We illustrate how culture jam practitioners and pedagogues are responding to increasing commercial incorporation by using participatory communication strategies to bring the act of jamming back into the realm of relocating culture. We analyze the past decade's evolution of one of YouTube's first viral videos, "Where the hell is Matt?," and connect this case to ways university pedagogy might integrate culture jams as artifacts and assignments to empower students to use communication frameworks not only to critique the status quo but also to collaboratively generate transformation. Throughout, we elucidate culture jam processes as creative and cooperative performances of staying on one's toes in the perpetual renegotiation of hegemony.
In 2008, ten million people were playing the massive multiplayer role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW); a fantasy-based virtual landscape where players bridge real-life personas with digital identity. However, the construction of sexuality within this gaming environment has created an oppressive atmosphere for individuals who do not adhere to a heteronormative lifestyle. In this essay, I undress the bottom-up and top-down structures that are regulating an environment that has no use for a constructed sexual binary and yet has one strictly imbedded in it. This analysis utilizes discourse analysis to analyze 400 messages posted to a WoW discussion board regarding the topic of “LGBTQ players and the WOW Community” in order to queer the sexuality presented in this space. This essay is further supplemented with my own experience playing the game and with an analysis of the games structural elements.
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