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2021 | Buch

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Rethinking Cultural Criticism

New Voices in the Digital Age

herausgegeben von: Prof. Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Unni From, Assoc. Prof. Helle Kannik Haastrup

Verlag: Springer Singapore

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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Über dieses Buch

This edited volume examines cultural criticism in the digital age. It provides new insights into how critical authority and expertise in a cultural context are being reconfigured in digital media and by means of digital media, as the boundaries of cultural criticism and who may perform as a cultural critic are redefined or even dissolved. The book applies cross-media and cross-disciplinary perspectives to advance cultural criticism as a wide-ranging and multi-facetted object of study in the 21st century. Presenting a broad collection of case studies, including global cases such as the Golden Globe, the Intellectual Dark Web, YouTube, Rotten Tomatoes and Artsy and particular national contexts such as Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark and the Netherlands, the book showcases the many theoretical and methodological approaches that may serve as useful frameworks for studying new critical voices in the digital age. It will be of interest to media, communication and journalism scholars as well as scholars from a range of aesthetic disciplines.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction: Rethinking Cultural Criticism—New Voices in the Digital Age

Abstract

In this introduction, we outline the book’s overall take on the rethinking of cultural criticism in the digital age. First, we outline the book’s approach to its two key concepts, culture and criticism. Our goal is not to offer an exhaustive definition of either concept but to provide a context for the subsequent chapters and how they contribute new theoretical and empirical perspectives to current understandings of cultural criticism. Second, we contextualize the book in broader scholarly debates about changing notions of cultural authority and expertise in the digital age, occasioned by the hybrid media ecology and its intertwined mass media and social media logics, and how these developments reconfigure traditional valorization circuits and modes of performing cultural criticism. Finally, we summarize how the chapters in the book address these newer conditions for and dimensions of cultural criticism in the digital age.

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Unni From, Helle Kannik Haastrup

Chapter 2. Public Intellectuals on New Platforms: Constructing Critical Authority in a Digital Media Culture

Abstract

This chapter introduces a multidimensional theoretical framework for studying public intellectuals in the digital media culture. The purpose of the framework is to retheorize the notion of public intellectual authority and autonomy in light of new media platforms and the transformed position of audiences. Constructing public intellectual authority is a complex process involving six interrelated dimensions: (1) qualification, (2) institutions, (3) media, (4) discourse, (5) personality, and (6) users. Although the chapter is mainly theoretical, the framework is illustrated by empirical examples taken from the online intellectual community, “The Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW). As a case of contemporary public intellectualism, the IDW is characterized by the use of social media, YouTube and crowdfunding sites to circumvent legacy institutions. However, this circumvention does not represent a realization of the ideal of intellectual autonomy. On the contrary, public intellectuals have become platform dependent. Changing media logics, platform infrastructures and new forms of user engagement play significant roles in shaping the public intellectual conversation. The framework presented in this chapter aims to provide future empirical studies with the analytical tools to explain the complex process of constructing public intellectual authority in a digital media culture.

Mikkel Bækby Johansen

Chapter 3. The Use of Wine as a Performance of a Style of Being: A Methodological Proposal to the Study of Persona-Driven Cultural Criticism

Abstract

The chapter is a case study on Danish journalist and wine critic Poul Pilgaard Johnsen. The study demonstrates how new practices are seen in cultural criticism. It is argued that Johnsen’s wine criticism is an example of persona-driven cultural criticism defined as a practice where the performance of the journalist’s or critic’s personality is a fundamental part of the media text. By applying a cross-disciplinary qualitative approach combining persona studies and performance studies, an analytical model is presented and used in the case study. The analytical model is composed of the five concepts; theatricality, body, voice, spatiality and personal narrative performance. The analysis of a number of radio shows and print articles demonstrates how Johnsen’s wine criticism is situated in the display of a persona engaged in an aesthetic style of being. The practice of Johnsen is read into the expansion of the notion of criticism and supports the need for new conceptualizations and methods when it comes to the study of contemporary cultural criticism.

