Rethinking Cultural Criticism: New Voices in the Digital Age [1st ed.] 9789811574733, 9789811574740

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Introduction: Rethinking Cultural Criticism—New Voices in the Digital Age (Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Unni From, Helle Kannik Haastrup)....Pages 1-15
Public Intellectuals on New Platforms: Constructing Critical Authority in a Digital Media Culture (Mikkel Bækby Johansen)....Pages 17-42
The Use of Wine as a Performance of a Style of Being: A Methodological Proposal to the Study of Persona-Driven Cultural Criticism (Steffen Moestrup)....Pages 43-65
Fans, Fun and Homophobia: Mischievous Criticism on the Czecho-Slovak Film Database (Ondřej Pavlík)....Pages 67-89
When Golden Globes and Stars Align: The Awards Show as a Platform for Cultural Criticism (Helle Kannik Haastrup)....Pages 91-112
The Dual Strategic Persona: Emotional Connection, Algorithms and the Transformation of Contemporary Online Reviewers (P. David Marshall)....Pages 113-135
How Has the Role of Newspaper-Based TV Critics Been Redefined in a Digital Media Landscape? (Paul Rixon)....Pages 137-161
Digital Media in the Visual Art World: A Renewed Relationship with the Market (Guillaume Sirois)....Pages 163-184
Young Voices, New Qualities? Children Reviewers as Vernacular Reviewers of Cultural Products (Maarit Jaakkola)....Pages 185-208
The Survival of the Critic: Audiences’ Use of Cultural Information and Cultural Reviews in Legacy Media (Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Unni From)....Pages 209-233
Where to Look Next for a Shot of Culture? Repertoires of Cultural Information Production and Consumption on the Internet (Marc Verboord, Rian Koreman, Susanne Janssen)....Pages 235-259
Back Matter ....Pages 261-264

Citation preview

Rethinking Cultural Criticism New Voices in the Digital Age Edited by Nete Nørgaard Kristensen · Unni From · Helle Kannik Haastrup

Rethinking Cultural Criticism

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen · Unni From · Helle Kannik Haastrup Editors

Rethinking Cultural Criticism New Voices in the Digital Age

Editors Nete Nørgaard Kristensen University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

Unni From Aarhus University Aarhus, Denmark

Helle Kannik Haastrup University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

ISBN 978-981-15-7473-3 ISBN 978-981-15-7474-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

This edited book, Rethinking Cultural Criticism: New Voices in the Digital Age, presents a collection of original, international research about cultural criticism across media in the twenty-first-century digital environment. The book is the outcome of an international two-day conference, hosted at the University of Copenhagen, in November 2018 with scholars from more than 10 different countries. We would like to thank all who participated, several of whom have also contributed to this book. The conference marked the closing of the four-year research project From Ivory Tower to Twitter (FITT): Rethinking the Cultural Critic in Contemporary Media Culture (2015–2019, grant-ID: 4180-00082). A project that has studied how media institutional and technological developments during the past decade have enabled advanced public participation in debates about arts and culture but also challenged established notions of cultural authority, enlightenment and expertise, and destabilized the position of critical institutions such as academia and the news media in the cultural information and valorization circuit. We would like to thank Independent Research Fund Denmark for providing us with the unique opportunity to realize this project and for flexibility in regard to the project timeline and team composition. We would also like to thank the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX) for co-funding one of the Ph.D. fellowships in the project. The project was led by Nete Nørgaard Kristensen from the University of Copenhagen and included a research team of eight scholars from v

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five Danish research institutions: Unni From, Helle Kannik Haastrup, Aske Kammer, Steffen Moestrup, Louise Yung Nielsen, Erik Svendsen and Troels Østergaard. We would like to thank all project members for their intellectual and scholarly contributions during the project, some of which are also presented in this volume. We would also like to thank a number of international colleagues for their valuable and inspiring input during the project period: Folker Hanusch, Jan Fredrik Hovden, Susanne Janssen, P. David Marshall, Julian Matthews, Kristina Riegert, Steen Steensen, Marc Verboord and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen. A special thanks to Henrik Bødker for always being willing to provide provoking but precise input. Finally, we would like to thank all the international colleagues who served as anonymous reviewers of the book chapters for their valuable comments and feedback. We hope that Rethinking Cultural Criticism: New Voices in the Digital Age will be a useful contribution to international research on cultural criticism—and, more broadly, cultural journalism—and that it will inspire fellow media and journalism scholars to engage with this intriguing and diverse field of study. Copenhagen, Denmark Aarhus, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark June 2020

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen Unni From Helle Kannik Haastrup

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

Introduction: Rethinking Cultural Criticism—New Voices in the Digital Age Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Unni From, and Helle Kannik Haastrup Public Intellectuals on New Platforms: Constructing Critical Authority in a Digital Media Culture Mikkel Bækby Johansen The Use of Wine as a Performance of a Style of Being: A Methodological Proposal to the Study of Persona-Driven Cultural Criticism Steffen Moestrup

