Introduction

Subvertising is the practice of altering an existing advertisement as a way to make a critical and social comment, and for various purposes. As such, it should be seen as a phenomenon that goes beyond the realm of advertising itself, and where different approaches converge. At its core, subvertising illustrates critical thinking through the use of techniques and resources usually deployed by advertising, but in doing so can call for major changes in society or operate on a much smaller scale to engage with a particular collective.

In terms of its large-scale purpose, directed at systems, subvertising can be thought of as a social movement used to denounce unsustainable consumerism. It offers a platform for various ideological positions, exemplified by feminists, environmentalists, anti-consumerist factions, and others, to oppose advertising. Their objection lies not in advertising per se, but rather in its utilisation as a potent tool that reinforces unrestrained consumerism. According to Lekakis (2020), based on this approach it can also be thought of as a series of tactics used by other groups to achieve their aims, such as the feminist movement (e.g., Barbaño and Moreno, 2019). Various independent collectives, groups and artists have appropriated the language of advertising and its means of dissemination to launch attacks in favour of different social causes. Subvertising itself is used to overturn messages from a range of ideological stances, such as anti-smoking (Dewhirst and Kozinets, 2014), anti-alcoholism (Zurita, 2011), environmentalism (Pacheco, 2009), anti-consumerism (Binkley and Littler, 2011), sustainable urban development (Tortosa, 2011) or defending working conditions in sweatshops (Rimmer, 2008). Consequently, subvertising has evolved in such a way that it operates not only as criticism but also as a way to redirect messages with the aim of inspiring and guiding the public. Drawing from the notion of cultural acupuncture (Jenkins and Dery, 2017), subvertising operates akin to acupuncture, effecting significant cultural shifts through modest interventions that target pivotal pressure points, i.e., real mobilisation to bring about social and cultural change. It is therefore a way for citizens to express themselves and a way to engage with public life, one that questions the messages generated by the dominant cultural viewpoint, which injects society with symbolic hegemonic forms of discourse intended to influence people in a way that ensures a perpetuation of the prevailing systems.

Other approaches, however, would consider the phenomenon of subvertising a consequence of the discontent that some collectives also feel towards advertising itself, given the overexposure to advertising messages generated by big brands and corporations, saturating the entire media space in their drive for profit (Diniz, 2008). This concern originated with the emergence of anti-branding movements in the late 1990s, stemming from the rise of postmodern consumer culture, which challenged established theories of consumer resistance (Holt, 2002). This trend gained momentum with the publication of “No Logo” by Naomi Klein in 2000, a bestseller that propelled the anti-corporate-globalisation movement and shifted focus to the consumer aspect of the economy (Schor, 2011). As post-modern consumers tire of this deluge of communication, new behaviours have emerged aimed at blocking, preventing and neutralising the corporate invasion into daily life, as well as fomenting an active response from people who feel invaded in their physical and mental space (Rumbo, 2002). In this context, a form of social corporatisation is observed (San Nicolás, 2004), a result of the continual bombardment of sponsored messages in public and private spaces (allvertising), which is possible thanks to the “phagocytosis [biological process where cells engulf foreign particles for the body’s immune response] that allows advertising to turn each and every artistic and cultural manifestation that exists or has ever existed into a drive for sales” (Abarca, 2010: 195). This omnicorporate scenario also provokes its audiences, who feel that usurping media and messages is the only way left for them to respond (Henderson, 2010).

In this regard, and as a consequence of the convergence of media on the internet, the practice of subvertising has evolved, expanding by various means into the context of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). This means that audiences are no longer passive but are actively taking part, occupying a central place in the creation and resignifying of cultural content, which they then place in circulation, into the flow of communication. The concept of participatory culture has links to the active audience model put forward by Hall (1980) with regard to mass communication, which describes how a passive recipient can in turn become an active emitter by putting counter-messages into circulation that express a counter-hegemonic interpretation of the advertiser’s message. According to Hall (1980), the audience decodes messages positively (dominant/hegemonic), negatively (oppositional) or neutrally (negotiated), depending on the ideology that individuals are influenced by. Consequently, the creation of counter-messages by a participatory culture means an oppositional response to communication from the corporations, voicing an attack on those brands whose behaviour or communication is felt to be inappropriate or excessive for ethical, social, ideological or political reasons. These counter-messages, which may consist of new content or an alteration of existing content, also criticise the ecosystem surrounding the advertising industry, such as the monopolisation of the mass media, advertising saturation or advertising itself as an excessive tool within the marketing mix (Moreno, 2015), demonstrating how “popular culture is a field of opposition” (Sandlin and Milam, 2008: 332).

