Cultural Citizenship And Popular Culture

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What does the concept of cultural citizenship bring to our analysis? It enables us to recognise the affective dimension of our relationship to politics and to media texts as a whole. Rather than simply using popular culture as a source of knowledge of the wider world (and of politics), we engage emotionally with popular cultural texts and that is precisely what makes us bridge popular culture and politics. As it has been argued, cultural citizenship is a deeply ‘affective relationship to the sovereign state’ (Miller 2007: 39) – it involves notions of bonding and belonging to an imagined community. Popular culture, as we have seen, addresses values, representations, and issues of social identity (Curran 2011: 63-68). Cultural citizenship, in turn, enables us to look at popular culture as a source of collective identity – whether it involves bonding and ‘commonality’, or distancing oneself from others (Street, Inthorn and Scott 2011: 350). It views popular culture as having ‘relevance for identity construction, ideology, and norms, aiding us to work through important [and might I add, conflicting] contemporary ideas and issues’ (Dahlgren 2009: 141). Popular culture allows us to engage affectively as well as cognitively in crucial issues, such as ‘how we should live (and live together) and what kind of society we want’ (Dahlgren 2009: 141).

A relatively great deal of research has addressed the detrimental effects of entertainment for democracy and political engagement (Putnam 2000) and linked, for example, the ‘tabloidization of news’ to the media giving up on its informational role and capacity to ‘teach’ the public rather than simply ‘tickling’ it (Thussu 2005: 15). Giving way to entertainment values and trivial human-interest ...

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...nition of the affective and emotional dimension of our relationship to politics – similar to our engagement with popular culture – which has been largely dismissed with regards to any serious political interest or debate. Cognition and emotions do not have to be so strictly opposed, as is shown in the concept of ‘affective intelligence’.

Furthermore, this goes to show that popular culture and political communication, far from being distinct realms of study, are ‘closely – even inseparably – entwined. Political communication is a form of popular culture, and popular culture communicates political ideas and values.’ (Street 2012: 81). We may further argue that popular culture may potentially provide ‘an alternative to established forms of political communication’ (Street, Inthorn and Scott 2011: 352) by providing an ‘alternative sense of community’ (Hermes 2005: 11).

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