Popular culture studies

Popular culture studies is the academic discipline studying popular culture. It is generally considered as a combination of communication studies and cultural studies. Academic discussions on popular culture started as soon as contemporary mass society formed itself and the views on popular culture that were developed then still influence contemporary popular culture studies.

Related Topics:
Academic discipline - Popular culture - Communication studies - Cultural studies - Mass society

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Following the social upheavals of the 1960s, popular culture has come to be taken more seriously as a terrain of academic enquiry and has also helped to change the outlooks of more established disciplines. Conceptual barriers between so-called high and low culture have broken down, accompanying an explosion in scholarly interest in popular culture, which encompasses such diverse mediums as comic books, television and the Internet. Reevaluation of mass culture in the 1970s and 1980s has revealed significant problems with the traditional view of mass culture as degraded and elite culture as uplifting. Divisions between high and low culture have been increasingly seen as political distinctions rather than defensible aesthetic or intellectual ones (Mukerji & Schudson 1991:1-2).

Related Topics:
1960s - High - Low culture - Comic books - Television - Internet

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