The constant exposure to the continual flow of media images in recent decades and the possibility of users having their own voice, as conferred by social media, clearly demonstrates that there is an active audience (Gallego, 1995) with critical capacity when receiving advertising messages (Cabello, 2006). In this way, part of society has shown itself to be a polysemic reader of advertising messages, able to make a free interpretation of texts and a counter-hegemonic analysis of corporate messages (Binay, 2005), having gained the necessary knowledge to interfere with and take part in the communication process (Berardi et al., 2003) in the current digital context.

Another use of subvertising is detected that is aimed at having an impact on a smaller scale but with long-term effects, using it to help generate critical thinking among specific groups of people, such as by introducing it into educational programmes aimed at improving advertising literacy (Grigoryan and King, 2008; Powell, 2018; Nelson et al., 2020). This approach shows the use of subvertising as a key instrument in media literacy education, which although a more recent concept is expected to gain considerable momentum in coming years.

These kinds of counter-hegemonic usurpation actions, aimed at overturning corporate communication, have become extremely popular over recent decades, due to how quickly messages can go viral online (Peverini, 2016) and the possibilities provided by social media in terms of sharing experiences and social mobilisation (de Melo et al., 2014). Other approaches to subvertising have been adopted in recent years by diverse collectives and organisations as a form of political counter-campaigning (Mackay, 2014) or to produce dissuasive advertising campaigns (Muralidharan, 2016). Subvertising is thus experiencing a moment of recognition in activist and professional spheres, as well as various international social movements.

At the academic level, the body of literature on subvertising is not extensive (Salih, 2019), and there has been no systematic round-up of the articles and other documents that combine to form the theoretical basis and premises on which the discipline is based. In terms of the different approaches to subvertising, the existing studies examine the issue from a diverse array of disciplines and approaches, including cultural studies (Gramigna, 2013), the legal aspects resulting from symbolic attacks on brands (Katyal, 2006), general sociology (Carducci, 2006), consumer activism (Kozinets and Handelman, 2004), semiotics (Önal, 2005) and advertising (Cortés, 2009). Therefore, due to its cross-cutting nature and its applicability to a diverse range of actions, this research focuses on examining the existing publications with the aim of elucidating which fields have addressed this phenomenon and the characteristics of their literature.

As a starting point, an exploration and organisation of the existing research into subvertising is required. That is the purpose behind this scoping review, to be able to describe the existing knowledge on the subject matter. According to Manchado et al. (2009: 15): “(…) this is a type of scoping review that is characterised by a series of aspects that make it possible to explore not only what has been done so far on a particular issue, but also by whom, where and in what way.” Although this review does not examine the analytical content or scientific discussions, it focuses on the development of subvertising literature and analyzes how different disciplinary fields have addressed the issue. Thus, it serves as an inventory of the research landscape and indicates the relevance and treatment of subvertising. This review would make it easier to identify both the origin and evolution of the phenomenon, and the areas of activity within the most global currents.

Objectives

The main objective of this article is to explore the existing studies on subvertising and how they have evolved, reviewing the literature and analysing the characteristics of the documents on the subject. The following secondary objectives are set:

  1. 1.

    Determine the origin of each publication, the document type and the evolution of contributions.

  2. 2.

    Observe the predominant areas of knowledge, the types of studies and the techniques used in the academic contributions made.

  3. 3.

    Identify the most prolific scientific authors and publications on the subject.

  4. 4.

    Assess the citation impact of scientific subvertising publications.

Methodology

This article attempts to clarify the current state of research into subvertising through a scoping review (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005) of the existing literature, in order to gain a more complete understanding of the current situation. In accordance with the technique applied, the decision was therefore made to include different document types, both academic and non-academic in origin, and from a selection of databases, such as scientific articles, doctoral theses, dissertations, conference speeches, general interest articles, books, book chapters and other publications. In databases where it was possible to do so, reviews and documents of fewer than 1000 words were excluded.

The time period of the review was extended after the initial narrative search, having detected the first subvertiser group to be created (Klein, 2000a), in 1979. Indexed documents were therefore requested from 1980 up to and including March 2020, when the search was carried out. The search included all geographical areas and six languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and French), although this was conditioned by the time period and the possible languages in the search tools.

The selection of keywords and the definitive sample set was carried out in two major search phases, which are described below. Additionally, in terms of the documents finally selected, the effectiveness of the keywords was verified in each of the search tools used.

