Pranking Wikipedia

When I was teaching the research and support lesson in my Comm 210 class, I was reminded of one of my favorite instances of culture jamming of all time: Stephen Colbert’s Wikipedia prank. In one of his shows, he logged into Wikipedia and changed the Wikipedia pages about George Washington (to say that he never owned slaves) and elephants (to say that Africa had more elephants today than it did 10 years ago).  These “facts” were obviously false; however, because Wikipedia allows users to vote on what information is true, Colbert was able to rally enough of his viewers to approve the information that the pages were temporarily changed. Eventually, the Wikipedia administrators changed the pages back and revoked Colbert’s membership to the website. Generally, I agree with Dr. McCauliff’s assertion that Colbert and Jon Stewart are not culture jammers because they culture jam to make profits; however, in this case Colbert’s actions perfectly fit the definition of culture jamming. Harold wrote that culture jamming “usually implies an interruption, a sabotage, hoax, prank, banditry, or blockage of what are seen as the monolithic power structures governing cultural life… It is an amping up of contradictory rhetorical messages in an effort to engender a qualitative change” (p. 192). Colbert used Wikipedia’s reliance on user-generated knowledge against the site by encouraging viewers to add their own ridiculous “facts.” Colbert exposed the untrustworthy nature of the website and provided an excellent video clip for my Comm 210 class on the dangers of using Wikipedia for scholarly research.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-31-2006/the-word---wikiality