Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication ) is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising . It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of mass society .
110-554: The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo and network of supporters created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos . Through various actions, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. To date, the duo have produced three films: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), and The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014). In these films, they impersonate entities that they dislike,
220-516: A 2009 film entitled The Yes Men Fix the World , which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival . In 2009 they launched their online video channel on Babelgum . Their third film, The Yes Men Are Revolting , premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival . The Yes Men encourage activist and student groups to make their voices heard through crashing conferences, creating fake websites, and getting arrested. One of
330-795: A "Housing Summit" in New Orleans, taking the stage along with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco . Before an audience composed mostly of real estate developers, one of the Yes Men gave a speech in which he claimed to be Rene Oswin, a fictitious "assistant under-secretary" at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In his speech he claimed that HUD would reopen public housing facilities that had been closed since Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. He announced this false claim because HUD had recently decided to only rebuild
440-601: A "Patriot Pledge" agreeing to keep nuclear waste in their back yards and send their children off to war. They appeared at the 2004 Republican National Convention and drove across the country at first in an RV with a George W. Bush body wrap, and then in a painted van. The Yes Men posed as working as part of the Bush-Cheney campaign . They carried around a petition asking for signatures to support global warming because America's competing countries will suffer while America only bears minor side effects. On December 3, 2004,
550-467: A 12-digit Standard Book Number of 345-24223-8-595 (valid SBN: 345-24223-8, ISBN: 0-345-24223-8), and it cost US$ 5.95 . Since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained thirteen digits, a format that is compatible with " Bookland " European Article Numbers , which have 13 digits. Since 2016, ISBNs have also been used to identify mobile games by China's Administration of Press and Publication . The United States , with 3.9 million registered ISBNs in 2020,
660-614: A better future with headlines such as Iraq War Ends and Nation Sets Its Sights on Building Sane Economy . The front page contained a spoofed motto, "All the News We Hope to Print" from the famous phrase "All the news that's fit to print". Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives, including an establishment of national health care, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s and an article wherein George W. Bush accuses himself of treason for his actions during his years as president. There
770-604: A cleanup. In Frankfurt, Dow's share price fell 4.24 percent in 23 minutes, wiping $ 2 billion off its market value. The shares rebounded in Frankfurt after the BBC issued an on-air correction and apology. In New York, Dow Chemical's stock were little changed because of the early trading. After the original interview was revealed as a hoax, Bichlbaum appeared in a follow-up interview on the United Kingdom's Channel 4 news. During
880-501: A demonstration of the retaliatory actions (legal consequences) handed down by the ruling apparatus. The basic unit in which a message is transmitted in culture jamming is the meme . Memes are condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others. The term meme was coined and first popularized by geneticist Richard Dawkins , but later used by cultural critics such as Douglas Rushkoff , who claimed memes were
990-467: A different ISBN, but an unchanged reprint of the hardcover edition keeps the same ISBN. The ISBN is ten digits long if assigned before 2007, and thirteen digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007. The method of assigning an ISBN is nation-specific and varies between countries, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The first version of the ISBN identification format
1100-521: A different form which brings together artists, designers, scholars, and activists to create works that transcend the status quo rather than merely criticize it. The term was coined by Mark 3000 of The Upstairs Burned and Mark 3000 in The Fascist States in a Flint, Michigan fanzine, Death and Gravey , in 1981. Subsequently, it was attributed to having been created in 1984 by Don Joyce of American sound collage band Negativland , with
1210-496: A disagreement. Peretti had requested custom Nikes with the word "sweatshop" placed in the Nike symbol. Nike refused. Once this story was made public, it spread worldwide and contributed to the already robust conversation about Nike's use of sweatshops, which had been ongoing for a decade prior to Peretti's 2001 stunt. Jammers can also organize and participate in mass campaigns. Examples of cultural jamming like Perretti's are more along
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#17327943857781320-400: A given ISBN is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for that country or territory regardless of the publication language. The ranges of ISBNs assigned to any particular country are based on the publishing profile of the country concerned, and so
1430-472: A hoax, although their message that the United States Chamber of Commerce needs to reevaluate their direction in terms of clean energy was their primary concern and was received. Major TV and news organisations carried this story briefly before the hoax was uncovered. The US Chamber of Commerce two weeks later did change their official policy though, according to Al Gore it was "not because of"