First phase: search and select initial documents

An initial search of the literature was conducted with the aim of selecting the most relevant keywords for the system. Documents that were already in our library were analysed and added to with results extracted from the internet through a simple Google search. As a result, 83 documents (books and articles) were selected, from which the terms used to reference both the subject matter and the actors practising subvertising were extracted. In total, 19 main terms were compiled that were considered to be the most representative lexicon of this field of study.

After identifying the keywords, the international databases were selected, to which other Spanish databases were added. The search was carried out in Scopus, Web of Science, Proquest, Ebsco Host, Ovid, Dialnet, Recolecta, Teseo, ISBN, CSIC and Google Scholar, using the fields: “Title”, “Summary” and “Keywords”.

Given how differently each database is organised, and the different possibilities available in each one, the search criteria were adapted depending on the time period and the subject matters. In databases that allowed classification by subject matter, the search was limited to those relating to Arts & Humanities and Social Science (Web of Science), and Business, Management and Accounting (Scopus). Given its exploratory nature, the search in the remaining databases was conducted across the complete catalogue, without applying any filters based on knowledge disciplines. This approach enables an understanding of the relevance of the research object across all branches of knowledge covered by the databases.

Figure 1 shows the search terms used. The terms “uncommercial” and “jammer”, which were initially included, were left out in the pre-testing phase, as they returned unrelated results. The variations in spelling and grammar of these terms, and the truncation operator (*) and logical operators (“AND” and “OR”), were all included in the search strategy in databases that allowed for these operations. Despite the fact that the language criterion consisted of the languages shown in Fig. 1, it was decided to search all terminology in English and/or Spanish, depending on the language preference of each database. For databases in which the main language is not English, it was decided to run a duplicate search for the terms in both English and Spanish. For databases in which the main language is English, the search was run in English only.

Fig. 1: Systematic Scoping Review Process.
Fig. 1: Systematic Scoping Review Process.
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Note. Use of logos for educational and research purposes.

The first-phase result returned a total of n = 2320 documents found, which were filtered by the previously established exclusion criteria (reviews, documents in other languages and documents of fewer than 1000 words), and by reading the summaries any duplicate documents were also eliminated. After this screening, the result fell to n = 509 documents that went through to the next phase (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
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Systematic Search Results.

Second phase: select contributions relating to advertising

To filter and select documents in the second phase, the full text was read and a thematic requirement was applied, given the range of approaches to the subject matter. In the first phase, we encountered a diversity of terminology used to describe subvertising practices, including terms like adbusting, culture jamming, counteradvertising, and brandalism. While subvertising typically involves altering commercial messages disseminated through mass media, culture jamming encompasses a broader spectrum of actions aimed at disrupting any communicative flow disseminated by institutional senders, whether commercial or otherwise. Due to this terminological diversity and the polysemous nature of many terms, our search initially included all documents identified using various keywords. Subsequently, during the second phase, we refined our selection by assessing whether each document referred specifically to commercial brands or mass media, ensuring alignment with the subvertising phenomenon rather than broader cultural sabotage practices.

We adopted the term subvertising in line with the recommendations of Leal-Rico et al. (2023) to categorise the practices examined in this study. Conversely, while culture jamming encompasses subvertising, it extends beyond advertising to encompass broader cultural sabotage activities. Therefore, documents that primarily focused on cultural sabotage without direct relevance to advertising messages were excluded from our analysis. Terms such as adbusting, antiadvertising, and brandjacking were considered synonymous with subvertising for the purposes of our study.

Ultimately, we recorded documents that referenced advertising channels and corporate culture in general terms, including mentions of commercial brands. This criterion allowed us to identify messages employing subversive techniques targeting cultural sabotage more broadly, rather than specifically targeting advertising and corporate culture. Publications unrelated to the corporate realm were excluded from the final selection.

The initial sample of n = 509 documents was reduced to n = 253 results after examining the full text to confirm their specific relevance to the subvertising field, and discarding any documents for which the complete text could not be located (n = 16). The final study sample, therefore, is comprised of n = 253 documents.

Effectiveness of the search strategy

The database that returned the greatest number of results was Proquest, with a total of 813 documents found among all the keywords. However, applying the exclusion criteria, Proquest resulted in 65% of its documents being excluded, and only 7% of its documents included for analysis (the remainder being duplicates). It therefore proved to be a highly prolific database, but with a high percentage of noise. Google Scholar was the database with the highest number of documents included in the final sample, with a total of 316 results, of which 34% were excluded for not meeting the pre-established criteria, 41% were duplicates and 25% were included in the final sample. It is worth noting that Google Scholar was the only database that returned pertinent results from all the various types of documents established.

