By catching powerful entities off-guard — by speaking on their behalf about wonderful things they should do (but in reality won’t) — you can momentarily expose them to public scrutiny. This is identity correction: exposing an entity’s inner workings to public scrutiny.
An Example
In 2004, The Yes Men impersonated Dow Chemical on the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal catastrophe and announced on Dow’s behalf that it was finally taking responsibility for the disaster. The consequences were immediate: voluminous news reports about the unlikely turn of events and giant temporary drops in the company’s stock value.
