Digital Media Workshop Terms

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culture Jamming

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The term “cultural jamming” and the concept behind it first appeared on JamCon ’84, a
1984 cassette-only release by the audio-collage band Negativland.
The group, whose sociopolitical satire and media criticism often have a sharp,
Situationist edge, applied the idea of “jamming” to billboard banditry. (Jamming was the
joke-y, trollish practice, then prevalent in the C.B. radio community, of disrupting other
users’ conversations with obscene or nonsensical interjections; billboard banditry is the
neo-Situationist practice of illegally altering billboards to perversely funny, usually
political effect in order to critique consumerism, capitalism, representations of race and
gender in advertising, or American foreign policy. )
Inspired by Negativland’s work in general, and JamCon ’84 in specific, I used my
readings in postmodern theory, Baudrillard, McLuhan, and the politicized cultural
histories of Stuart Ewen to historicize and theorize in depth Negativland’s notion of
“cultural jamming,” which my Inner Grammarian insisted on retooling as culture
jamming.