In terms of keywords, the term counter-advertising, despite being included, ended up having the highest percentage of noise, and 98% of the articles were excluded. Similarly, 84% of the results containing the term “culture jam” were discarded. The keyword with the highest percentage of results included in the sample was subvertising, with 27% of the documents meeting the inclusion criteria. The documents that were eventually selected come from a range of disciplines and approaches, but they all relate to subvertising. It should be noted that subvertising practices involve actions carried out by activists in message manipulation. Therefore, computer studies related to ad blocking are outside the scope of this study.

Analysis type and variables considered

Once the documents had been selected, they were analysed to extract the previously codified required information. The information was codified using the software Excel, and the SPSS Statistics software was used for the descriptive calculations and cross tabulations. This analysis covers both the particular form of the sample’s documents and the results based on the analysis of their content.

To meet the first objective, the country of origin, language, number of publications per year and type of document per year were codified and observed per document. By cross-tabulating these variables, document output evolution could be analysed, and the main countries and languages in which the documents were published could be mapped.

For the second objective, the analysis focused on academic documents, identifying the scope of the publication, the type of study and the techniques applied. To classify the documents by area of knowledge, the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database was used, complemented by Scopus, Miar, CSIC and Latindex. A search was made in each publication in the sample, and the first scope and academic field of each document was selected, dividing them into general categories. For 20% of the documents, no classification was possible. Furthermore, the methodology followed in each study was divided into qualitative, quantitative, mixed, participatory action research and other approaches without a methodological requirement.

For the third objective, information was obtained on the auditing of the documents. The publications’ reference was extracted, as well as the names and number of individuals authoring each text, their academic affiliation and their gender. To codify authorship by gender, the decision was made to opt for a binary division through a search of the name or photograph on certain academic networks or social media, fully aware of the limitation that this criterion imposes, as it fails to consider the diversity of gender identities.

Finally, for the fourth objective, to assess the citation impact of scientific articles related to subvertising in the academic sphere, we gathered citations for each article in our sample. Due to the diversity of the sample and its lack of indexing in certain scientific databases, citations for each article were evaluated based on the citation index recorded in the databases, prioritising Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. This variety of indexing sources enables us to evaluate the online presence and level of academic popularity of scientific articles addressing the topic of subvertising.

Results

Origin and evolution of publications

In terms of geographic origin, the USA accounted for the highest number of publications, with 36% of the total (91 documents), followed by Spain and the UK, with 16% each. Of the rest, 31% are divided among 25 countries on different continents, and 1% of the sample has no country indicated. This result differs from the Anglocentric trend observed in results per languages, as the predominant language for publication is English (72%), followed by Spanish (20%).

In examining the data, it is notable that both North America and Spain host some of the most frequently mentioned activist subvertising groups within the documents sampled. Adbusters (Canada) emerges as the most prominent group with 145 references, followed by the Billboard Liberation Front (USA) with 74 references, The Yes Men (USA) with 32 references, and Consumehastamorir (Spain) with 23 references. These findings suggest a significant presence and influence of activist subvertising groups in these regions.

Analysis of the time of publication reveals a general increase in documents published since 2018, although four separate stages are identified: 1. Initial: the first document is from 1986, although no other publications were detected until seven years later, at which point a very modest number of documents were identified, with minimal output between 1996 and 1999. 2. Take-off: a steadily growing output of publications on the subject is observed between 1999 and 2011. 3. Uneven growth: in this period a contrast between years is observed, starting with a drop in publications in 2012, ending three years later with the highest figure for the whole period, in 2015. 4. Standstill: from 2015 onwards, the number of publications per year appears to fall, although analysis of the pandemic and post-pandemic period is needed to draw any conclusions. Two documents were detected from the first three months of 2020 (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3
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Total number of publications per year.

Regarding the document types included in the sample, scientific articles are the most common format, accounting for 43% of the texts. Publications in book format and chapters in books account for 14%, doctoral theses make up 8%, and 15% are dissertations. Speeches given at conferences account for 5% of the documents in the sample. Also relevant are the documents in the “other publications” category, consisting of articles in professional magazines, essays and other general interest texts, which account for 16% of the sample (Table 1).

Table 1 Types of publications comprising the sample.
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By combining year of publication with document type, a more pronounced increase is observed in the number of academic documents compared with other publication types. The results of this cross tabulation indicate an unequal evolution in terms of document type. Figure 4 shows that the first recorded document on subvertising is a scientific article from 1986. However, no new scientific publication is found until 1999, when the number of documents on the subject starts to rise. In 2007 there was a more marked increase than in previous years, with seven publications recorded. From that year onwards the numbers fall and stabilise above the other publication types until 2018, with the exception of a drop in 2012, with only three articles published. The highest number is from 2016, when 12 scientific articles were published. Since 2019, this has fallen to three scientific articles.

