*

Week 7: Alternative Media, Hacktivism, &

Culture Jamming
* We have discussed the problem with “mainstream” media
coverage of activism.
* Recall the protest paradigm.
* Need an alternative to mainstream media? Try alternative media!
* But what is alternative media?
* The problem with defining alternative media is that everything is
alternative to something.
* Think: Conservative activists complain about the mainstream media
treating their movements unfairly due to liberal bias. Activists on
the left complain about the mainstream media treating them
unfairly due to a corporate bias that favors the status quo.
* So is the status quo favorable to the Left? Or the Right?
* Think about alternative media in terms of its production.
* Focus in on creating more participatory media. and offering a voice to
those typically excluded from media production.
* Less about commercial profits and more about community.

*
* Alternative media have been fundamental to social movements
throughout history.
* Can include the media produced by activists themselves or by like-
minded individuals.
* Provide a much more sympathetic narrative to activists.
* Give activists platforms to communicate their message and find
supporters.
* Mainstream media typically produced as part of the status quo.
* Mainstream media are owned by corporations and produced for profit.
The people who produce these are rich and benefit from the status
quo. If activism is about challenging the status quo, we can expect
that mainstream media will be less sympathetic to activists.
* Alternative media tend to be activist by nature, offering activists a
platform to spread their ideas rather than simply reporting on tactics
or the organizing efforts (as mainstream media tend to focus on).
* However, alternative media is primarily consumed by those already
sympathetic to the movement. Activists are stuck with mainstream
media if they want to attract more support from the general
population or from those in power.

*
* The activist’s dilemma—do you follow the rules or break them to effect
change?
* On March 7, 1965, peaceful protesters were beaten by law enforcement
officers for crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama. The late
Representative John Lewis was one of these protesters. Commemorating the
event in March 2020, Lewis urged people to “Get in good trouble, necessary
trouble, and redeem the soul of America.”
* Protesters in 1965 broke the law and were punished for it. That raises
the following questions:
* When is breaking the law justified?
* When is a message so important that it must be spread through illegal
methods?
* And how can activists be sure that their message isn’t lost amidst competing
messages or ignored in the face of other problems?
* When is a cause so important that you have no other choice than to force
people to consider it?
* We now look at two disruptive communication tactics that activists use—culture
jamming and hacktivism.

*
* Culture jamming as an activist tactic took off in the 1980s
* Culture jammers argue that culture, politics, and social values have
been hijacked by marketing, advertising, and commercialism.
* However, tactics are what matter. While many culture jammers are
anti-corporate, many also focus on racism, sexism, ableism,
homophobia, classism, and anti-environmentalism that define mass
culture and commercial images.
* They take the images of the corporate and subvert them, often using a
similar style as the original content.
* Culture jams revise logos, fashion statements, and product images to
challenge the ideas of “what’s cool” along with assumptions about the
personal freedoms of consumption.
* For example, corporations use advertising to make many harmful
practices seem cool.
* Smoking, unattainable body types, alcoholism, environmental degradation,
sweat shop labor practices, etc.
* The goal is to “wake up” citizens from the haze of daily lives to
surrounding problems and diverse cultural experiences.

*
* This is an early example of an
“uncommercial” by the organization
Adbusters.
* The goal is to mimic the look of Calvin Klein
ads from the same period (early 90s) and
make people question the impact these ads
are having on society.
* The beauty industry makes money from
promoting unattainable body images. This
keeps us buying more make-up, hair
products, hair removal products, weight
loss supplements, clothing, shoes, gym
memberships, plastic surgery, and muscle
building and sex organ enhancement
supplements. But what is this doing to our
health? Should they be held responsible for
the harm that they are causing society?
*
* Or should corporations do whatever they
want to ensure the highest profits?
*
* The most famous culture jamming organization is
Adbusters.
* We will learn more about them during Week 13.
* This organization argues that corporations have
hijacked our democracy and our culture. They
take a playful approach to subverting the
influence of corporate culture and the corporate
media by using their own images against them.
* Other examples of culture jamming
* The graffiti artist Banksy
* The Billboard Liberation Front
* Burning Man events
* Russian Feminist punk band Pussy Riot
* Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat
* Stephen Colbert in former show The Colbert
Report
* Several examples in the book and movie Fight
Club.