1540-447: A practice that they call "identity correction." The Yes Men operate under the mission statement that lies can expose truth. They create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they intend to spoof, which have led to numerous interview, conference, and TV talk show invitations. They espouse the belief that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of
1650-426: A presentation in place of Lee Raymond. In the actual speech, the "NPC rep" announced that current U.S. and Canadian energy policies (notably the massive, carbon-intensive processing of Alberta's oil sands , and the development of liquid coal ) are increasing the chances of huge global calamities. But he reassured the audience that in the worst-case scenario, the oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming
1760-565: A print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort." On September 21, 2009, one day before a UN summit lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 , over 2,000 volunteers distributed throughout New York City a 32-page "special edition" New York Post , blaring headlines (cover story "We're Screwed") that the city could face deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within
1870-494: A similar kind, the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), identifies periodical publications such as magazines and newspapers . The International Standard Music Number (ISMN) covers musical scores . The Standard Book Number (SBN) is a commercial system using nine-digit code numbers to identify books. In 1965, British bookseller and stationers WHSmith announced plans to implement
1980-468: A standard numbering system for its books. They hired consultants to work on their behalf, and the system was devised by Gordon Foster , emeritus professor of statistics at Trinity College Dublin . The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee on Documentation sought to adapt the British SBN for international use. The ISBN identification format was conceived in 1967 in
2090-401: A systematic pattern, which allows their length to be determined, as follows: A check digit is a form of redundancy check used for error detection , the decimal equivalent of a binary check bit . It consists of a single digit computed from the other digits in the number. The method for the 10-digit ISBN is an extension of that for SBNs, so the two systems are compatible; an SBN prefixed with
2200-402: A third of the subsidized housing stock after Hurricane Katrina, and made plans to demolish four of New Orleans’ ten public housing developments, leaving thousands of New Orleans residents without homes. This decision was contested locally, nationally, and internationally. So, the Yes Men proclaimed that HUD had changed its mind about tearing down the undamaged housing units, and would not tear down
2310-426: A toilet. Another way that social consumer movements hope to utilize culture jamming effectively is by employing a metameme. A metameme is a two-level message that punctures a specific commercial image but does so in a way that challenges some larger aspect of the political culture of corporate domination. An example would be the "true cost" campaign set in motion by Adbusters . "True cost" forced consumers to compare
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#17327943857782420-585: A type of media virus . Memes are seen as genes that can jump from outlet to outlet and replicate themselves or mutate upon transmission, just like a virus. Culture jammers will often use common symbols such as the McDonald's golden arches or Nike swoosh to engage people and force them to think about their eating habits or fashion sense. In one example, jammer Jonah Peretti used the Nike symbol to stir debate on sweatshop child labor and consumer freedom. Peretti made public exchanges between himself and Nike over
2530-461: A zero (the 10-digit ISBN) will give the same check digit as the SBN without the zero. The check digit is base eleven, and can be an integer between 0 and 9, or an 'X'. The system for 13-digit ISBNs is not compatible with SBNs and will, in general, give a different check digit from the corresponding 10-digit ISBN, so does not provide the same protection against transposition. This is because the 13-digit code
2640-564: A zero to a 9-digit SBN creates a valid 10-digit ISBN. The national ISBN agency assigns the registrant element ( cf. Category:ISBN agencies ) and an accompanying series of ISBNs within that registrant element to the publisher; the publisher then allocates one of the ISBNs to each of its books. In most countries, a book publisher is not legally required to assign an ISBN, although most large bookstores only handle publications that have ISBNs assigned to them. The International ISBN Agency maintains
2750-477: Is 7, and the complete sequence is ISBN 978-0-306-40615-7. In general, the ISBN check digit is calculated as follows. Let Then This check system—similar to the UPC check digit formula—does not catch all errors of adjacent digit transposition. Specifically, if the difference between two adjacent digits is 5, the check digit will not catch their transposition. For instance, the above example allows this situation with
2860-400: Is a multiple of 11. That is, if x i is the i th digit, then x 10 must be chosen such that: For example, for an ISBN-10 of 0-306-40615-2: Formally, using modular arithmetic , this is rendered It is also true for ISBN-10s that the sum of all ten digits, each multiplied by its weight in ascending order from 1 to 10, is a multiple of 11. For this example: Formally, this
2970-485: Is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase or receive ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. A different ISBN is assigned to each separate edition and variation of a publication, but not to a simple reprinting of an existing item. For example, an e-book , a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book must each have
3080-425: Is also a Reuters photo of the fake cover page and a fake website, http://www.nytimes-se.com/ . Alex S. Jones , a former Times reporter and media scholar, said of the paper, "I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it...it will probably be a collector's item. I'm just glad someone thinks The New York Times print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating
