Digital Culture Jamming with FORCE

On October 25, 2014, the Johns Hopkins University Digital Media Center presented ‘Digital Culture Jamming’, a talk on creative digital media by Baltimore-based art-activist group FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. Participants learned from organizers Hannah Brancato, Rebecca Nagle and Dan Staples how FORCE uses digital pranks, internet memes and public installations to combat sexual violence and promote a culture of consent.

FORCE has leveraged parody websites such as “PINK Loves CONSENT” and “Playboy’s Top Ten Party Commandments” to generate a nationwide dialogue about combating sexual violence. This talk was designed to attract an array of socially-engaged students and will focus on digital cultural jamming strategies, with FORCE projects serving as examples. Culture jamming borrows typical advertising techniques to expose faulty assumptions (or unconscious thought messages) and to challenge the status quo, for example reconfiguring logos, juxtaposing incongruent images, and creating memes. This one time, 90 minute event was open to JHU students as well as the wider Baltimore public.

‘Digital Culture Jamming’ was hosted by the JHU Digital Media Center and the JHU Center for Health Education and Wellness (CHEW), and the JHU Sexual Assault Resource Unit (SARU); with major support provided by the JHU Dean of Student Life.

Additional Information:
http://pages.jh.edu/health / upsettingrapeculture.com