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Fans, Fun and Homophobia: Mischievous Criticism on the Czecho-Slovak Film Database Ondˇrej Pavlík

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When Golden Globes and Stars Align: The Awards Show as a Platform for Cultural Criticism Helle Kannik Haastrup

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CONTENTS

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The Dual Strategic Persona: Emotional Connection, Algorithms and the Transformation of Contemporary Online Reviewers P. David Marshall

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How Has the Role of Newspaper-Based TV Critics Been Redefined in a Digital Media Landscape? Paul Rixon

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Digital Media in the Visual Art World: A Renewed Relationship with the Market Guillaume Sirois

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Young Voices, New Qualities? Children Reviewers as Vernacular Reviewers of Cultural Products Maarit Jaakkola

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The Survival of the Critic: Audiences’ Use of Cultural Information and Cultural Reviews in Legacy Media Nete Nørgaard Kristensen and Unni From

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Where to Look Next for a Shot of Culture? Repertoires of Cultural Information Production and Consumption on the Internet Marc Verboord, Rian Koreman, and Susanne Janssen

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Unni From, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Media and Journalism at School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark, where she serves as researcher and Deputy Head of the School. She specializes in research about cultural and lifestyle journalism and cultural criticism across media, and applies both quantitative and qualitative methods. She has published in international journals such as Communication, Culture & Critique; Digital Journalism; Journalism—Theory, Practice, Criticism; Journalism Practice and Journalism Studies. She has extensive management experience as Director of Centre of University Studies in Journalism and as Head of Studies. Helle Kannik Haastrup, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She specializes in research about film and television aesthetics and popular digital media culture, celebrity culture, intertextual storytelling and cross-media analysis. She has been a Visiting Scholar at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Chair of the Film Studies Section of ECREA and is co-founder of Nordic Celebrity Studies Network. She has published two monographs and contributed to international journals such as Celebrity Studies Journal, Film International and Popular Communication as well as international edited volumes on cross-media phenomena.

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Maarit Jaakkola, Ph.D. is Co-director of the Centre of Nordic Media Research Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, as well as Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) at the University of Gothenburg and lecturer in journalism at Tampere University in Finland. In her research, Jaakkola is searching for connections between professional and non-professional media production, formal and informal pedagogies, as well as cultural approaches. Susanne Janssen is a Professor of Sociology of Media and Culture, Chair of the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and founding academic director of the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture (ERMeCC). She has published widely on the role of cultural mediators in the creation, dissemination and valuation of literature, music and other art forms; the classification of culture; the social significance of popular music heritage; and cultural globalization. Her current research focuses on the impacts of increased diversity, globalization and digitalization in the fields of media, culture, education and politics. Mikkel Bækby Johansen is a Ph.D. fellow in Media Studies at University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He writes his dissertation on public intellectuals and authority constructions in a digital media landscape with an empirical focus on social media and “The Intellectual Dark Web”. His research interests include digital media cultures, social theory, political philosophy, as well as journalism and public discourse in Western societies. He is M.A. in Film and Media Studies from University of Copenhagen, where he wrote his thesis on public intellectualism in Danish journalism. He holds a B.A. from Aarhus University in Media Studies with a supplementary subject of philosophy. Rian Koreman is a Ph.D. Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication in the Erasmus School of History Culture and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her Ph.D. project focuses on the authority of cultural critics in times of digitalization and cultural omnivorousness. Her research interests include sociology of arts and culture, (cultural) journalism, literature, popular music and (new) media. Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Ph.D. is a Professor of Media Studies at Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark,

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where she serves as Head of Section of Media Studies. She specializes in research about media and popular culture, cultural journalism and cultural criticism across platforms and political communication. Her work has appeared in international journals such as Celebrity Studies; Communication, Culture & Critique; Digital Journalism; Journalism—Theory, Practice, Criticism; Journalism Practice; Journalism Studies; Media, War and Conflict; Sociology Compass; Television & New Media. P. David Marshall holds a Professorship and Research Chair in New Media, Communication and Cultural Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. His research investigates our political, economic, cultural and celebrity public personality systems and their transformations in and through digital culture. His books include Persona Studies: An Introduction (2019), Advertising and Promotional Cultures: Case Histories (2018), Celebrity Persona Pandemic (2016), Contemporary Publics (2016), A Companion to Celebrity (2016), Celebrity and Power (2nd edition 2014), The Celebrity Culture Reader (2006), New Media Cultures (2004), Web Theory (2003) and Fame Games (2000). Steffen Moestrup, Ph.D. is a Docent at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus, Denmark. His research areas include persona-driven journalism, cultural criticism and documentary film. His Ph.D. was a case study of persona-driven journalism practices at the Danish radio station Radio24syv. Moestrup has a background in print and television journalism and has produced a number of documentary films. He is a member of the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) and a board member of Humanities and Social Sciences Association (HSSA) at the University of California, Berkeley. Ondˇrej Pavlík is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture at Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic, where he works on his thesis on affective dispositions of film criticism. Outcomes of his previous research on European slow cinema were published in the peer-reviewed Czech film studies journal Iluminace, where he also published several interviews. He is a film critic, an editor of the Czech film magazine Cinepur and a regular contributor to the cultural magazines A2 and Film a doba. Paul Rixon is a Reader in Radio and Television at the University of Roehampton, UK. He has published extensively on American programmes, British television, television and radio critics and the media coverage of

