Popular Culture

Popular culture

Introduction:

Popular culture can be defined as culture that prevails in a society that result from day to day interactions, needs and desires of everyday life. Popular culture has been shaped by the growth of mass media, emergence of new technologies and the development of industrial mass production, mass communication studies define popular culture as those cultural texts that are continuously proposed by the mass media and are used in everyday life but they are differently interpreted by individuals, the word popular refers to the large audience of the cultural text. There are many forms of popular culture and some of these include Films, fashion, Music, advertising, sports and magazines

Production of popular culture:

Popular culture production comprises of two levels and they include the encoding level and the decoding level, encoding occurs at the industrial level where cultural text are proposed and put together to produce popular culture. The decoding level refers to consumption of these cultural texts, the decoding level refers to the interpretation of these cultural text by the audience, when the audience comes i9nto contact with the cultural text he or she interprets it differently.

Before the cultural text is released for consumption the producers must first take into consideration the interpretation of this cultural text, this include its effect, its influence, whether it is entertaining and whether it instructs of persuades, other complex interpretations include cognitive, emotional, ideology and behaviour consequences. Production of popular culture is drawn from myths, beliefs, rituals and heroic ideals.

Popular culture

Importance of popular culture:

Popular culture is proposed by the mass media and given that the audience is large it plays a major role in the society, Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of hegemony, hegemony is the power that is exercised by one social group to win the consent of the less dominant group without using force, it is an ideology of the dominant group achieved by engineering consensus by controlling cultural forms, he stated that the church promoted the acceptance of beliefs and culture that benefited the ruling class and therefore the survival of capitalism was as a result of acceptance.

Importance of popular culture in business and career:

The understanding of popular culture is important in business, popular culture is produced in order to shape the perception of the masses, therefore when businesses are selling their products they will have to propose certain popular culture in order for the consumers to accept the product, this can only be done through the mass media whereby a certain cultural text is proposed by the media in order to promote the product of the business.

Popular culture artefact:

Popular culture

My choice is the world cup trophy game, this can be regarded as popular culture and the reason why I choose this artefact is because it is one of the most popular artefact in the world whereby almost all the countries in the world participate in the game in order to win the trophy, the games are held every 4 years, during the games the mass media repeatedly highlights the scores and upcoming matches and much time is devoted to advertising sponsors of the world cup.

The following is a picture of the artefact:

November, from http://www.google.co.ke/imgres?imgurl

This is a unique form of popular culture given that it is well known all over the world and is this form of popular culture is likely to be there for many years to come, during the games the media agenda all over the world at the time is usually the FIFA world cup and the official sponsors of the game.

REFERENCE:

Harrington, Lee 2001. Popular Culture: Production and Consumption. New York: Blackwell publishers

November, from http://www.google.co.ke/imgres?imgurl

Popular culture

Storey, John. 2004. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. New Jersey: Prentice Hall press.