Steffen Moestrup

Chapter 4. Fans, Fun and Homophobia: Mischievous Criticism on the Czecho-Slovak Film Database

Abstract

Recent academic debates about film criticism in the digital era have mostly focused on the practice of professional critics. This chapter aims to reorient the debate on amateur critics and film fans who have been largely seen as an anonymous force that threatens the critical establishment. How, then, can we better grasp how fans disrupt existing critical practice? Drawing on the actor-network theory and ideas related to the postcritique movement, this chapter argues that the disruptive nature of fan criticism can be best captured through its affective ambiguity. While centering on one popular and controversial Czech fan critic and his film reviews, this chapter introduces the concept of mischievous criticism; a style of writing that is both hateful and playful, abusive and appreciative. Such affective ambiguity is crucial to understanding not only the provocative nature of mischievous criticism, but also its role in the circulation of hate, its approach to film evaluation and its relationship to online communities. Finally, framing film criticism in terms of its mood, style and dominant affect allows us to expand the notion of emotional labor. As this chapter suggests, such labor may also include cultivation of affectively rich, polarizing personas or inventive manipulation of language.

Ondřej Pavlík

Chapter 5. When Golden Globes and Stars Align: The Awards Show as a Platform for Cultural Criticism

Abstract

Using the 2018 Golden Globe Awards show as a case study, this chapter analyzes how a movie awards show can communicate cultural criticism. Awards shows are located in the “middle-zone of cultural evaluation” (English 2005), because they represent neither traditional cultural criticism nor the producers’ promotion and PR. This chapter aims to show that this Golden Globe Awards provided an alternative kind of cultural criticism, communicated via a live media event. Based on a framework combining theories of cultural criticism and analyses of live media events and studies of cultural awards and celebrity culture, the chapter demonstrates how the Golden Globe ceremony communicated cultural evaluation based on specific aesthetic criteria, through selection-as-evaluation, and by providing a cultural context for the artwork (Carroll 2009). The 2018 Golden Globe Awards show was colored by the Time’s Up activist action, giving the ceremony a political context and a focus on gender equality. Cultural criticism was expressed both in individual speeches and through the selection of the award-winning films and television series. The analysis of the 2018 Golden Globe Awards show thus contributes to our understanding of how different voices and genres, can produce an alternative kind of cultural criticism.

Helle Kannik Haastrup

Chapter 6. The Dual Strategic Persona: Emotional Connection, Algorithms and the Transformation of Contemporary Online Reviewers

Abstract

Through a particular study of online entertainment reviewing, this chapter explores the emergence of a new strategic persona in contemporary culture. It investigates the way that the production of entertainment-related commentary, reviews and critiques online is increasingly defined by a complex relationship and intersection with what is described as a dual strategic persona. Along with a public presentation of the self as reviewer across multiple platforms, the new online film reviewer is also negotiating how their identity and value are aggregated and structure into algorithms. These algorithms construct a second persona that reviewers are constantly working out to construct and improve to make themselves more visible in this different online world of reviewing. The chapter investigates how the prominent website, Rotten Tomatoes, is connected to reviewers and how these same reviewers maintain their presence and visibility for their followers via sites like Rotten Tomatoes and other platforms and pathways to their audiences.

P. David Marshall

Chapter 7. How Has the Role of Newspaper-Based TV Critics Been Redefined in a Digital Media Landscape?

Abstract

In this chapter, I present an analysis of how TV critics working for the British press are redefining their role for the digital era. This is achieved by exploring the interplay occurring between critics, newspapers, online digital platforms, and the wider contextual environment. As I do this, I reflect on what this tells us about how the role taken by critics is changing and where these developments are leading. To provide a framework for this analysis, I use the five orientations utilized by Jaakkola et al. (2015) for their work exploring change happening in cultural journalism: knowledge orientation, audience orientation, power orientation, time orientation and ethical orientation. For each of these, I explore different aspects of change happening within the new online TV coverage. This includes looking at the role of the comment sections found on most online pages, the conflation of previews into reviews, the rise of the episodic review and shifts in the underlying values of critics. I end by raising the question of whether a new form of liquid criticism is developing, one which is more suitable for the new television and online press environments.