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war in various journals. He is the author of three monographs, American Television on British Screens, TV Critics and Popular Culture and Radio Critics and Popular Culture. Guillaume Sirois is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université de Montréal, Canada. His research focuses on contemporary art and other visual practices, including design, architecture and fashion. His research interests also include cultural policy, creativity and globalization. His work has appeared in various journals and edited books. Marc Verboord is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media & Communication in the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His research is situated at the crossroads of cultural sociology, communication science, and media studies, and addresses questions on cultural consumption, cultural globalization and the impact of new media on cultural evaluation. He has published in leading sociological and communication journals including American Sociological Review, Communication Research, New Media & Society and Information, Communication & Society. Since January 2015, he is Co-Editor of Poetics. Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, Media and the Arts.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 9.1

Multidimensional structure of public intellectual authority Journalist and critic Poul Pilgaard Johnsen is recording his radio show in the oriel in his own apartment in Copenhagen Update from Johnsen’s Facebook profile: “new tenant from Greenland in the oriel” Analysis of media content A typology of reviewers

24 54 56 173 194

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List of Tables

Table 10.1

Table 10.2

Table 10.3 Table 10.4

Table 10.5

Table 10.6 Table 10.7 Table 11.1 Table 11.2 Table 11.3 Table 11.4

Percentage of male and female respondents indicating that they are interested or very interested in the given topics Percentage of respondents across educational levels indicating that they are interested or very interested in the given topic Percentage of how often the male and female respondents seek out information about culture Percentage of male and female respondents indicating that they use these sources to access information about culture Percentage of users/non-users of a particular source of information to access cultural information, who indicate that they find the given source of information trustworthy or very trustworthy Preferred genres when reading about culture in print/digital newspapers People’s responses to various statements about cultural journalism Factor analysis of internet affordances (N = 848) Results latent class analysis (N = 848) Outcomes LCA Step-3 analysis: explaining repertoires (N = 755) Test results of the estimated cluster models in latent class analysis

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Rethinking Cultural Criticism—New Voices in the Digital Age Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Unni From, and Helle Kannik Haastrup

Cultural criticism is constantly developing and diversifying. Institutional and technological media developments have enabled widespread public participation in debates about arts and culture over the past few decades. As a result, cultural criticism today comprises many different types of voices, which apply different stylistic formats and genres and which gain authority, visibility, and recognition across digital platforms in a wide variety of ways. These multiple cultural arbiters of taste, both old and new, address the cultural public sphere and its many sub-publics and communities in new and different ways, and these agents are situated at

N. N. Kristensen (B) · H. K. Haastrup University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] H. K. Haastrup e-mail: [email protected] U. From Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_1

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the complex intersections of agency and control within the connectivity afforded by platform society (van Dijck et al. 2018). Being interdisciplinary, culturally diverse, and cross-mediated in scope, this edited volume investigates the complexity of contemporary cultural criticism and communication. It does so by bringing together scholars from different disciplines, including media studies, celebrity studies, journalism studies, cultural sociology, and cultural studies. The contributors to this volume thus apply various methodological approaches, among them historical perspectives, conceptual debates, qualitative textual analyses, surveys, and netnography, to study global cases such as the Golden Globe Awards, the Intellectual Dark Web, YouTube, Rotten Tomatoes, and Artsy.net. Some focus on particular national contexts, such as Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and the Netherlands, while others focus on particular cultural domains, such as film, television, art, and wine, or on culture more generally. A common denominator is that all the chapters engage with cross-mediated cultural criticism, that is, the interactions of the (news) media industry, digital platforms, and social networking sites, situated within the hybrid media system (Chadwick 2013). The book showcases how the increasingly heterogeneous group of cultural arbiters of taste perform critical authority and bring expertise to bear by combining emotional, experience-based, or subjective reactions to culture and cultural consumption that are typically produced bottomup with the types of aesthetic knowledge and expertise about art and culture that have traditionally been exercised top-down (e.g., Kristensen and From 2015; Verboord 2014). This complex combination of voices and approaches means that communication and communicative performances of culture critical authority have changed considerably, which has challenged traditional cultural experts, such as intellectuals and journalists, and critical institutions, such as academia and the news industry. Digital media technologies have provided new platforms, such as social networking sites, file and video sharing sites, and aggregator sites, to produce and distribute cultural criticism, inviting users to adopt and develop the ever-changing digital media logics or platform vernaculars (e.g., Gibbs et al. 2015; van Dijck and Poell 2013). Some scholars have lamented these developments in cultural criticism, highlighting the death of the critic (e.g., McDonald 2007), while others have emphasized them as examples of the constant uncertainties of cultural criticism (e.g., Chong 2020) or identified their innovative and democratizing potential (e.g., Frey 2015). This edited volume does

