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Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book uses a series of case studies to show how popular media are important to us, as a source of pleasure and entertainment, but also in communicating about the world with others.
Social media platforms have changed how we talk about what we like and dislike in our popular media use. 'Cultural citizenship' shows how these discussions speak to 'belonging', to what we feel our rights and responsibilities are in today's polarized world. Cultural Citizenship and Popular Culture is based on audience-led research and does not privilege textual analysis as a starting point for taking popular media use's measure. Instead, it offers research tools to listen to others.
This book offers scholars and students of media and creative industries a means to understand their professional position as one in which they engage with rather than assume to know what users of popular cultural texts and products think and feel.
List of contents
Introduction. DEMOCRACY I Part I. I hear you. Popular culture, audience research and appreciative inquiry. Key concepts. 1. IDENTITY: What cultural citizenship is and why studying it matters 2. POWER: Popular culture as an object of study With Jan Teurlings 3. AFFECT: Researching popular culture and cultural citizenship. Rewriting qualitative audience research Part II. Keeping myself from moralising. On the litmus test of gender definitions in fearing the effects of popular culture. Three case studies 4. CULPABILITY: Affective-discursive analysis. Understanding the hatred of television character Skyler White With Leonie Stoete (based on Hermes & Stoete 2019) 5. INNOCENCE: Parents talking about what popular culture might do to their children With Sarieke Hoeksma 6. CONFUSION: When the future (briefly) became female. Viewers discussing a woman being cast as Doctor Who With Sophie Eeken (based on Eeken & Hermes 2021) Part III. Listening with generosity. Another three case studies that take a broader intersectional approach and a conclusion. 7. PATRIARCHY: Good guys (or not). Feminism, auto-ethnography and the Mentalist 8. RESPONSIBILITY: Content analysis with the help of fan-viewers: sorting through the appeal of a decade of RuPaul's Drag Race With Michael Kardolus (based on Hermes & Kardolus 2022) 9. STORYTELLING: Meanwhile in the real world: popular culture and cultural citizenship politicize online on social media platforms Conclusion DEMOCRACY II: (Searching for) cultural citizenship as (attending to) worldbuilding in action.
About the author
Joke Hermes is a Dutch media and cultural studies researcher. She has published widely on popular culture, audience research and feminist analysis of gender and diversity. She is a professor of Media, Culture and Citizenship at Inholland University and teaches media studies at the University of Amsterdam.
Summary
Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book uses a series of case studies to show how popular media are important to us, as a source of pleasure and entertainment, but also in communicating about the world with others.