3190-424: Is available on the International ISBN Agency website. A list for a few countries is given below: The ISBN registration group element is a 1-to-5-digit number that is valid within a single prefix element (i.e. one of 978 or 979), and can be separated between hyphens, such as "978-1-..." . Registration groups have primarily been allocated within the 978 prefix element. The single-digit registration groups within
3300-492: Is futile because it is easily co-opted and commodified by the market, which tends to "defuse" its potential for consumer resistance. A newer understanding of the term has been called for that would encourage artists, scholars and activists to come together and create innovative, flexible, and practical mobile art pieces that communicate intellectual and political concepts and new strategies and actions. ISBN (identifier) The International Standard Book Number ( ISBN )
3410-402: Is not needed, but it may be considered to simplify the calculation.) For example, the check digit for the ISBN of 0-306-40615- ? is calculated as follows: Thus the check digit is 2. It is possible to avoid the multiplications in a software implementation by using two accumulators. Repeatedly adding t into s computes the necessary multiples: The modular reduction can be done once at
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3520-414: Is rendered The two most common errors in handling an ISBN (e.g. when typing it or writing it down) are a single altered digit or the transposition of adjacent digits. It can be proven mathematically that all pairs of valid ISBN-10s differ in at least two digits. It can also be proven that there are no pairs of valid ISBN-10s with eight identical digits and two transposed digits (these proofs are true because
3630-406: The 2012 Stratfor email leak that Dow Chemical Company hired private intelligence firm Stratfor to monitor the Yes Men. One of the Yes Men's most famous pranks is placing a "corrected" WTO website at https://www.gatt.org ( General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ). The fake site began to receive real emails from confused visitors, including invitations to address various elite groups on behalf of
3740-618: The anti-globalization movement or opponents of corporate crime . This has often resulted in false news reports, such as those covering the demise of the World Trade Organization , or Dow Chemical paying compensation to the victims of the Bhopal disaster . The Yes Men have posed as spokespeople for the WTO, McDonald's , Dow Chemical, and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development . The two leading members of
3850-415: The publisher , "01381" is the serial number assigned by the publisher, and "8" is the check digit . By prefixing a zero, this can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8 ; the check digit does not need to be re-calculated. Some publishers, such as Ballantine Books , would sometimes use 12-digit SBNs where the last three digits indicated the price of the book; for example, Woodstock Handmade Houses had
3960-448: The 13-digit ISBN, as follows: A 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts ( prefix element , registration group , registrant , publication and check digit ), and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts ( registration group , registrant , publication and check digit ) of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces. Figuring out how to correctly separate
4070-432: The 6 followed by a 1. The correct order contributes 3 × 6 + 1 × 1 = 19 to the sum; while, if the digits are transposed (1 followed by a 6), the contribution of those two digits will be 3 × 1 + 1 × 6 = 9 . However, 19 and 9 are congruent modulo 10, and so produce the same, final result: both ISBNs will have a check digit of 7. The ISBN-10 formula uses the prime modulus 11 which avoids this blind spot, but requires more than
4180-473: The 978-prefix element are: 0 or 1 for English-speaking countries; 2 for French-speaking countries; 3 for German-speaking countries; 4 for Japan; 5 for Russian-speaking countries; and 7 for People's Republic of China. Example 5-digit registration groups are 99936 and 99980, for Bhutan. The allocated registration groups are: 0–5, 600–631, 65, 7, 80–94, 950–989, 9910–9989, and 99901–99993. Books published in rare languages typically have longer group elements. Within
4290-583: The 979 prefix element, the registration group 0 is reserved for compatibility with International Standard Music Numbers (ISMNs), but such material is not actually assigned an ISBN. The registration groups within prefix element 979 that have been assigned are 8 for the United States of America, 10 for France, 11 for the Republic of Korea, and 12 for Italy. The original 9-digit standard book number (SBN) had no registration group identifier, but prefixing
4400-617: The Arctic Circle. The website launch was commemorated by a fake launch party held in the Seattle Space Needle . Shell Oil disavowed any affiliation with the website or the launch party on June 14, 2012. The Action Switchboard is a platform the Yes Men launched to link up people who want to be involved in activism events with people organising them. As it says "The Action Switchboard is a platform that helps activists find each other, come up with direct action ideas, and get
4510-585: The Canadian environment minister, Jim Prentice . The statement pledged to cut carbon emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The statement was followed by a response from the Ugandan delegation, praising the statement, that was also faked. Another fake statement was then put out blasting the falsehoods of the original fake statement. A fake story in a European edition of the Wall Street Journal
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4620-529: The Empire of the Signs , a seminal essay that remains the most exhaustive historical, sociopolitical, and philosophical theorization of culture jamming to date. Adbusters , a Canadian publication espousing an environmentalist critique of consumerism and advertising, began promoting aspects of culture jamming after Dery introduced founder and editor Kalle Lasn to the term through a series of articles he wrote for
