Popular Culture: Definitions and Consumption

• Popular culture is produced, consumed, and experienced collectively within overlapping social relationships.

Definitions of Popular Culture

• Well-liked and measured by commercial metrics

• Well known across the nation or the world

• Mass culture designed for mass consumption

• Culture with a populist bent belonging to the people

• Events simultaneously experienced by mass audiences in real-time

• Culture is richly symbolic, invested with meaning, and collectively shared

• "Art worlds" consist of support personnel, division of labor, and cooperative links

• Art worlds and a network of creative personnel inform popular culture production

• Interpretive communities influence cultural consumption and allow "re-making" of popular culture meaning

• Successful cultural producers are successful cultural consumers

• Cultural production and consumption is a continual act of "the remix"

How Culture Affects Consumption

• Culture depends on group affiliations like friends, family, and online communities
• Groups also shape perceptions of what is "good" or "important"

Creating Meanings in Pop Culture

• People in different groups interpret culture in varied ways, leading to new meanings
• Meaning is always changing, as different communities add their own interpretation

Functionalist Approaches

• Functionalist approaches in study help understand 4 areas:

• Rituals of solidarity and social cohesion

• Popular culture as a resource for public reflection

• Rituals of rebellion

• Darker functions of popular culture

• Durkheim's contributions include theories of ritual, "collective consciousness," and "collective effervescence"

• Collective consciousness is shared beliefs/sentiments

• Collective effervescence is belonging produced by collective ritual

• Sacred inspires reverence, while the profane is ordinary

• Symbols create "illusory" or "manufactured" difference, particularly in sports

• Functionalist approaches focus on symbols, rituals, and practices

• Rituals are common in sports.

• "Imagined communities" rely on mediated images and "pseudo events"

• An imagined community exceeds personal knowledge

• Pseudo-events are staged for media

• Celebrity gossip serves a social function, akin to gossiping about own lives

• Negative stories are valued over positive ones

• Gossip underpins the entertainment and political reporting industries.

• "Rituals of rebellion" are rituals, not real rebellion

Critical Approach

• Early scholars include Marx, Gramsci, Adorno, and Postman
• Marx said those that ruled the material also ruled thought
• Gramsci is known for "cultural hegemony," turning beliefs of the ruling class into accepted cultural norms
• Adorno said the media invented things for society to want and then manufactured them
• Postman was negative about the effect of television on politics
• Klein, Klinenberg, and Morozov developed critical approaches further
• Klein interrogated economic globalization and corporate power
• Klinenberg studied media ownership
• Morozov argued against technology worship
• The emphasis on profits to corporations reinforces inequalities
• Also gender and racial inequality in the workplace

How Popular Culture Attacks Us

• Media industries promote and devalue products to perpetuate re-buying
• Consumerism is used to combat "FOMO"

Interactive Approach

• Cooley, Goffman, Gans, and Asch/Milgram made early contributions

• Cooley: "looking glass self," society and individuals cannot be studied separately

• Goffman: people "dress the part," using dramaturgy

• Gans popularized peer group societies

• Asch: peer groups affect evaluation

• Milgram: peer pressure affects actions

• "Well connected" refers to having weak ties and proper connections

• Gladwell's "connectors" are cultural emissaries

• "Aspiration labor" combines interactional and critical approaches

• Erin Duffy analyzes influencers' aspirational labor

• Dick Hebdige studied subcultures

• Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) argued that postwar youth subcultures challenged norms

• Five ways to measure word-of-mouth promotion effectiveness: volume, intensity, valence, dispersal, duration

• "Opinion leaders," "early adopters," "market maven," and "collective consumption" are terms

• Opinion leaders are influencers with deep familiarity

• Early adopters influence through having the newest items

• Market mavens accumulate knowledge quickly

• Collective consumption is viewing together

Collaborative Circles

• "Collaborative circles" and “pairs” utilize competitiveness and drive innovation
• "Cultural conventions" make activity possible

Constraints

• Three "realities" are constraints on cultural works: legal, organizational, and technical
• Legal system, organizational apparatus, and tech constraints matter
• Howard Becker described the difference between arts and crafts: craft isn't respected

Selling Out

• "Selling out" is not as influential as it once was
• Corporate tie-ins to music are less contentious

Memes

• Memes as Mapping Tools of Everyday Life are part of the cultural landscape
• Cultural, political, and spatial boundaries can be connected
• Memes chart out the connection
• Palestinians navigate global/state dynamics using memes
• "Fluency in American culture" helps meme culture "work" in Palestine