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not take sides in these debates. Rather than discussing these changes as opportunities or threats to critical cultural debate, it argues that the reconfigurations call for new types of research questions and crossdisciplinary approaches to advance cultural criticism in the digital age as a wide-ranging and multifaceted object of study in the twenty-first-century media landscape. Presenting a broad collection of case studies from various contexts, the book showcases the many theoretical and methodological approaches that may serve as useful frameworks for studying new culture critical voices in the digital age. On this basis, 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 constantly renegotiated. Studying cultural critics in the media is nothing new. Existing scholarship has provided single nation studies, especially within the Anglo-Saxon context (e.g., Blank 2007; Chong 2020; Frey and Sayad 2015; McDonald 2007; Orlik 2016; Rixon 2011); used specific disciplinary approaches or focused on a particular cultural domain or genre, e.g., film (Carroll 2009; Frey 2015; Frey and Sayad 2015; McWhirter 2016), literature (e.g., Chong 2020; McDonald 2007), or television (Bielby et al. 2005; Poole 1984; Rixon 2011); or examined cultural criticism on specific media platforms, e.g., newspapers (e.g., Purhonen et al. 2019), radio (Rixon 2015), or electronic media (Orlik 2016). By applying a crossmedia, cross-disciplinary, and cross-national approach, this book aims to add to this existing literature by studying how cultural criticism is today performed across a range of interpretive, text-based and visual genres, platforms, and cultural fields. In this introduction, we will first outline the book’s approach to its two key concepts, culture and criticism, which are both polysemantic and rich in meaning. 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. Since cultural criticism is conceptually related to and encapsulates central aspects of critique and reviewing, we will also sketch how the chapters in the book engage with these dimensions of criticism. We then wish to contextualize the book in broader scholarly debates about changing notions of cultural authority and expertise occasioned by the hybrid media ecology and its intertwined

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mass media and social media logics, and how these developments reconfigure traditional valorization circuits and modes of performing cultural criticism. We will end by summarizing how the chapters in the book address these newer conditions for and dimensions of cultural criticism in the digital age.

Culture and Criticism As the book centers on cultural criticism, it is relevant to briefly address our conceptualization of culture—a frequently used but also highly contested concept in and beyond humanistic research. A key reference in the literature is Raymond Williams, who identifies three definitions of culture in the modern understanding of the word (Williams 1976/1984, p. 90): The first refers to general processes of cultivation and to intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic movements that originated in the eighteenth century. The second relates to culture as a particular way of life, “whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity in general” (ibid.). The third relates to artistic activities, meaning that culture is music, literature, painting, sculpture, and film (ibid., p. 90). This book adopts the third definition of culture as artistic activities, which has become a dominant meaning in both everyday language and aesthetic scholarly debates. Historically, this definition conceptualized culture in a relatively narrow sense, as the arts, but, during the twentieth century, scholarly debates (also in media and journalism studies) broadened this definition of aesthetic culture to include popular culture as the boundaries between high art and popular culture have dissolved (e.g., Gans 1999; Purhonen et al. 2019). The chapters in this edited volume apply a non-normative and non-hierarchical approach to artistic activities and domains when engaging with cultural subfields such as film, television, art, and wine. These cultural domains constitute the principal focus of the book’s analyses of how various types of culture are discussed, evaluated, and valorized in the digital media landscape. Criticism is the second of the book’s key concepts. It is an ambiguous term, because it intersects with related concepts such as critique and reviewing in complex ways. These concepts all involve the process of evaluating cultural phenomena and goods and all aim to consider the cultural and societal value of a certain object or phenomenon. They are often used interchangeably (Kristensen and Haastrup 2018), though they are