4730-416: The ISBN is less than eleven digits long and because 11 is a prime number ). The ISBN check digit method therefore ensures that it will always be possible to detect these two most common types of error, i.e., if either of these types of error has occurred, the result will never be a valid ISBN—the sum of the digits multiplied by their weights will never be a multiple of 11. However, if the error were to occur in
4840-513: The International ISBN Agency as the registration authority for ISBN worldwide and the ISBN Standard is developed under the control of ISO Technical Committee 46/Subcommittee 9 TC 46/SC 9 . The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978. An SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit "0". For example, the second edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns , published by Hodder in 1965, has "SBN 340 01381 8" , where "340" indicates
4950-538: The Internet, producing ‘subvertisements' and placing them in public spaces, and creating and enacting ‘place jamming' projects where public spaces are reclaimed and nature is re-introduced into urban places. The most effective form of jamming is to use an already widely recognizable meme to transmit the message. Once viewers are forced to take a second look at the mimicked popular meme they are forced out of their comfort zone. Viewers are presented with another way to view
5060-475: The Liverpool street underground station to host a flashmob to sell their mobile services. Culture jamming is a form of disruption that plays on the emotions of viewers and bystanders. Jammers want to disrupt the unconscious thought process that takes place when most consumers view a popular advertising and bring about a détournement . Activists that utilize this tactic are counting on their meme to pull on
5170-469: The NPC was expected to deliver the long-awaited conclusions of a study commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman . The NPC is headed by former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond , who is also the chair of the study. When the Yes Men arrived at the conference they said that Lee Raymond (the promised speaker) was unable to make it due to a pressing situation with the president. The Yes Men then went on to give
5280-464: The SI argued humans had become passive recipients of the spectacle , a simulated reality that generates the desire to consume, and positions humans as obedient consumerist cogs within the efficient and exploitative productivity loop of capitalism. Through playful activity, individuals could create situations , the opposite of spectacles. For the SI, these situations took the form of the dérive , or
5390-629: The Sally Brompton horoscope in the Post was commissioned from an environmental activist horoscope writer but was not published. On September 22, 2009, the Yes Men demonstrated on the alleged behalf of Halliburton and dozens of other climate threatening corporations an inflatable ball-shaped costume known as the SurvivaBall, claiming it was a self-contained living system for surviving disasters caused by global warming. Over two dozen people wore
5500-466: The SurvivaBall costumes as it was demonstrated in the East River. Police shut down the demonstration for lack of a permit. Co-founder of the Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum, was arrested on an outstanding parking ticket charge and a handful of other Yes Men were served with summons and tickets for disorderly behavior and creating hazardous conditions. The SurvivaBall was also used in a protest at the steps of
5610-456: The United Kingdom by David Whitaker (regarded as the "Father of the ISBN") and in 1968 in the United States by Emery Koltay (who later became director of the U.S. ISBN agency R. R. Bowker ). The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the ISO and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO 2108. The United Kingdom continued to use the nine-digit SBN code until 1974. ISO has appointed
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#17327943857785720-454: The United States; his wife, Lillian, stated Anderson suffered "25 years of unfair treatment." On their fake Dow Chemical website, the Yes Men said that Dow Chemical Company had no intention whatsoever of repairing the damage. The real company received considerable backlash, and both the real Dow and the phony Dow denied the statements, but Dow took no real action. The Yes Men decided to pressure Dow further, so as "Finisterra," Bichlbaum went on
5830-455: The WTO, to which they responded as if they were the actual WTO. At the WTO, the Yes Men gave speeches encouraging corporations to buy votes directly from citizens. They then unveiled a gold spandex body suit that they said would allow productivity to increase, as managers would not have to oversee workers in person but could keep track of them via images on an attached screen as well as implanted sensors. The Yes Men appeared on August 28, 2006, at
5940-447: The Yes Men are known by a number of aliases, most recently, and in film, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno ( Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos , respectively). Servin is an author of experimental fiction, and was known for being the man who inserted images of men kissing in the computer game SimCopter . Vamos is an associate professor of media arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , New York. They are assisted by numerous people across
6050-428: The Yes Men's first pranks was the satirical website gwbush.com , established for the 2000 US presidential election to draw attention to alleged hypocrisies on Bush's actual website. When asked about the site in a press conference on May 21, 1999, Bush responded that the website had gone too far in criticizing him. In 2004, the Yes Men went on tour posing as the group "Yes, Bush Can!" and encouraged supporters to sign
6160-602: The Yes Men's stunt. The Chamber launched a trademark and copyright infringement lawsuit against The Yes Men, who were defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation . The suit was dropped in June 2013. This action appears in their film, The Yes Men Are Revolting . During the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen , the Yes Men put out a statement in which they purported to be
