Is the Fake News the Real News?

Earlier this year, we discovered how powerful the media is on our lives as a result of how much information is available to us – sometimes, overwhelming amounts. There is a reason that our era is and will remain to be identified as the age of information; Wikileaks is an excellent example of this overwhelming amount of information. With the accessibility to all these different sorts of information and from different viewpoints, we can expect strong (which often means biased) opinions. For this reason, culture jamming is growing in popularity.

Satirical news reporting started as just a part of culture jamming, but has evolved to define and control it. Forms of media that mock every last detail of a politician’s life (the Colbert Report, Daily Show, The Onion, etc.) have become a large seller for the entertainment business; audiences form strong opinions on politicians and parties, therefore it is now comedy to poke fun at them. This demand has grown so much that now, shows other than just satirical news use this form of entertainment to attract audience – SNL sees more political mocks and Ellen DeGeneres features frequent commentaries.

Personally, I find more truth in satirical news reporting than in legitimate news. The objective of this media is to make money from this form of entertainment. However, they do so by crossing boundaries in how much they criticize companies, politicians and anyone with a large effect on our society’s customs and behaviour: “The objectives of culture jamming often include…using the media to criticise [sic] the media and dominant culture” (Culture Jamming and Counter Hegemony, pg 214). This is a type of campaign and awareness that I hugely advocate. Only by crossing such boundaries can people fully understand an opinion different from theirs and realize the measure of corruption in other media, which is advantageous to improving the quality of life in our society.

As defined in the text, this is media activism (pg 214). Since we have already acknowledged that the media has a huge effect on our society, we can conclude that media activism is popular, but more importantly, is effective: “In the 1970s, feminists…started to paint slogans and captions on images of women…Such political graffiti drew attention to the sexism in these images and in doing so changed patriarchy” (pg 214). Feminism, for example, is known to be the most advanced movement in political history, largely due to media activism. While it is an ongoing movement, women’s rights have seen drastic changes (positively) in the last century.

Conclusively, culture jamming in any form is advantageous to a society’s functioning. Although it is most popularly a form of entertainment, it is still significantly effective to changing world politics in general. Culture jamming identifies the corruption (and sometimes, just plain ridiculousness) in the logic of other media, which helps its large base of consumer audiences form better informed opinions on what controls their society. It positively affects the entertainment business and it successfully targets exploited marketing, which ultimately makes it a useful part of our society.