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in fact distinct as they relate to different types of authority and expertise and, in addition, have been influenced and transformed by different historical contexts and genres, media platforms, and institutional settings. Critique is typified by its broad analytical and interpretive approach to cultural phenomena but also by providing reflections on broader societal and political issues. In the very first prospectus of the academic journal Cultural Critique from 1985, the aim of the journal was described as “an examination of received values, institutions, practices, and discourses in terms of their economic, political, social, and aesthetic genealogies, constitutions and effects” (Cultural Critique 1985, p. 5). This ambition reveals that critique is grounded in macro-analyses of culture in a broad sense, and it identifies critique as a field of inquiry based on interdisciplinary perspectives and theoretical interpretations of culture and society. In other contexts, the concept of critique is used more narrowly and is closely related to specific scholarly disciplines such as literary studies or film studies (e.g., Anker and Felski 2017). Thus, critique is often associated with academia and communicated through scholarly debates, sharing features such as critical discourses and research-based genres, and published in academic journals and books (see also Bordwell 1989; Chong 2020). In this edited volume, critique is not addressed explicitly but is adopted as a broad meta-perspective. This meta-perspective can be exemplified by Chapter 2, in which Mikkel Bækby Johansen shows how intellectual critique and its shaping of public opinion has been revitalized on the Intellectual Dark Web, and by Chapter 4, in which Ondˇrej Pavlík analyzes transgressive film reviews on the Czecho-Slovak Film Database ˇ (CSFD) by the digital persona “verbal.” Pavlík’s analysis not only exemplifies new participatory reviewing practices but also questions whether expressions of emotionality, sarcasm, wordplay, and self-reflexivity are signs that film criticism is in decline. While critique incorporates abstract theoretical and interpretative perspectives, reviewing connotes a more mainstream type of cultural evaluation and is adopted in everyday language as an umbrella term for many heterogenous evaluation practices and styles of expression. Some characterize reviewing as a “non-reflective, spontaneous reaction to a cultural object” (Jaakkola 2018, p. 13), while others see reviews as a “report with an opinion” (e.g., Titchener 1998, p. 3) or as “the overnight reaction to a play, concert or exhibit” (Titchener 1998, p. 2). The prototype of a review is an online or print magazine or newspaper piece that evaluates the value and quality of a book, art exhibition, film, or play, among

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other genres, and that is written by a professional cultural journalist or freelancer affiliated with academia—who Chong (2020, p. 4) refers to as journalistic reviewers. These reviewing practices have also long been part of arts and cultural programming in broadcast television and radio, not least in public service-based media systems. From its beginnings, the BBC has considered “arts programming as an important element in its overarching mission to help create an informed and educated citizenship” (Genders 2020, p. 58). Similarly, Norwegian and Swedish public service broadcasters NRK and SVT/ST continue to see reviews as a key genre of their cultural program offering (Hellman et al. 2017). In recent decades, such reviews have also included guiding elements intended to inform the public—as both media audiences and cultural consumers— about the price, location, and timeliness of cultural productions or their value for money. This has led to debates about the quality and aim of journalistic cultural reviewing, seeing journalistic reviewers—and the broader professional domain of cultural journalism—as cultural patriots or cheerleaders more than as critical voices (e.g., Hovden and Knapskog 2015; Klein 2005). Even though the review can today be found both within and outside the content repertoire of traditional media institutions and is distributed via a broad spectrum of formats, and expressions, a distinctive feature of the review continues to be its evaluative approach to cultural offerings. The chapters in this volume address a range of these formats and agents: In Chapter 7, Paul Rixon shows how British television critics have redefined their role as cultural mediators in an age of digital television; in Chapter 8, Guillaume Sirois examines the ways in which traditional practices of reviewing are redefined by commercial digital art sites; and in Chapter 9, Maarit Jaakkola analyzes how children are today involved in vernacular cultural reviewing practices about, among other things, theater, books, and toys on YouTube. We have chosen criticism as the conceptual baseline of this book, as it includes key elements traditionally associated with both critique and reviewing. Historically, criticism has played a central role in the legitimation and circulation of aesthetic cultural value—and this is still the case, despite the economic incentives that have increasingly also come to drive the cultural field and the cultural industries (e.g., Chong 2020). Criticism stems from the expansion of the “public sphere in the world of letters,” as phrased by Habermas (1989, p. 30), including the development of literary magazines in the early eighteenth century (Carroll 2009; From 2019; McDonald 2007, p. 53). Noël Carroll defines criticism as a “genre of

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verbal discourse” (2009, p. 12), embracing reflective and analytical genres provided by cultural experts. These genres include the cultural or personal essay and long-form journalism (From 2019), which, similar to critique, are based on intellectual argumentation. However, a central difference is that critique represents a macro-perspective on culture and society, while criticism often analyzes specific cultural phenomena, experiences or products. At the same time, criticism involves evaluative practices similar to those associated with reviewing. These practices often include, according to Carroll (2009, p. 13), at least one or more of six distinct elements: description, classification, contextualization, elucidation, interpretation, and analysis, which are elements visible in cultural criticism across a range of cultural domains (e.g., Chong 2020; Frey 2015). Intellectuals and artists have had a prominent role in cultivating criticism, and criticism has been fundamental in developing arts and cultural journalism—and thus reviewing—in the news industry. Regardless of the debates about the quality of criticism and reviewing, criticism seems to have been revitalized and to have expanded in the digital media landscape, as showcased by all the chapters in this book. ∗ ∗ ∗ Critique, criticism, and reviewing represent a continuum with critique as the most intellectual, in-depth approach to culture; criticism as a reflexive and evaluative practice; and reviewing as an umbrella term for very different routines, including small-scale consumer or amateur recommendations and professional journalistic pieces with guiding elements. In the digital age, critique, criticism, and reviewing are also associated with different notions of cultural authority and expertise, which link to broader reconfigurations of knowledge and which include the dissolving of the boundaries between authorities and laypeople in society at large.