Paul Rixon

Chapter 8. Digital Media in the Visual Art World: A Renewed Relationship with the Market

Abstract

This chapter considers the media coverage provided by two digital platforms, Artsy and Artnet, which merge two activities traditionally kept apart in the visual art world: selling works of art and writing about them. This model raises questions about the independence of such media production vis-à-vis the market and the professional positions of writers. By comparing the new model to the classical conceptualization of art criticism, the chapter shows how this media production differs from the traditional art magazine. Indeed, art critics have been conceived as key agents in the process of legitimizing art, as they elaborate aesthetic arguments that contribute to establish its artistic and economic value. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of media content produced by Artsy and Artnet that demonstrates their lack of engagement in such aesthetic discussions. They rather favor the topicality of an artistic production as the main criterion guiding their editorial program. Ultimately, this new model corresponds to the introduction of branded content in the visual art world. Branded content is designed here to educate the public, since the expansion of the art market is foreseeable only if prospective customers have the knowledge required to appreciate the artistic and economic value of pieces.

Guillaume Sirois

Chapter 9. Young Voices, New Qualities? Children Reviewers as Vernacular Reviewers of Cultural Products

Abstract

As a consequence of the decentralization and democratization of content production, even reviews have started being produced by ordinary citizens and consumers. In this context, young children present an entirely new group of reviewers that has been previously excluded in the previous, institutionalized traditions of reviewing. This chapter examines children, from toddlers to 12-year-olds, as producers and co-producers of online reviews in two vernacular reviewer-type categories, professional amateurs and consumer reviewers. These categories are embedded in a wider context of institutionalized and non-institutionalized reviewing and discussed in terms of the children’s roles in producing criticism. It is observed that children most typically occur as co-producers, supported by active parents, whose actions guide the reviewing to a large extent. In their reviewer roles, children are anchored in both aesthetic or non-profit and commercial contexts. It is suggested that the emergence of public child reviewers may, at least in theory, contribute to a situation where young voices that were previously ignored in discussions concerning cultural objects in the public sphere become better heard, supporting discourses and practices of more child-oriented citizenship and consumership.

Maarit Jaakkola

Chapter 10. The Survival of the Critic: Audiences’ Use of Cultural Information and Cultural Reviews in Legacy Media

Abstract

This chapter examines how people engage across media with a combination of what is often referred to as cultural journalism, cultural criticism and information about culture beyond the domain of journalism and criticism. We focus on the Danish context as an interesting case in point considering the subsidy measures implemented to support the production and circulation of art, culture and cultural information in society. Based on a national survey of a representative sample of the Danish population, the study shows that people are quite interested in information about culture and use a variety of media platforms and sources to access such information, including their own personal network. The study also shows that people still find legacy media and their critics highly trustworthy and consider the review an important cultural genre, despite the many new types of critical arts- and culture-related discourses circulating across platforms. These findings contribute to especially cultural journalism studies, which have taken very little interest in the audience perspective but also to audience studies, which have shown no particular interest in people’s use of cultural information.

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Unni From

Chapter 11. Where to Look Next for a Shot of Culture? Repertoires of Cultural Information Production and Consumption on the Internet

Abstract

Cultural journalism contributes to the symbolic production culture, but an understudied element is how audiences partake in using and valuing cultural information in the media. This chapter examines how audiences use the internet to find information on new cultural products as well as contribute to the production of information. Our study is relatively explorative: We set out to find the underlying dimensions in producing and consuming online cultural information, in other words: the repertoires of user-generated content (UGC). At the same time, we also aim to contribute to the explanation of creating and consuming cultural UGC. We use data of an online survey in the Netherlands to answer our questions. We find five distinguished clusters, ranging in size from 46 pct. to 4 pct. of the population: occasional review readers, basic information users, moderate omnivores, ardent producers, and heavy omnivores. Differences between these groups can partly be explained via demographics background: age and educational level, but not sex. Cultural capital is also a strong predictor for cluster membership. Finally, we find an influence of internet affordances: repertoires are shaped by the perceived convenience of the internet as well as the importance of diversity of opinions.

Marc Verboord, Rian Koreman, Susanne Janssen

Backmatter

Titel: Rethinking Cultural Criticism
herausgegeben von: Prof. Nete Nørgaard Kristensen
Unni From
Assoc. Prof. Helle Kannik Haastrup
Verlag: Springer Singapore
Electronic ISBN: 978-981-15-7474-0
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-7473-3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0