6270-491: The active drift of the body through space in ways that broke routine and overcame boundaries, creating situations by exiting habit and entering new interactive possibilities. The cultural critic Mark Dery traces the origins of culture jamming to medieval carnival , which Mikhail Bakhtin interpreted, in Rabelais and his World, as an officially sanctioned subversion of the social hierarchy. Modern precursors might include:
6380-657: The allocations of ISBNs that they make to publishers. For example, a large publisher may be given a block of ISBNs where fewer digits are allocated for the registrant element and many digits are allocated for the publication element; likewise, countries publishing many titles have few allocated digits for the registration group identifier and many for the registrant and publication elements. Here are some sample ISBN-10 codes, illustrating block length variations. English-language registration group elements are 0 and 1 (2 of more than 220 registration group elements). These two registration group elements are divided into registrant elements in
6490-410: The billions of people who would die into oil. The project, called Vivoleum , would work in perfect synergy with the continued expansion of fossil fuel production. The oilmen listened to the lecture with attention, and then lit "commemorative candles". At this point, event security recognized the Yes Men and forced them off stage, and the 'punchline' – that the candles were made of Vivoleum obtained from
6600-502: The capitol. The protesting balls demanded action be taken on global warming to achieve the 350.org goal. Their strategy was to block the entrance until the government comes to a binding agreement on climate change. On October 19, 2009, the Yes Men spoofed the United States Chamber of Commerce , declaring a U-turn on their climate change policy. The Yes Men were not able to complete the conference without being exposed as
6710-466: The check digit itself). Each digit, from left to right, is alternately multiplied by 1 or 3, then those products are summed modulo 10 to give a value ranging from 0 to 9. Subtracted from 10, that leaves a result from 1 to 10. A zero replaces a ten, so, in all cases, a single check digit results. For example, the ISBN-13 check digit of 978-0-306-40615- ? is calculated as follows: Thus, the check digit
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#17327943857786820-419: The check digit must equal either 0 or 11. Therefore, the check digit is (11 minus the remainder of the sum of the products modulo 11) modulo 11. Taking the remainder modulo 11 a second time accounts for the possibility that the first remainder is 0. Without the second modulo operation, the calculation could result in a check digit value of 11 − 0 = 11 , which is invalid. (Strictly speaking, the first "modulo 11"
6930-514: The claim "GE Responds to Public Outcry – Will Donate Entire $ 3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs." and it seems that the AP reported the story as fact, as reported by Good . In June 2012, the Yes Men collaborated with Greenpeace and members of the Occupy Seattle movement to create ArcticReady.com, a parody website criticizing Shell Oil's drilling activities in
7040-411: The complete sequence is ISBN 0-306-40615-2. If the value of x 10 {\displaystyle x_{10}} required to satisfy this condition is 10, then an 'X' should be used. Alternatively, modular arithmetic is convenient for calculating the check digit using modulus 11. The remainder of this sum when it is divided by 11 (i.e. its value modulo 11), is computed. This remainder plus
7150-621: The crisis into a publicity shtick". On January 16, 2019, parody editions of The Washington Post were distributed in Washington, D.C. Dated May 1, 2019, the edition's headline read "UNPRESIDENTED" and the lead article described Donald Trump 's resignation from the presidency after a period of unrest. The Yes Men took credit for the edition. In November 2021, for the United Nations COP26 climate action summit in Glasgow,
7260-586: The department. White commented, "I'm like, who the heck is that?" The fictitious Oswin also announced that the big oil companies would contribute some of their record profits to rebuild the wetlands destroyed by the construction of oil tanker canals to prevent the city from being inundated by future hurricanes. On June 14, 2007, the Yes Men acted during Canada 's largest oil conference in Calgary , Alberta , posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives. In front of more than 300 oilmen,
7370-478: The details of over one million ISBN prefixes and publishers in the Global Register of Publishers . This database is freely searchable over the internet. Publishers receive blocks of ISBNs, with larger blocks allotted to publishers expecting to need them; a small publisher may receive ISBNs of one or more digits for the registration group identifier, several digits for the registrant, and a single digit for
7480-587: The dominant culture. In 1985, the Guerrilla Girls formed to expose discrimination and corruption in the art world . Mark Dery's New York Times article on culture jamming, "The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax" was the first mention, in the mainstream media, of the phenomenon; Dery later expanded on this article in his 1993 Open Magazine pamphlet, Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in
7590-601: The emotional strings of people and evoke some type of reaction. The reactions that most cultural jammers are hoping to evoke are behavioral change and political action. There are four emotions that activists often want viewers to feel. These emotions – shock , shame , fear , and anger – are believed to be the catalysts for social change. Culture jamming also intersects with forms of legal transgression. Semiotic disobedience, for example, involves both authorial and proprietary disobedience, while techniques such as coercive disobedience comprise acts of culture jamming combined with