Cultural Criticism in the Digital Age Since the twentieth century, knowledge has become more widely distributed in society and expertise has been de-professionalized and reappropriated through lay participation (Nowotny et al. 2001, pp. 215, 227). Digital media and technology, not least the Internet, have played an important role in this transformation of who are (considered) authorities and experts (e.g., Anderson 2008, p. 216) and have, according to Thomas

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Nichols, “accelerated the collapse of communication between experts and laypeople…” (2017, p. 106). Lifestyle media, e.g., television, magazines, and the Internet, have mainstreamed expert guidance to the handling of everyday life, and new forms of “popular expertise” (Lewis 2008) have complemented traditional forms of knowledge, grounded in rational and evidence-based argumentation. Or, put differently, established forms of authority and expertise have been challenged as new forms have emerged. In the context of cultural criticism, this means that heterogeneous culture critical voices coexist and compete in today’s digital cross-media culture. In previous work, Kristensen and From (2015) returned to Max Weber’s original distinctions between different types of authority to argue that today’s heterogeneous culture critical voices combine rational and charismatic authority in new ways with implications for who are recognized as critical authorities and experts. Rational authority refers to those groups who, in view of society’s rules and regulations, are formally perceived as (cultural) authorities based on their institutional couplings and formalized cultural capital, such as academics and journalists. Charismatic authority is connected to individuals with extraordinary, personal attributes who, in the current digital media landscape, utilize a range of platforms to gain visibility and recognition, such as celebrities, pundits, and influencers—or media-made arbiters of taste. Many of the chapters in this edited volume implicitly recognize and exemplify that cultural critics today mix rational and charismatic types of authority. In Chapter 3, Steffen Moestrup shows how professional cultural journalists use their personal charisma to renew and expand the authoritative genre conventions of criticism, while, in Chapter 8, Guillaume Sirois shows that rational authority is imitated and re-appropriated on digital arts platforms—for commercial rather than aesthetic purposes. Likewise, in Chapter 5, Helle Kannik Haastrup points to film award shows as arenas for celebrities to establish critical authority, as these shows are both live media events with particular institutionalized rules (such as selectionas-evaluation and film aesthetic criteria) and platforms for performing a particular public self and voicing critical opinions. In addition to exemplifying the “the diversity of ‘authorities’” in late modernity (Giddens 1991, p. 5), these developments in cultural criticism illustrate what Andrew Chadwick has labeled the hybrid media system, what José van Dijck and Thomas Poell (2013) have labeled the intertwinement of a mass media logic and a social media logic, and what P. David Marshall (2010) has labeled a shift in public communication from a representational

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to a presentational regime. This shift is evidenced by the decreasing dominance of objective, authoritative culture critical voices represented through institutionalized mass media and their logics, such as newspapers, radio, and television, and the increasing dominance of a multitude of personalized and subjective voices presenting themselves on social network media, using social media logics to share their individual opinions about a range of cultural issues with their followers. One implication of this shift is that the gatekeeping and legitimizing function of authoritative culture critical institutions, such as academia and news media, has been challenged. As shown in both Chapter 10 by Nete Nørgaard Kristensen and Unni From and in Chapter 11 by Marc Verboord, Rian Koreman, and Susanne Janssen, media users today consult a range of media and sources of information to access news, information, and critical opinions about culture, and they also participate in and contribute to such symbolic production practices themselves. This does not mean, however, that institutional media have lost their intermediary power altogether—they are most often parts of people’s cultural media repertoires that span institutionalized news media and newer digital platforms, which highlights the hybrid nature of both media production and media use today. In this new media ecology, digital platforms are equally available to critical voices residing within and outside established culture critical institutions and used for purposes across such institutional boundaries. Vloggers and influencers may use digital platforms as a training ground to gain visibility and recognition as a culture critical voice in institutionalized media (e.g., Kammer 2015), i.e., to perform aspirational or hope labor (Duffy 2015). Conversely, professional critics may cultivate a cross-media presence to maintain public visibility beyond their culture critical pieces in representational media (e.g., Kristensen and From 2018). In this volume, such cross-media performances are addressed by Mikkel Bækby Johansen’s analyses of The Intellectual Dark Web (Chapter 2) and by Steffen Moestrup’s analyses of how a professional journalist performs his distinct persona across representational and presentational media (Chapter 3). Key to these debates about new gatekeepers, participatory culture, and a cross-media presence is whether such changes boost subjectivity in cultural criticism, as opposed to rational argumentation, and how individuals perform their selves in critical debate. One could argue that the expression of self by means of a distinctive voice and personal style has long been part of cultural criticism in the representational regime. In his

