Popular Culture in the Twenty‐First Century

• Published in: Popular Culture pp. 281 - 310
• Main Authors: O'Brien, Susie, Szeman, Imre
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated 2017; John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subjects: Arab Spring; Céline Dion; distinction; Google; Internet; social media; Society & culture: general; taste; twenty‐first‐century culture; universities
• ISBN: 1119140331; 9781119140337
• DOI: 10.1002/9781119140399.ch10

At the start of the twenty‐first century, popular culture is undergoing shifts and changes that are reshaping how we experience it, where we experience it, and what our experience of it means for the ways in which we engage with our lives. Democracy—its presence or lack, its decline or enhancement—turns out to have become one of the key issues involved in discussions of popular culture in the twenty‐first century. This chapter focuses on three key cases that raise questions about the powers and problems of new communications technologies in the twenty‐first century, and that together provide a place from which to begin to map the increasingly complex landscape of contemporary popular culture. The emerging technologies may help to organize, synthesize, and share these narratives, but it is popular culture's makers and “users” who will create and, ultimately, enact them.