Fig. 4
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Evolution over time by document type.

Regarding the rest of the publications, a similar, moderate increase over time is observed, with general numbers ranging from zero to five publications in all the remaining document types. The first publication in the dissertation category appears in 2002. Since then, the figures show a stabilisation in documents of this type, between zero and two publications a year, with the exception of 2011, with five publications. The first doctoral thesis also appears in 2002, after which the number ranges between zero and two a year during the period under review, except for 2015, when four doctoral theses on subvertising are recorded.

Publications consisting of books and book chapters vary consistently between 2000 and 2017. Publications in this category are recorded for every year except 2016. The highest figures are found in 2009, 2011 and 2017, with four publications each year. Texts from conference speeches appear as of 2001, with the highest number recorded in 2017 (two papers).

Finally, the “other publication types” category has a different progression from the other document types. This first publication from this category is from 1993, peaking in 1995 and 2000 with four publications in each year. It is worth noting that the highest number of these publications matches the take-off phase of the other categories. With regard to the rest of the period reviewed, these publications appear in most years, with figures ranging from zero to three publications per year (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5
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Scientific scope of scientific publications.

Main scopes and methodology used in the documents analysed

The sample reveals that subvertising is studied from within a wide range of disciplines. In scientific publications, communication is the main scope in which the subject is studied, followed by sociology and economics. The scientific fields are also observed to diversify from 2000 onwards. In this take-off phase, texts on subvertising appear in publications from the fields of sociology, education, medical sciences, art, history, law, philology, philosophy and technology.

Continuing with the classification of the perspectives from which subvertising is studied, the specific academic fields of the scientific articles published is also observed (n = 109). A predominance is detected of social sciences and humanities in general as the main field of academic study, at 15%, followed by social communication and journalism, at 10%. The other 18 fields all place at less than 10% of publications, although combined they account for 49% of the sample.

Regarding the impact of scientific publications, once we compiled the citations for all scientific articles, we found a general citation range of 657, as depicted in Fig. 6. Due to the significant variation in the number of citations for each article in each databes, we calculated the mode and median to assess the actual impact of the total number of publications. Thus, we determined that the mode in the Scopus database is 1, with a median of 12. In the Web of Science (WOS) database, the minimum mode is 2 (non-representative as there are no repetitions), with a median of 15, while in Google Scholar, the mode is 0, with a median of 4.

Fig. 6
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Citations for scientific articles according to databases.

Despite the small mode in all databases used, it is noteworthy that the overall range is driven by the article Adversaries of Consumption: Consumer Movements, Activism, and Ideology (Kozinets and Handelman, 2004), the most cited scientific article in the sample, with a total of 657 citations, as indicated in the Scopus database. To provide context and enable effective measurement of the impact of scientific documents, we cross-referenced this variable with the academic field of each publication. Notably, of the total citations obtained for all scientific articles (3373) comprising the sample (n = 109), the highest percentage (35%) comes from the field of economics, while the second highest percentage (33%) originates from the field of sociology. Only 6% of these citations are found in the field of communication. To compare these citation results within the same study topic, we also extracted the number of citations for books and book chapters documents in the sample (n = 34). Thus, we observed that the 34 books have a total of 2114 citations overall, with 69% of these belonging to the field of sociology.

In terms of the content of all the publications analysed (n = 253), both the methodology and the research technique used in each document are identified (Fig. 7). The methodology used in each text varies. The qualitative methodology predominates over the quantitative approach, accounting for 73% of the sample, compared with 0.4%. The choices of mixed methodologies, and mixed and more practical approaches based on PAR (participatory action research), account for 5% and 1%, respectively. However, 21% of the documents approach subvertising with no methodological requirement, as they are general interest and opinion texts, rather than strictly academic publications.

Fig. 7
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Research methodologies used in the publications.

The same occurs in the choice of research techniques (Fig. 8). A clear trend is identified in the use of case studies (27%), together with literature review and other secondary sources of information (25%), as resources for studying subvertising from different viewpoints. Collaborative workshops account for 8% of the texts, and other less commonly used procedures also emerge: conversational techniques (6%), analysing the content of subvertising messages (6%), mix of qualitative techniques (3%), analysis of primary sources (2%), use of surveys (0.4%) and ethnography (0.4%).

Fig. 8
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Research techniques used in the publications.