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work on film criticism, Bordwell (1989, p. 38) argues that a rhetorical strategy of “elocution,” that is, using stylistic articulation, has always been a way for critics to gain a distinct voice. Similarly, Chong (2019) highlights subjectivity in the shape of emotion and self-interest as intrinsic to literature critics’ work. In the digital economy, however, the presentation of (a) self has become a prerequisite for gaining visibility and recognition. The personal profile on social networking platforms is by default individual, inviting people to perform a curated version of self, i.e., a persona or a strategically communicated public presentation of the private self (Marshall 2010) by means of social media logics such as popularity and connectivity. Popularity, according to van Dijck and Poell (2013), is linked to the attention economy (Marwick 2015), where the success and clout of, in our context, culture critical voices are constantly measured and managed, not by reference to traditional cultural hierarchies and markers of cultural distinction and taste but by metrics such as followings, likes, comments, and shares. In this volume, this is exemplified by Ondˇrej Pavlík and P. David Marshall, as both show how film critics hone their personas on social media and take into account platform algorithms to gain further exposure of their critical opinions and personas. Connectivity concerns the “mutual shaping of users, platforms, advertisers, and, more generally, online performative environments” (van Dijck and Poell 2013, p. 8), where algorithms facilitate human connectedness in the shape of individualized networks but also automated personalization, as seen when cultural audiences and consumers are increasingly presented with a personalized or “tailored content experience based on the user’s past content consumption or search queries,” as phrased by Jonathan Hutchinson (2017, p. 202). Cultural criticism in the digital age thus involves both old and newer practices and formats, ranging from small-scale feedback, such as liking a product or providing brief consumer comments or online recommendations, to YouTube videos and blogs, and to various types of journalistic evaluations of new cultural offerings. This has expanded what may today be conceptualized as criticism, and the chapters in this book each discuss some of the ways in which this expansion is taking place.

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Chapter Outline The chapters in this book cover four central research areas that point to the changed conditions and contexts of cultural criticism in the media today. The first of these areas concerns how well-established critical voices and public personas, such as intellectuals and professional cultural journalists, adapt to a new digital reality. Here, the chapters identify the ways in which these critical voices use cross-media strategies and digital platforms to reposition themselves in the cultural information circuit, i.e., to perform their cultural authority across platforms and to access publics in new ways. In Chapter 2, Mikkel Bækby Johansen presents a model for analyzing public intellectuals’ use of digital platforms to form new subpublics for cultural debate and to gain authority beyond their traditional domains of communication, e.g., institutionalized media. This multidimensional model illustrates how the construction of intellectual authority is today the result of a complex combination of qualifications, institutional ties, and communication infrastructures. Taking his point of departure in a case study of a renowned Danish journalist and wine critic, in Chapter 3, Steffen Moestrup shows how professional cultural journalists may intentionally build a character as a critical media persona across platforms. By applying performance theory, Moestrup shows that personalization is a central feature of cultural criticism today, which has resulted in the development of new genre formats. The second research area of the book includes examples of how newer critical voices, such as celebrities, influencers, fans, and ordinary cultural consumers, use digital media platforms to engage in public cultural debate, and how such activities expand the notion of cultural criticism and reconfigure authoritative cultural hierarchies. Using the Czechˇ Slovak Film Database (CSFD) as a case study, in Chapter 4, Ondˇrej Pavlík analyzes a forum in which professional critics, fans, and amateurs participate in critical debates about film on more or less equal terms. This exemplifies the intertwinement of traditional authorities and new critical voices in contemporary and digitally mediated cultural criticism about film. Using film stars on the red carpet at the televised Golden Globe Awards Show in 2018, in Chapter 5, Helle Kannik Haastrup identifies ways in which female global celebrities engage in cultural criticism and activism by giving acceptance speeches, relating the #MeToo movement to specific media fictions awarded at the live broadcast event. In Chapter 6, P. David Marshall provides a theoretical perspective on the