*
* Culture jamming is about playful disruption.
* Trying to reclaim public space from the private.
* Tactics used:
* Buying advertising space and time for “uncommercials”
* Ads that promote buying differently or even buying nothing.
* Spread of subversive memes through social networks (esp. digital)
* Graffiti
* Art, films, poetry, and literature
* Flash mobs
* Parades
* Selling sustainable goods that are conspicuously logo-free
* Magazines & newsletters; spreading message through alternative, corporate-free media.
* Logic & reasoning:
* Culture jammers argue that spectacle is used to control people. We are entertained into passivity. They try
to use spectacle to “wake people up.”
* Tactics can be adapted for any purpose.

*
* Hacktivism is a type of internet activism where individuals or groups use computer-based
tactics of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change.
* Some argue that hacktivism is a type of culture jamming; others argue that it is something
different.
* Protest-related tools and tactics include:
* Creating software or websites to achieve political goals (think Wikileaks).
* Mirroring—copying the contents of censored websites and spreading it to open networks or
sites.
* Anonymously spreading messages to large audiences, often about human rights abuses or
corruption.
* This is especially common in heavily censored societies like China.
* Doxing—exposing private or confidential documents
* Denial-of-service attacks—cyberattacks where machines or networks are crashed or disrupted
by using malware to overload a system.
* Virtual sit-ins—protesters visit a targeted website in large numbers to overload the system
and slow it down or crash it.
* Website defacements—altering a website to spread a specific message
* Website redirects—changing the address of a website so visitors are redirected to another
site that is often criticizing or mocking the original
* Geo-bombing—adding geo-tags while editing YouTube videos so the location of the video can
be seen in Google Earth.
* For example, Tunisian activists collected video testimonies of people speaking out on human
rights abuses in Tunisian prisons. These videos were then geo-tagged with the location of the
Tunisian presidential palace. Now, when you see the Tunisian presidential palace on Google
Earth, it is covered with the videos. This is a popular way to get around government blocking of
video-sharing websites.

*
* Anonymous is probably the most famous
* Started as a joke by teenagers using 4chan message boards. Mostly engaged in disrupting games and chat rooms.
* Reached height of popularity in 2012. A network of thousands, mostly focused on leftist-libertarian ideals of personal freedom and
against government and corporate control.
* Not really a group—more of a banner that people rally to.
* Noted for their use of the Guy Fawkes masks, made famous in the film V for Vendetta.
* Original attacks:
* Attacking Neo-Nazi radio host, Hal Turner
* Church of Scientology—denial of service attacks, sending black faxes (to use up all fax machine ink), and prank calls.
* Attack against PayPal and Mastercard for blocking WikiLeaks donations
* Uncovered proposals for HBGary Federal, a security company and Palantir, the tech-surveillance company, offering work on behalf
of the Bank of America and the US Chamber of Commerce to use disinformation to embarrass and discredit adversaries.
* Exposing child pornography traffickers on the Dark Web
* Attacks ended in 2012 when a member was arrested and acted as an FBI informant, leading to the arrests of several group
members.
* Recent Activities:
* Renewed activity during the BLM protests of 2020.
* Leaked internal police files from 200 agencies showing that law-enforcement groups spread misinformation to Minnesota police
officers during the protests over the death of George Floyd and monitored protesters’ social media activity.
* Rumored to have hacked Chicago police scanners so they played N.W.A’s “Fuck the Police”
* Denial of service attack for the Minneapolis Police Department website.
* Declared war on QAnon in 2018. QAnon was an Anoymous group that also originally sprang up on a 4chan site but mobilized for alt-
right causes and conspiracy theories.
* In September 2021, stole and leaked data held by Epik, a website hosting firm popular with far-right organizations like the Proud Boys and
conservative media networks like Parler and Gab.

*
*
* Hacktivism and culture jamming include a wide variety of activities, some
more shocking and disruptive than others.
* I do not suggest a moral equivalence between any of the activities discussed in
these slides.
* When are disruptive tactics like hacktivism and culture jamming warranted
or even necessary?
* Should there be limits to these tactics?
* Subverting an advertisement is one thing; leaking private emails or secure
information that could lead to people’s deaths are another. That does not
mean, however, that leaking information might not be warranted. But when?
* How can we define and recognize the “good trouble?”
* And when do disruptive tactics hurt our causes rather than help it?
* Next week, we look at even more extreme protest tactics by focusing on
activists’ use of violence and terrorism.