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SFB 1472:  Transformations of the Popular

Subject Area Humanities
Social and Behavioural Sciences
Term since 2021
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Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438577023
 
Being popular means getting noticed by many. This nominal definition of the CRC 1472 detaches the formulation of hypotheses from normative approaches that would insert the popular into the asymmetries of the traditional differentiation of ‘high’ and ‘low culture’. It does not separate the popular from the cultivated or the legitimate, but from the non-popular. The guiding difference ‘popular / non-popular’ is a quantitative one. It distinguishes that which is noticed by many from that which is noticed only by a few. What the popular is in its essence remains just as open as what attracts the attention of many, how this attention is registered, and who exactly these ‘many’ are. Whether attention success-es are claimed, pretended, or staged in rankings: being noticed by many (or few) has consequences for the object of attention. The CRC empirically records what is considered popular or non-popular: it identifies emic high/low differences and investigates their transformation through the popular. Degrees of popularity change how something is assessed. Whether something is noticed by many or hardly noticed at all has consequences for follow-up and evaluative communication. Popularity is scalable and therefore comparable. Rankings indicate which items on the list are noticed more than others. Displays and counters sort followers, likes, and ratings into a ratio: this is more popular than that; something ranks at the top, something does not make the list. The effects of such comparisons include validation and denigration. These transformations of the popular change the social distribution of attention. They generate or intensify socio-political conflicts: controversial people, programs, or positions become popular when they are noticed by many. Legitimization through attention and the delegitimization of the popular can become precarious, and the distribution of attention may become problematic. The first phase of the CRC has shown that popularity can also be experienced as a challenge or a threat. Controversial practices of depopularization (discontinuation, censorship, sanction) register problematizations of the popular; they aim to reduce popularity or delegitimize attention. What is being noticed by many may face rejection – all the more intensely the greater the number of people who pay attention to something or demand that it be ignored. Intense rejection seems easier to popularize than cultivating what should be recognized. This systematically and methodologically, but also culturally and socio-politically, virulent problem is central to the CRC’s elaboration of its theory of the popular in the second phase. The focus is no longer on the revaluation of popular culture, but on precarious and polemogenic forms of popularity, in which the distribution of attention also determines status and opportunities for domination.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres
International Connection Austria

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Applicant Institution Universität Siegen
 
 

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