7700-437: The end, as shown above (in which case s could hold a value as large as 496, for the invalid ISBN 99999-999-9-X), or s and t could be reduced by a conditional subtract after each addition. Appendix 1 of the International ISBN Agency's official user manual describes how the 13-digit ISBN check digit is calculated. The ISBN-13 check digit, which is the last digit of the ISBN, must range from 0 to 9 and must be such that
7810-598: The flesh of an "Exxon janitor" who died as a result of cleaning up a toxic spill – was not delivered to the audience, but only to reporters. The Yes Men (along with the Anti-Advertising Agency) also claimed partial responsibility for a prank on November 12, 2008, where approximately 80,000 copies of a fake edition of the July 4, 2009 edition of The New York Times were handed out on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. The fake edition shows their ideas for
7920-586: The gas leak. The Indian Supreme Court eventually mediated a settlement in which UCC accepted moral responsibility and agreed to pay $ 470 million to the Indian government to be distributed to claimants as a full and final settlement. The average amount to families of the dead was $ 2,200. Warren M. Anderson, who led the Union Carbide during the Bhopal disaster of 1984, died in 2014 at the age of 92 after fleeing to
8030-428: The general public and to call greater media attention to stories of interest. Some of these outrageous ideas include the prospect of selling one's vote or a proposition that the poor should consume recycled human waste. On most occasions, little to no shock or outrage is publicly evoked in response to their prank. On occasion, the Yes Men's phony spokesperson will make announcements that represent fictitious scenarios for
8140-551: The globe. There are other full-time members, such as Whitney Black and Rocco Ferrer, who take a more behind-the-scenes approach. Their experiences were documented in the film The Yes Men , distributed by United Artists, the film documentary info wars , and the book The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization ( ISBN 0-9729529-9-3 ). Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno also directed
8250-442: The housing projects, as they had planned to do in order to replace them with mixed-income developments. HUD called this prank, which was intended to bring attention to the lack of affordable housing, a "cruel hoax". A former resident of the community was quoted by Bichlbaum as saying, "do whatever's most effective, do it, don't worry about how it affects us," however. HUD spokeswoman Donna White said no one named "Rene Oswin" works for
8360-827: The human labor cost and conditions and environmental drawbacks of products to the sales costs. Another example would be the "Truth" campaigns that exposed the deception tobacco companies used to sell their products. Following critical scholars like Paulo Freire , Culture jams are also being integrated into the university classroom "setting in which students and teachers gain the opportunity not only to learn methods of informed public critique but also to collaboratively use participatory communication techniques to actively create new locations of meaning." For example, students disrupt public space to bring attention to community concerns or utilize subvertisements to engage with media literacy projects. Some scholars and activists, such as Amory Starr and Joseph D. Rumbo, have argued that culture jamming
8470-426: The ideological position of the organization or person. Furthermore, they acknowledge the idea that many corporate or government entities manipulate their ideology using spin ; in response, the Yes Men use this power of spin to their own advantage, and use media outlets to disseminate their personal interpretation of the situation. A sense of humor and shock value is usually employed to make these issues more palatable to
8580-521: The interview he was asked if he had considered the emotions and reaction of the people of Bhopal when producing the hoax. According to the interviewer, "there were many people in tears" upon having learned of the hoax. Bichlbaum said that, in comparison, what distress he had caused the people was minimal to that for which Dow was responsible. The Yes Men claim on their website that they have been told by contacts in Bhopal that once they had got over their disappointment that it wasn't real, they were pleased about
8690-477: The language and rhetoric of mainstream culture to subversively critique the social institutions that produce that culture. Tactics include editing company logos to critique the respective companies, products, or concepts they represent, or wearing fashion statements that criticize the current fashion trends by deliberately clashing with them. Culture jamming often entails using mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, commonly using
8800-476: The lines of tactics that radical consumer social movements would use. These movements push people to question the taken-for-granted assumption that consuming is natural and good and aim to disrupt the naturalization of consumer culture; they also seek to create systems of production and consumption that are more humane and less dominated by global corporate late capitalism . Past mass events and ideas have included Buy Nothing Day , virtual sit-ins and protests over
8910-589: The magazine. In her critique of consumerism, No Logo , the Canadian cultural commentator and political activist Naomi Klein examines culture jamming in a chapter that focuses on the work of Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada . Through an analysis of the Where the Hell is Matt viral videos, researchers Milstein and Pulos analyze how the power of the culture jam to disrupt the status quo is currently being threatened by increasing commercial incorporation. For example, T-Mobile utilized
9020-598: The media-savvy agit-prop of the anti-Nazi photomonteur John Heartfield , the sociopolitical street theater and staged media events of 1960s radicals such as Abbie Hoffman , Joey Skaggs , the German concept of Spaßguerilla , and in the Situationist International (SI) of the 1950s and 1960s. The SI first compared its own activities to radio jamming in 1968, when it proposed the use of guerrilla communication within mass media to sow confusion within