Conversational techniques (interviews, focus groups, etc.) that are appropriate for collecting primary data are used in 6% of the documents, all of which date from before 2015. When analysed by years, up to 2010 the most commonly used technique is the reading of document sources (bibliographic review and other secondary sources), appearing in 13% of the sample texts. In the last decade of the sample period (2010–2022), the number of documents that use this technique drops slightly (to 11%). In contrast, the second most commonly used technique up to 2010 is case studies (11%). It is also the most commonly used technique in the 2010–2020 period, being used as the main research technique in 16% of the documents.

Journals and authorship of publications

The number of journals in which scientific articles (n = 109) are published, which account for 43% of the sample, amounts to 93 different journal titles. A query in JCR confirms that 51% of these journals are indexed. Within these indexed publications, 13% are in the first quartile, 30% are in the second and third quartiles, respectively, and 28% are in the fourth quartile.

There are seven scientific journals that have published more than one article on subvertising. Table 2 shows that two journals have the highest number of accumulated publications. Established in 2003, Popular CommunicationFootnote 1 is an international journal examining media and culture, focusing on communication symbols, forms, materiality, systems, and networks in transnational popular culture. The second most prolific journal, Cultural StudiesFootnote 2, founded in 1987, explores the relationship between cultural practices and diverse aspects of daily life, history, power dynamics, ideology, economy, politics, knowledge, technology, and the environment. The remaining 86 journals have all published one article each on subvertising. Four of the seven journals with the highest number of publications are indexed. One of these is in the first quartile, and the other three are in the second quartile. Observing the scientific journals with related publications as a whole, there is notable interest shown in the subject by publications with an impact index in the second, third and fourth quartiles.

Table 2 Journals with the highest number of publications on subvertising.
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Regarding the authorship of all the documents that make up the sample, most of the texts are authored by an individual (76%), followed by groups of two to four authors (23%) and collaboration between five authors (0.4%). In total, 316 authors collaborated on the 253 documents that comprise the sample. Most of these authors have only one publication. A total of 5% of them appear in more than one publication. Table 3 shows the authors who have authored more than one document, of which three texts are by the same author. This top 3 list of most prolific publishers includes: (1) Dr. Marta Pacheco RuedaFootnote 3, a full professor at the University of Valladolid (Spain), who has authored numerous publications on advertising, including critical advertising theory, and the relationship between advertising and urban public space; (2) Dr. Matt SoarFootnote 4, a Professor Emeritus in Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal (Canada), is an intermedia artist, filmmaker, and writer, with expertise in design, media studies, and cultural studies, exploring the intersection of residual and emergent media forms; and (3) Christine HaroldFootnote 5, Professor and Chair of Communication at the University of Washington, specialised in rhetoric and consumer capitalism, whose research examines the opportunities for meaningful political action within a world increasingly shaped by marketplace logics and rhetorics.

Table 3 Authors with the highest number of publications on subvertising.
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In terms of which institutions authors are affiliated to, universities emerge as the main producers of subvertising content (82%). The 316 authors publishing on this subject matter are affiliated to a total of 262 institutions. From the sample set as a whole, 11% of these authors are not affiliated with any institution. Among all the affiliations detected, 214 are universities and the rest are professional associations, advanced study centres and technology institutes, among others. Table 4 includes all the institutions with the highest output of documents relating to the subject matter. The rest have a single related publication. There is considerable geographic diversity among the universities with most academic output, with institutions in Spain, USA, Brazil, France, Canada, Ecuador, Germany, New Zealand and Sweden.

Table 4 Main institutions with the highest number of publications on subvertising.
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Analysing authorship by gender, the sample contains 159 women and 155 men (it was not possible to determine the gender of two authors). In articles written by a single author, there is mathematical balance between the genders, with 50% authored by women and 49% by men (1% of the sample is lost due to it being impossible to determine the gender).

Discussion and conclusions

The aim of this article is to meet the need for greater knowledge of a phenomenon with a major social component and critical perspective, by conducting a review study of subvertising, due to no prior research having been identified with these characteristics. This study has sought to contribute to this phenomenon, by identifying and analysing the related publications. A scoping review with a preliminary narrative phase was therefore conducted. This approach is not a restrictive one, with few exclusion criteria, and using a high number of search tools. The aim is to ensure the inclusion of all possible contributions, whether academic or otherwise, in order to analyse the various different approaches to the study of subvertising.

In this regard, in the second phase, the process delves further by analysing in detail only the texts that are specifically related to advertising. In this way, although the texts analysed in this article originate from different disciplines and take different approaches, they all deal with subvertising in its multiple versions, as an autonomous discipline or as a topic within the phenomenon of culture jamming, and always in terms of its relation to corporate culture. They therefore comprise a body of research, the main features of which are identified in this article.

