Digital culture jamming and cultural populism : a semiotic analysis within the framework of Mcguigan’s “cool capitalism"

Abstract

Digital culture jamming draws on the richness of digital materials and the dissemination power of online networks to subvert media messages, as well as the dominant and popular discourses produced by political and economic power actors, through humorous and aesthetic means. This study examines how digital culture jamming transforms cultural images employed by capitalism, including symbols of high culture, through the lens of McGuigan's concepts of cultural and critical populism. The primary aim of the study is to analyze the critical stance that digital culture jamming adopts towards popular culture and to evaluate how such content intervenes in the reproduction or concealment of social inequalities. The study applies a qualitative semiotic analysis, adopting Roland Barthes’ three levels of meaning, denotation, connotation, and myth, to examine four images selected from a carousel post shared on the public Instagram account @canavarkara. The selected post was considered particularly relevant due to its critical engagement with consumerism and populism, as well as its suitability for semiotic analysis. The findings indicate that these visual interventions not only highlight issues such as labour invisibility, surveillance, and social isolation but also demonstrate how they can simultaneously challenge dominant ideologies under McGuigan's concept of cool capitalism. This study contributes to the literature on digital activism by offering a critical perspective on the visibility of power relations and ideological manipulation. Given the study's focus on a single account, its limitations are acknowledged, and future research should further explore the erosion of culture jammers' anonymity, content production practices, and the populist potential of digital culture jamming.