of this tradition and will be happy to wear the badge "Culture Jammer". With the ability to use software, the internet to publish to a huge audience user generated media content is quickly catching up and will soon overtaking that of industry media content.The audience are there, i have the technology and skill to create the content. However as always content is king and it has to be engaging to an audience and it is here that the hard part of my work lies.