In light of the results, the USA is the main producer of subvertising texts, accounting for a third of all the publications analysed. It is also relevant that Spain occupies second place in terms of country of origin, and that Spanish is the second most common language of the documents analysed. Indeed, a comparatively high number of publications come from a small number of universities, including four located in Spain. The prevalence of highly cited activist subvertising groups in both North America and Spain underscores the importance of exploring the activities and influence of these groups in greater depth. The prominence of Adbusters in Canada and other influential groups such as the Billboard Liberation Front and The Yes Men in the USA, along with Consumehastamorir in Spain, suggests a correlation between the visibility of these groups within their respective countries and their influence on the discourse surrounding subvertising. Further research is needed to elucidate the specific contributions of these groups and their national contexts to the advancement of knowledge in this field.

There is also a clear English-language dominance, once the contributions from the UK and Australia are also taken into account. However, although most of the literature is published in English due to the language’s international nature, interest in subvertising clearly has a wider cultural relevance, given that 25 countries from all around the world were detected.

This result is evidence of the real origin of this line of research, with a clear increase in academic contributions, particularly scientific articles, from 2000 onwards. However, this conclusion does not necessarily mean that scientific articles are the ideal medium for circulating either theory or practice when it comes to subvertising, as the result needs to be interpreted in the context of the publish-or-perish regime (Becker and Lukka, 2022), which currently exerts pressure on the academic publication system.

In this regard, four stages are observed that serve to illustrate the type of intellectual output around this phenomenon: initial (1986–1999), take-off (1999–2011), uneven growth (2012–2015) and standstill (2015 to end of study period). Although the first document identified is a scientific text, other publication types such as general-interest articles dominate the initial and take-off stages. From that point, a change is observed in the overall types of publications, which takes definitive shape in 2002, when scientific articles become the dominant type of publication. Scientific articles dominate in the rest of the period studied in terms of the number of texts.

In accordance with this evolution, the year 2000 can be established as the key moment in the intellectual output of an academic nature dealing with subvertising, as it was the year in which No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000) was published, a book that questions the ethics of corporate practices in the age of globalisation and is considered the first bestseller to address the subvertising issue at an international level. The book may well have triggered the rise in the output of subvertising texts in the 21st century. Indeed, 43% of the documents published from 2002 onwards include a reference to this bestseller. By following this line of analysis, an in-depth study of the trends and currents within the subvertising movement would help to resolve the possible connections between these peaks in the data and the events that took place at the same time. The divergence between media and scholarly engagement on subvertising around 2000 saw media commentators addressing the issue earlier than scientists, possibly due to the time required for data collection and methodological development. This fact suggests that as subvertising gained social recognition, scholarly interest surged, leading to a rise in scientific publications on the topic. In Spain, there are other factors involved that might explain both the evolution and the increased presence of texts written in Spanish. It may be related to new dynamics in university output, brought about by the passing of Spain’s Organic Law 6/2001 on Universities (known as the LOU), the creation of the Spanish National Agency of Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA), and with it the incorporation of teacher accreditation systems. Furthermore, dissertations are included, and although there are relatively fewer of these than articles, they are academic in nature, and are particularly relevant following the introduction of the new qualifications within the framework of European convergence, as a result of which such projects are mandatory. Another reason may be related to the 2008 Great Recession, as it could be argued that the rise in the number of these texts is a consequence of the context itself, being conducive to reflection and critical thinking. The 2008 crisis and its aftermath significantly impacted consumer attitudes towards marketing messages, financial institutions, and corporate practices, leading to increased skepticism and a demand for greater transparency and accountability (Campbell-Verduyn, 2017).

That’s why, classifying the documents by their scientific scope and academic field can help to view the different perspectives and subject areas that have studied subvertising and which add to the body of research. In general, this relates to “communication” as a scientific field and “social sciences and humanities” as a field of knowledge. This result was to be expected, as it is a criterion that is practically inherent to the selection of articles on aspects relating to advertising. However, the number of approaches also begins to diversify in 2000. The 29 fields of study that account for the documents of an academic nature confirm the cross-cutting nature of the subject matter and the interest it arouses due to its applicability in highly diverse areas of study.

In relation to this, it can be concluded that subvertising is a multidisciplinary phenomenon, with a diverse range of perspectives and approaches, which can be as varied as the forms they take and how they are applied. It is important to note that the subvertising movement is subject to criticism, for creating images with an advertising aesthetic (Gilman-Opalsky, 2013), and there are studies that examine the phenomenon from a position of cultural and social activism (Lambert-Beatty, 2010), which leaves the communication and advertising perspectives that are involved to one side. As a result, a varied range of fields of study have been identified, which leads to the consideration that the contributions on subvertising from all the various disciplines are of value.

