This article starts from the observation that popular culture resides in a contradictory space. On the one hand it seems to be thriving, in that the range of media objects that were previously studied under the rubric of popular culture has certainly expanded. Yet, cultural studies scholars rarely study these media objects as popular culture. Instead, concerns about immaterial labor, about the manipulation of voting behavior and public opinion, about filter bubbles and societal polarization, and about populist authoritarianism, determine the dominant frames with which the contemporary media environment is approached. This article aims to trace how this change has come to pass over the last 50 years. It argues that changes in the media environment are important, but also that cultural studies as an institutionalizing interdisciplinary project has changed. It identifies “the moment of popular culture” as a relatively short-lived but epoch-defining moment in cultural studies. This moment was subsequently displaced by a set of related yet different theoretical problematics that gradually moved the study of popular culture away from the popular. These displacements are: the hollowing out of the notion of the popular, as signaled early on by Meaghan Morris’ article “The Banality of Cultural Studies” in 1988; the institutionalization of cultural studies; the rise of the governmentality approach and a growing engagement with affect theory.
LINK
This report investigates prior experiences and impacts of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) with the aim of informing preparation plans for Leeuwarden and Fryslân to organize the event in 2018. The longterm benefits that the ECoC tend to be both tangible through improvements in facilities, and intangible as self-confidence and pride increase as the result of celebrating the destination, its culture and history.
DOCUMENT
Lecture on reading images (using semitiocs and discourse theory) and the theorization of 'affect' (what is it that images 'do' to us).
DOCUMENT
Previous investigations of consumer subcultures in the CCT tradition focused primarily on consumer behaviours, feelings, experiences and meanings of consumption. This paper advocates that in order to deeply understand and interpret a particular subculture, researchers in consumer culture should consider more thoroughly the interaction between consumers and producers in consumption markets. This argument is illustrated with a research project on lifestyle sports. From the results of this study it appears that producers play a vital and interdependent role in meaning and interpretation processes. It is argued that processes in which consumers give meaning to activities can not be isolated from the processes in which producers ascribe meanings to activities, settings and markets. In this 'circuit of culture', production and consumption are not completely separate spheres of existence but rather are mutually constitutive of one another (Du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, & Negus, 1997).
DOCUMENT
Introduction to a special issue of the IASPM journal. This special issue on fan studies aims to build a bridge with the study of popular music in order to inspire further investigation of music fandom.
DOCUMENT
For twenty years, typical outdoor lifestyle sports like rafting, snowboarding and rock climbing, which used to be exclusively practised in natural environments, are being offered in controlled artificial settings. This process can be described as 'the indoorisation of outdoor sports'. With this development, questions of authenticity arise. Are these new, commercial forms still authentic lifestyle sports? And can we consider the participants in these indoorised lifestyle sports as authentic? There has been a discussion about authenticity in lifestyle sports since its worldwide popularisation and it is worth to reconsider this discussion against the background of new, commercial versions of lifestyle sports. Therefore, in this paper a qualitative analysis is offered about the consumption of a constructed authenticity in a cultural context increasingly characterized by artificialization.
DOCUMENT
In the 1990s, the popularisation of house music and ecstasy led to a shift in the focus of research into club cultures. Characteristic of club culture is the willingness to share on the social (network), cultural (taste and knowledge), and physical (location) levels. Drug researchers ascertain that, since the 1990s, there has been a normalisation of drug use in the entertainment areas of youth and young adults. In an ongoing panel study among Amsterdam’s trendsetters, club cultures prove eminently receptive to new trends in nightlife. This chapter focuses on the transformation of club cultures into screen cultures within the electronic dance music (EDM) domain and the influence of vernacular media. This development runs parallel to the flight from overregulated entertainment venues. A second development is that the growing influence of the vernacular media has stimulated and also democratised knowledge, opinions and discussions about drugs, and the role in the prevention and risk discourse has changed from of a top-down to a linear model. In the vernacular discourse, the dominating view is that it is normal to experiment with drugs as long as it is done responsibly.
DOCUMENT
In the autumn of 2009, a group of exchange students in the University of Applied Sciences of Utrecht got a task to make a research project on the current situation of Social Media. The group consisted of 5 people with really different backgrounds and opinions. Two Finnish, one Austrian, one Belgian and one Taiwanese put their heads together to explore the enormous world of Social Media. In this paper, Social Media stands for Online Social Media in other words: websites that allow people to communicate with each other, share opinions and ideas, public or semi-public profiles for the users and possibility to view those profiles. Most known examples of Social Media at this moment (2010) would be Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, flixter, LinkedIN, Tagged, Twitter and Plurk. There are hundreds and hundreds more of Social Media websites and each of them has its own purpose and idea. Some of them concentrate on one topic or subject and some websites are more expanded. Most of the Social Media websites give the opportunity to their users to upload pictures, videos and other data but the most important thing is that social media allow people to communicate ‘one-to-many and many-to-one’ and not as the old fashion media ‘one-way communication’ only.
DOCUMENT
The purpose of the research we undertook for this Conference Paper was to investigate whether marketing campaigns for specific types of drinks could be directed towards age cohorts rather than towards intercultural differences between countries. We developed consumer profiles based on drinking motives and drinking behavior by age cohorts. We hypothesized that differences between countries in the youngest age groups are smaller than in the older age groups, where country specific tradition and culture still plays a more prominent role. We, therefore tested, from the data obtained by the COnsumer BEhaviouR Erasmus Network (COBEREN), the hypothesis that the extent to which the age specific profiles differ between countries increases with age. The results confirm our hypothesis that the extent to which drinking motives differ between countries increases with age. Our results suggest that marketing campaigns which are directed towards drinking motives, could best be tailored by age cohort, in particular when it concerns age group 18-37 and more particular for beer, spirits and especially premix drinks. Marketing campaigns for non-alcoholic beverages should be made specific for the British countries and the Western countries, but even more effectively be made specific for the age cohort 18-37.
DOCUMENT
Proceedings of the IASPM Benelux conference. Popular Music: Theory and Practice in the Lowlands.
DOCUMENT
