RED is the New Black: Brand Culture, Consumer Citizenship and Political Possibility

Any quick glance at cultural, social, and political life in twenty-first century United States discloses compelling evidence that regardless of identity, or generation, or socioeconomic status, we organize our lives within brand culture. While advertising continues to have a dominant presence in both public and private spaces, what characterizes contemporary culture is not so much the ubiquitous ad, but rather the normalization of brand culture, where consumer participation is not simply (or even most importantly) indicated by purchases made, but rather by brand loyalty and affiliation. By connecting brands to lifestyles, to politics, and even to social activism, brand culture permeates consumer habits, and more importantly, all forms of political, social, and civic participation. We examine two contemporary examples of branding strategies, the RED campaign and the Chevy Tahoe consumer competition, as a way to demonstrate the dynamic relationships between consumers and brand marketers. In particular, we discuss these campaigns as lenses through which we understand how brand culture is a space for the constitution of consumer citizenship. These two campaigns are also illustrative of the ways that brand culture is in a state of flux at this historical moment, and we explore this instability for its political impact

Mobile Voices: Projecting the Voices of Immigrant Workers by Appropriating Mobile Phones for Popular Communication

Mobile Voices, also known as VozMob (www.vozmob.net), is a digital storytelling platform for first generation, low-wage immigrants in Los Angeles to create and publish stories about their communities, directly from cell phones. The project is a partnership between the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA), a nonprofit that organizes low-income immigrants in Los Angeles. Founded in 1984, IDEPSCA's programs are focused on education, economic development, health access and reform, popular communication, and worker rights. Currently IDEPSCA runs six day laborer and household worker centers and two day laborer corners where workers look for jobs in a more humane and dignified way while learning about their rights and gaining valuable leadership skills. The Annenberg School for Communication (the research partner) and IDEPSCA (the community partner) came together around the shared goal of designing communication systems and processes that promote media justice and help those without computer access gain greater participation in the digital public sphere. This chapter is a reflection on popular communication, participatory design, andcommunity-based multimedia practice from the Mobile Voices project team. It was collaboratively written by 13 members of the project and includes a project overview and an exploration of themes including the pedagogy of popular communication, participatory technology design, and the dynamic

RED is the new black: brand culture, consumer citizenship and political possibility

Any quick glance at cultural, social, and political life in 21st Century United States discloses compelling evidence that regardless of identity, or generation, or socio-economic status, we organize our lives within brand culture. While advertising continues to have a dominant presence in both public and private spaces, what characterizes contemporary culture is not so much the ubiquitous ad, but rather the normalization of brand culture, where consumer participation is not simply (or even most importantly) indicated by purchases made, but rather by brand loyalty and affiliation. By connecting brands to lifestyles, to politics, and even to social activism, brand culture permeates consumer habits, and more importantly, all forms of political, social, and civic participation. We examine two contemporary examples of branding strategies, the RED campaign and the Chevy Tahoe consumer competition, as a way to demonstrate the dynamic relationships between consumers and brand marketers. In particular, we discuss these campaigns as lenses through which we understand how brand culture is a space for the constitution of consumer citizenship. These two campaigns are also illustrative of the ways that brand culture is in a state of flux at this historical moment, and we explore this instability for its political impact