Early 20th Century Discussion Of Mass Culture And Popular Culture

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COMD 342 – Popular Culture Midterm
1) Early 20th century critics focused on the notion of mass culture and Americanization in order to highlight the cultural degeneration of the masses, which created a superficial culture. This superficial culture prompted individuals to have a shallow understanding of ‘higher arts’. This critic towards the popular culture indicated that ‘Americanization’ was a degenerative process which eroded the cultural richness of the society and introduced an empty shell of aesthetically worthless understanding of art and culture. In modern American popular culture, this cultural degeneration can be exemplified with the case of pop music. Music industry of the 21st century is often criticized for its aesthetically shallow …show more content…

Murdock and P. Golding criticizes the role of the mass media and popular culture for two fundamental reasons. Firstly, the mass media influences individuals’ decision to spend their leisure time and their spending, through promoting popular culture products, which are not necessary but are often enforced on individuals through advertising and manipulative content. Through these manipulative advertisements, the mass media lead individuals to unconsciously spend their money on needless goods just because they are perceived as necessary or ‘good-to-have’. Secondly, the mass media also intervenes to the knowledge production process in the society and provide manipulated information to individuals, in order to make them believe what they aim to show. The mass media, through manipulating what individuals obtain as information, also shapes their ideas, beliefs and attitudes towards social, political and economic events. Therefore, Murdock and Golding criticizes mass media as a manipulative source of information which both forces individuals to have excessive and unnecessary expenditures and to have a blind attitude towards the social, political and economic developments in the society. A good example for the manipulative power of the mass media in contemporary societies would be the use of social media. Individuals are obsessed with social media platforms and spend their all time ‘online’. They spend their time and money to be an effective user such as paying for higher internet speeds, buying new mobile phones that are capable of capturing high-quality photos and videos, and they get their information from invalidated sources on these platform without fact checking, and thus they are often

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