Regarding the results of the impact of the scientific articles included in the sample, it is worth noting that measuring the number of citations has proven to be complex due to the characteristics of the sample. The fact that the search is focused on multiple databases with their own characteristics complicates the extraction of results in bibliometric analyses. Thus, it has been possible to measure the presence and dissemination in the academic community of this type of articles, but it has not been possible to extract the average number of citations due to the variety of sources for measuring the citations of each article.

It is noteworthy to highlight the low impact of the majority of the scientific articles in the sample, with some peaks of citation but generally low data. Additionally, the predominance of citations in the fields of economics and sociology and the low impact in the field of communication contrast with the results obtained regarding the academic field of scientific publications. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that more is published on the topic from the field of communication, but this issue is more inclusive in the fields of economics and sociology.

The methodologies and techniques used in the publications analysed since 1986 are also diverse, although there is a clear predominance of the qualitative approach. From 2010 the number of case studies rises to the point that it can be considered the main technique used in the study of subvertising. It can be concluded, therefore, that the study of subvertising practices plays an important role in defining and marking out the theoretical basis of the subject matter. It also shows the relevance of experiences aimed at the small scale, with medium-term effects in specific collectives (Borromeo, 2016; Novia, 2018), which leads to the consideration that subvertising will play a major role in the coming years as an educational tool in advertising literacy.

Finally, in terms of authorship, there are as many women as men. When analysing the scientific articles, these tend to have a single author. In line with the predominant field of knowledge, more contributions are detected from a maximum of three authors in joint authorship. However, although no differences between men and women are identified in terms of authorship or in position when the document has joint authors, jointly authored works tend to show a segregation of research groups by gender. An analysis of the main approaches and the impact of these publications could provide more information on the effect of the gender system in the subject matter observed.

Despite the conclusions and implications reached by this article, the existence of certain limitations must be recognised. Firstly, the intention was to selection a broad range of databases, including up to 11 search tools. A priori, this design leads to the assumption of a greater amount of noise in the search process, but it does help to achieve a body of research that is more complete and more centred on subvertising, providing conclusive results. However, after confirming the extent of the spread of the publications across differing disciplines, there are almost certainly more documents relating to subvertising that are not in the sample. Secondly, documents found in other languages from those selected were also discounted, preventing analysis of other texts written in languages such as Russian, German, Swedish or Dutch. Collaboration among international researchers in future works may well improve the global reach in this regard.

In summary, the subvertising phenomenon is studied from a wide range of perspectives and approaches. The extent to which the publication of texts has evolved since the beginning of the 21st century compared with end of the 20th century leads to the conclusion that this is a growing trend that attracts analysis from a wide range of disciplines.

Most of the documents studied on the subject matter are from academic circles. Scientific journals are the main source of publication, indicating a growing interest in the phenomenon of subvertising. The study of the practical application of subvertising is expanding into academic fields that reach beyond its initial use as a way to support social causes. There has been a recent rise in the study of subvertising from different perspectives, such as the medical sciences and philosophy, leading to the conclusion that subvertising, in its function as a practical tool, needs a deeper and more focused analysis to understand all its possible applications.

The predominance of qualitative research as an approach to the phenomenon in recent decades, and the new application of other techniques in this field of study, such as participatory action research, suggests future possibilities for research relating to the analysis of subvertising practices. However, the variety of perspectives from which the topic is approached seems to point to a multiplication of terms and concepts that will lead to broader analysis, but will also in practice raise the amount of noise in any review, requiring more in-depth study to establish a definition.

Consequently, the excessive terminology used may pose a problem when it comes to standardising the discipline and ensuring a common theoretical basis that will be of use to future publications. A more in-depth analysis of the use of terms, depending on the particular scope of the study or the techniques being applied, would be not only interesting but necessary to view the relevance of this phenomenon and understand its reach, beyond being treated as an expression of protest.

Equally, a short and more qualitative analysis that helps to understand the different viewpoints considered in each document, as well as studying specific artists and groups of authors, specific actions, intrinsic elements and the use of particular definitions in each discipline, is another necessary step that would help to produce a deeper understanding of the subvertising phenomenon.

The scoping review applied in this article provides key information on the composition, evolution and description of the main components of the existing body of research linked to subvertising, and thus establishes the necessary starting point from which the different ways of approaching, understanding and justifying both the actions and the theories of subvertising can be analysed in greater depth in future studies.