9130-501: The meme and are forced to think about the implications presented by the jammer. More often than not, when this is used as a tactic the jammer is going for shock value. For example, to make consumers aware of the negative body image that big-name fashion brands are frequently accused of causing, a subvertisement of Calvin Klein 's 'Obsession' was created and played worldwide. It depicted a young woman with an eating disorder throwing up into
9240-409: The new #DNCTakeBack campaign, Spencer pushed a more ambitious and progressive Democratic agenda, including: Medicare for all, tuition-free college, public campaign financing, stronger unions, an end to corporate lobbying and the end of for-profit prisons. In November 2018, Motherboard/Vice released a video about The Yes Men and their fake VW "Emissions Anonymous" project. In the prank, they apologize to
9350-404: The news to claim that Dow planned to liquidate Union Carbide and use the resulting $ 12 billion to pay for medical care, clean up the site, and fund research into the hazards of other Dow products. After two hours of wide coverage, Dow issued a press release denying the statement, stating that they had no employee by that name and he was an impostor, ensuring even greater coverage of the phony news of
9460-399: The next few days. The Indian government reported that more than half a million people were exposed to the gas, leading to numerous early and late health defects. The Bhopal Disaster became one of the worst chemical disasters in history and the name Bhopal became synonymous with industrial catastrophe. Immediately after the disaster, UCC began attempts to dissociate itself from responsibility for
9570-599: The next few decades. The paper had been created by the Yes Men and a coalition of activists as a wake-up call to action on climate change. Other articles describe the Pentagon's alarmed response to global warming , the U.S. government's minuscule response, China's advanced alternative energy program, and how the COP15 in Copenhagen could be a "Flopenhagen". There is also a fake website. A "climate change horoscope" satire on
9680-580: The numerous environmental problems and human rights violations that have occurred in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria since Shell began oil exploration in the region decades ago. Shell has yet to make any official statement about this video. On April 13, 2011, a hoax website with a URL similar to that of the GE press domain (genewscenter.com) designed to look like the GE news center website. The hoax site posted
9790-722: The original medium's communication method. Culture jamming is also a form of subvertising . Culture jamming is intended to expose questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture , and can be considered a reaction against politically imposed social conformity . Prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the Billboard Liberation Front and contemporary artists such as Ron English . Culture jamming may involve street parties and protests . While culture jamming usually focuses on subverting or critiquing political and advertising messages, some proponents focus on
9900-419: The past, humans dealt with life and the consumer market directly. They argued that this spontaneous way of life was slowly deteriorating as a direct result of the new "modern" way of life. Situationists saw everything from television to radio as a threat and argued that life in industrialized areas, driven by capitalist forces, had become monotonous, sterile, gloomy, linear, and productivity-driven. In particular,
10010-561: The pranksters shared news of a private jet interior design company's membership in the UN's ‘Race to Zero’ program, convincing some that they'd trolled the gathering by getting their fake company admitted. The prank was highlighting the absurdity that such a company actually exists and is a member of a net-zero program. Culture jamming Culture jamming employs techniques originally associated with Letterist International , and later Situationist International known as détournement . It uses
10120-570: The public for the Dieselgate emissions scandal , in which several models and years of VW car family diesel autos were engineered and built with a rigged emissions system that ran clean only while under test conditions, but otherwise released high levels of air pollutants. The Houston Chronicle even covered the pranksters' April 2018 entry in Houston's annual Art Car Parade as if an official VW PR campaign: "The marketing department has even turned
10230-484: The public viewer to a consideration of the original corporate strategy. The studio for the cultural jammer is the world at large. According to Vince Carducci , although the term was coined by Negativland, the practice of culture jamming can be traced as far back as the 1950s. One particularly influential group that was active in Europe was the Situationist International and was led by Guy Debord . The SI asserted that in
10340-502: The publication element. Once that block of ISBNs is used, the publisher may receive another block of ISBNs, with a different registrant element. Consequently, a publisher may have different allotted registrant elements. There also may be more than one registration group identifier used in a country. This might occur once all the registrant elements from a particular registration group have been allocated to publishers. By using variable block lengths, registration agencies are able to customise
10450-428: The publishing house and remain undetected, the book would be issued with an invalid ISBN. In contrast, it is possible for other types of error, such as two altered non-transposed digits, or three altered digits, to result in a valid ISBN (although it is still unlikely). Each of the first nine digits of the 10-digit ISBN—excluding the check digit itself—is multiplied by its (integer) weight, descending from 10 to 2, and
10560-475: The ranges will vary depending on the number of books and the number, type, and size of publishers that are active. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture and thus may receive direct funding from the government to support their services. In other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. A full directory of ISBN agencies
