Can Popular Culture Be Truly Considered Popular?

In the proceeding essay, I will be making the argument that practices of everyday life can not be truly considered ‘popular’ in cultures that are heavily integrated with digital expressions of corporate power. I will argue that the actions made by those within these highly digitized cultures can not be considered popular in any more of a dictionary-definitional sense, as they are too heavily influenced by manipulative forces of mass culture. I will begin by constructing a definition of ‘popular’ in the relevant context with which to continue my argument with. I will proceed to argue that corporations ultimately control the content of the media consumed by digitally integrated societies, and by association, control the actions and views of that

While this may be closer to what a dictionary defines ‘popular’ as being, we have to be aware of how the word is being used, and which lenses to apply when viewing and analyzing it. When the word is examined in the context of popular culture, it takes on a different meaning than it might in a dictionary-definitional sense. While quantitative factors inherently must take a role in the definition of ‘popular’, we must also consider the origin from which these factors stem from. Raymond Williams (1983, p.237) provides a very good, simple definition of popular culture as “the culture actually made by the people for themselves” , addressing the fact that the term ‘popular’ relates more closely to the populace from which the culture is present in, rather than simply a measure of how many people subscribe to a cultural trend. John Storey (2012, p.9) similarly defines popular culture as “‘authentic’ culture of ‘the people’”, giving us a second, comparable view that popular culture is an organic type of culture that is produced by the population, rather than by a select few larger powers. Working from both Williams’ and Storey’s definitions of popular culture, we can deduct that the word “popular”, when being looked at under the lens of popular culture, can be defined as something made by the people for consumption by

When understanding how culture is changing in the digital era, it is vital to understand the difference between these two types. While ‘popular culture’ and ‘mass culture’ may seem like synonyms of each other, they in fact represent very different ideas. Popular culture, as earlier defined, can be described as culture that is organically formed by the people for use by the people. In contrast, mass culture refers to a much more artificial culture, generally created, controlled, and spread by a select few mass-influencers; a culture that is “mass-produced for mass consumption.” (Storey, 2012, p.8). Because of its overall goal to be made consumable by the largest number of people possible in the most passive way possible, mass culture is inherently “formulaic, manipulative” (Storey, 2012,