Cultural Media Studies
Cultural media studies
1. What is popular culture
Popular culture
Bourdieu: (influenced by Marxism, structuralism, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology)
Cultural taste communicates class positions & supports class distinctions. Shapes our
identities. People attach meaning to it and find position of resistance or identification.
How to decide what is ‘popular’ culture? Defined in relation to what it is not. Itself is an
empty category.
- Well-liked by many people (=useless)
- What’s left after deciding what is high culture (=HC has to be difficult)
o Shakespeare used to be low culture, now seen as high culture
- Authentic culture of the people ≈ folk culture: by and for the people
- Gramsci: Site of struggle against the power bloc
- There is no distinction (postmodernism)
Studies of relationships of power. Gives meaning to everyday lives of people & structures
their lives.
PC emerges because of industrialisation & urbanisation
- New relation between employer & employee
- Residential separation of classes
- Fear of radicalism
Liu: Lists of interests on social profiles = taste performances
Fiske:
The art of the people is the art of making do. The culture of everyday life lies in the
creative discriminating use of the resources that capitalism provides.
In the cultural economy, what circulates isn’t money but meanings & pleasures.
(mass) Media = vehicle for communicating culture. Contributes to the exercise of power.
Interwoven in our daily lives
Intertextuality
People ≠ passive
Distinguish between financial and cultural economy
1
Tars Christiaens
,Cultural Media Studies
Silverstone: Towards a new media politics
- Thought about morality and ethics
- How does media contribute to the exercise of power society, politics and our life?
o Trump gained popularity from tv-show ‘The Celebrity Apprentice’
- If you study media culture, you have to take position + defend it
- PC has moral responsibility because it makes the other visible
o Confronts us with things we wouldn’t see in our normal lives (refugees)
Conclusions
Media Popular culture
Vehicle for communicating texts Not fixed
Increasingly interwoven in our lives, Related to power and ideology: social
complex, personal, mobile and pervasive conflict taste, values…
We live in media > < with media Can be studies by looking at texts &
Can’t be separated from culture any more practices
2
Tars Christiaens
, Cultural Media Studies
2. Culture and civilisation tradition = school of
thought
Context: The masses create their own culture cohesion, pleasure, political
study of this culture emerges: the culture and civilisation tradition
Thinks very negatively about the audience. Does not see PC as diverse nor has it any value
They are convinced that PC threatens religion, morals and social order
Binary thinking: High vs low culture – Elite minority vs masses – Culture vs anarchy.
Top-down social order. Pessimist thinking of PC. Populist disapproval.
Arnold: Strong conservative & nostalgic: culture is the best that has been thought and said.
- Culture as social function: policing the uncultivated
- The state: must claim cultural authority against possible anarchy
- Education= road to civilisation: coercion & culture + subordination
- Upward mobility: Through culture (yet limited because masses are satisfied with
inadequate culture)
- Media: distinction of consumption between working class and elite. High speed press
allowed everyone to buy tabloids which influenced people’s opinions.
- Anarchy (= PC) needs to be overcome. Intellectuals have to educate the ‘aliens’
Leavis: Leavisism = attitude towards PC
- Nostalgic towards ‘golden age’
o Shakespeare represented organic community (good for both elite & working
class)
- Fearful of commercialisation: Americanisation & mass culture
- Pessimist about contemporary culture
- Mass media = cheapest emotional appeals, passive & distracting, levelling-down
effects. Advertising = main symptom of cultural decline
- Did take PC as serious study object and conducted empirical studies (but weak)
- Took action in education
- Sees democracy as a threat of civilisation, undermines authority
- Elitist, snobbery, nostalgic
3
Tars Christiaens
Cultural media studies
1. What is popular culture
Popular culture
Bourdieu: (influenced by Marxism, structuralism, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology)
Cultural taste communicates class positions & supports class distinctions. Shapes our
identities. People attach meaning to it and find position of resistance or identification.
How to decide what is ‘popular’ culture? Defined in relation to what it is not. Itself is an
empty category.
- Well-liked by many people (=useless)
- What’s left after deciding what is high culture (=HC has to be difficult)
o Shakespeare used to be low culture, now seen as high culture
- Authentic culture of the people ≈ folk culture: by and for the people
- Gramsci: Site of struggle against the power bloc
- There is no distinction (postmodernism)
Studies of relationships of power. Gives meaning to everyday lives of people & structures
their lives.
PC emerges because of industrialisation & urbanisation
- New relation between employer & employee
- Residential separation of classes
- Fear of radicalism
Liu: Lists of interests on social profiles = taste performances
Fiske:
The art of the people is the art of making do. The culture of everyday life lies in the
creative discriminating use of the resources that capitalism provides.
In the cultural economy, what circulates isn’t money but meanings & pleasures.
(mass) Media = vehicle for communicating culture. Contributes to the exercise of power.
Interwoven in our daily lives
Intertextuality
People ≠ passive
Distinguish between financial and cultural economy
1
Tars Christiaens
,Cultural Media Studies
Silverstone: Towards a new media politics
- Thought about morality and ethics
- How does media contribute to the exercise of power society, politics and our life?
o Trump gained popularity from tv-show ‘The Celebrity Apprentice’
- If you study media culture, you have to take position + defend it
- PC has moral responsibility because it makes the other visible
o Confronts us with things we wouldn’t see in our normal lives (refugees)
Conclusions
Media Popular culture
Vehicle for communicating texts Not fixed
Increasingly interwoven in our lives, Related to power and ideology: social
complex, personal, mobile and pervasive conflict taste, values…
We live in media > < with media Can be studies by looking at texts &
Can’t be separated from culture any more practices
2
Tars Christiaens
, Cultural Media Studies
2. Culture and civilisation tradition = school of
thought
Context: The masses create their own culture cohesion, pleasure, political
study of this culture emerges: the culture and civilisation tradition
Thinks very negatively about the audience. Does not see PC as diverse nor has it any value
They are convinced that PC threatens religion, morals and social order
Binary thinking: High vs low culture – Elite minority vs masses – Culture vs anarchy.
Top-down social order. Pessimist thinking of PC. Populist disapproval.
Arnold: Strong conservative & nostalgic: culture is the best that has been thought and said.
- Culture as social function: policing the uncultivated
- The state: must claim cultural authority against possible anarchy
- Education= road to civilisation: coercion & culture + subordination
- Upward mobility: Through culture (yet limited because masses are satisfied with
inadequate culture)
- Media: distinction of consumption between working class and elite. High speed press
allowed everyone to buy tabloids which influenced people’s opinions.
- Anarchy (= PC) needs to be overcome. Intellectuals have to educate the ‘aliens’
Leavis: Leavisism = attitude towards PC
- Nostalgic towards ‘golden age’
o Shakespeare represented organic community (good for both elite & working
class)
- Fearful of commercialisation: Americanisation & mass culture
- Pessimist about contemporary culture
- Mass media = cheapest emotional appeals, passive & distracting, levelling-down
effects. Advertising = main symptom of cultural decline
- Did take PC as serious study object and conducted empirical studies (but weak)
- Took action in education
- Sees democracy as a threat of civilisation, undermines authority
- Elitist, snobbery, nostalgic
3
Tars Christiaens