10670-460: The release of their album JamCon '84 . The phrase "culture jamming" comes from the idea of radio jamming , where public frequencies can be pirated and subverted for independent communication, or to disrupt dominant frequencies used by governments. In one of the tracks of the album, Joyce stated: As awareness of how the media environment we occupy affects and directs our inner life grows, some resist. The skillfully reworked billboard... directs
10780-476: The resources they need to pull them off." In October 2015, at the annual Politicon non-partisan political convention, the Yes Men promoted an interview with whistleblower Edward Snowden , known to be living in exile in Russia. As they introduced the interview, they announced that Snowden had been pardoned and would join the group in person. As Snowden appeared before them, people cheered, applauded and many rushed
10890-403: The ruse (e.g. Survivaball ), as shown in their 2003 DVD release The Yes Men . The Yes Men have collaborated with other groups of similar interest, including Improv Everywhere , Andrew Boyd and Steve Lambert . According to Servin, the Yes Men concept initially sprang from their creation of a fake website spoofing the World Trade Organization . To the surprise of Servin and Vamos, many believed
11000-405: The same book must each have a different ISBN assigned to it. The ISBN is thirteen digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, and ten digits long if assigned before 2007. An International Standard Book Number consists of four parts (if it is a 10-digit ISBN) or five parts (for a 13-digit ISBN). Section 5 of the International ISBN Agency's official user manual describes the structure of
11110-566: The site to be authentic, and the two were consequently contacted to speak at a conference in Austria. Since this time, the Yes Men have continued performing large-scale hoaxes, in what they describe as a collaborative effort with journalists to help the media tell stories which they believe are important. The Yes Men often deploy a satirical approach: they pose as a powerful entity (typically a corporate or government representative or executive) and make ridiculous and shocking comments that caricature
11220-600: The stage for photos. A short time later, another Edward Snowden appeared on the giant screen; however, this time, it was the real Edward Snowden from Russia. In July 2017, The Yes Men pranked the Democratic Party at Politicon. Following up the "Better Deal" agenda released by the party a week earlier, prankster Andy Bichlbaum posed as Frank Spencer, Deputy Vice Chair for Civic Engagement of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). As part of
11330-634: The stunt and thought it had helped to raise awareness of their plight. At the International Payments Conference on April 28, 2005, 'Dow representative' "Erastus Hamm" unveiled Acceptable Risk, the Acceptable Risk Calculator, and the Acceptable Risk mascot – a life-sized golden skeleton named Gilda – to an audience of about 70 banking professionals. In February 2012, it was widely reported in
11440-415: The sum of all the thirteen digits, each multiplied by its (integer) weight, alternating between 1 and 3, is a multiple of 10 . As ISBN-13 is a subset of EAN-13 , the algorithm for calculating the check digit is exactly the same for both. Formally, using modular arithmetic , this is rendered: The calculation of an ISBN-13 check digit begins with the first twelve digits of the 13-digit ISBN (thus excluding
11550-430: The sum of these nine products found. The value of the check digit is simply the one number between 0 and 10 which, when added to this sum, means the total is a multiple of 11. For example, the check digit for an ISBN-10 of 0-306-40615- ? is calculated as follows: Adding 2 to 130 gives a multiple of 11 (because 132 = 12×11)—this is the only number between 0 and 10 which does so. Therefore, the check digit has to be 2, and
11660-456: The twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster , Andy Bichlbaum appeared on BBC World as "Jude Finisterra", a Dow Chemical spokesman. Dow is the owner of Union Carbide , the company responsible for the chemical disaster in Bhopal, India on December 3, 1984. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately from the hazardous chemicals and thousands more were killed by the plume from the UCC plant during
11770-545: Was also posted online. Jim Prentice described the hoax as "undesirable". On March 28, 2010, a video was released on YouTube with the title "Shell: We are sorry". A man called Bradford Houppe, from the Ethical Affairs Committee at Royal Dutch Shell gave a four-minute-long apology to the people of the Niger Delta for ruining their land, water, and communities. This video was created in response to
11880-545: Was by far the biggest user of the ISBN identifier in 2020, followed by the Republic of Korea (329,582), Germany (284,000), China (263,066), the UK (188,553) and Indonesia (144,793). Lifetime ISBNs registered in the United States are over 39 million as of 2020. A separate ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation (except reprintings) of a publication. For example, an ebook, audiobook , paperback, and hardcover edition of
11990-604: Was devised in 1967, based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering ( SBN ) created in 1966. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO 2108 (any 9-digit SBN can be converted to a 10-digit ISBN by prefixing it with a zero). Privately published books sometimes appear without an ISBN. The International ISBN Agency sometimes assigns ISBNs to such books on its own initiative. A separate identifier code of
12100-532: Was required to be compatible with the EAN format, and hence could not contain the letter 'X'. According to the 2001 edition of the International ISBN Agency's official user manual, the ISBN-10 check digit (which is the last digit of the 10-digit ISBN) must range from 0 to 10 (the symbol 'X' is used for 10), and must be such that the sum of the ten digits, each multiplied by its (integer) weight, descending from 10 to 1,
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