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ways in which online personas, or influencers and key opinion leaders, use their persona strategically to establish authority. His main argument is that such online reviewers construct dual personas through individual self-representation on the one hand and through the algorithms that drive their popularity and exposure on the other hand. The third research area explores how the genre conventions and public reach of cultural criticism evolve within particular cultural domains and on particular platforms. In Chapter 7, Paul Rixon provides a historical account of the changing role of television critics and the changing nature of television criticism in British print and digital newspapers, which today includes episodic guides, fan-like forms of coverage, and a move toward (p)reviews with the potential for public participation. Using the American web-based news service Artsy Magazine and the German web-based news service Artnet News as cases, in Chapter 8, Guillaume Sirois argues that writers at these art sites are prominent agents of the market; these commercially-driven digital art platforms integrate news and reviews in their communication and marketing strategies and prioritize shareable and easily consumable content, e.g., relatively simple texts with catchy titles and plenty of images. In Chapter 9, Maarit Jaakkola explores the influential media platform YouTube as a lucrative forum for children to review toys and cultural artifacts, thus expanding the boundaries of cultural reviewing and who are considered cultural and commercial authorities today. She demonstrates how such vernacular forms of reviewing replace the parental tradition of recommending cultural products. Fourth and finally, the book concludes with two chapters about the public’s use of cultural criticism and information about culture in specific national contexts. In Chapter 10, Nete Nørgaard Kristensen and Unni From present a study of Danes’ engagement with the vast amount of information and critical opinion about arts and culture circulating across media today. They show that people use a wide range of sources to access information about culture, including institutionalized news media, strategic communication from cultural institutions, and social media. At the same time, people also use their personal network as an important and reliable source of information about culture. In Chapter 11, Marc Verboord, Rian Koreman and Susanne Janssen provide a Dutch perspective on audiences’ engagement with cultural information with a focus on the interplay between audiences’ use of the Internet and their production of user-generated content (UCG) about culture. Identifying five different clusters, the chapter demonstrates how different patterns

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of usage and participation relate to demographics and cultural capital but also to perceived convenience of the Internet and the importance of diversity of opinions.

References Anderson, C. (2008). Journalism: Expertise, authority, and power in democratic life, chap. 17. In D. Hesmondhalgh & J. Toynbee (Eds.), The Media and Social Theory. London: Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/ 9780203930472/chapters/10.4324/9780203930472-24. Anker, E., & Felski, R. (2017). Critique and Postcritique. North Carolina: Duke University Press. Bielby, D. D., Moloeny, M., & Ngo, B. (2005). Aesthetics of Television Criticism: Mapping Critics’ Reviews in an Era of Industry Transformation. In C. Jones & P. H. Thornton (Eds.), Transformation in Cultural (pp. 1–43). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Blank, G. K. (2007). Critics, Ratings, and Society. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Bordwell, D. (1989). Making Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Carroll, N. (2009). On Criticism. New York: Routledge. Chadwick, A. (2013). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chong, P. (2019). Valuing Subjectivity in Journalism: Bias, Emotions, and SelfInterest as Tools in Arts Reporting. Journalism, 20(3), 427–443. Chong, P. (2020). Inside the Critic’s Circle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cultural Critique. (1985). Prospectus. Cultural Critique, 1(Autumn), 5–6. Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1354279.pdf. Duffy, E. (2015). The Romance of Work: Gender and Aspirational Labour in the Digital Culture Industries. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(4), 441–457. Frey, M. (2015). The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism: An Anxiety of Authority. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Frey, M., & Sayad, C. (Eds.). (2015). Film Criticism in the Digital Age. London: Rutgers University Press. From, U. (2019). Criticism and Reviews. The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. Wiley. Gans, H. J. (1999). Popular Culture and High Culture (rev. ed.). New York: Basic Books. Genders, A. (2020). BBC Arts Programming: A Service for Citizens or a Product for Consumers? Media, Culture and Society, 42(1), 58–74.

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Gibbs, M., Meese, J., Arnold, M., Nansen, B., & Carter, M. (2015). #Funeral and Instagram: Death, Social Media, and Platform Vernacular. Information, Communication, Society, 18(3), 255–268. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-identity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Boston: MIT Press. Hellman, H., Larsen, L. O., Riegert, K., Widholm, A., & Nygaard, S. (2017). What Is Cultural News Good For? Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish Cultural Journalism in Public Service Organisations. In N. N. Kristensen & K. Riegert, K. (Eds.), Cultural Journalism in the Nordic Countries (pp. 111–134). Göteborg: Nordicom. Hovden, J. F., & Knapskog, K. A. (2015). Doubly Dominated: Cultural Journalists in the Fields of Journalism and Culture. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 791–810. Hutchinson, J. (2017). Cultural Intermediaries. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jaakkola, M. (2018). Vernacular Reviews as a Form of Co-consumption: The User-Generated Review Videos on YouTube. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 34(65), 10–20. Kammer, A. (2015). Post-Industrial Cultural Criticism: The Everyday Amateur Expert and the Online Cultural Public Sphere. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 872–889. Klein, B. (2005). Dancing About Architecture: Popular Music Criticism and the Negotiation of Authority. Journal of Popular Communication, 3(1), 1–20. Kristensen, N. N., & From, U. (2015). From Ivory Tower to Cross-Media Personas—The Heterogeneous Cultural Critic in the Media. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 853–871. Kristensen, N. N., & From, U. (2018). Cultural Journalists on Social Media. MedieKultur, 65, 76–97. Kristensen, N. N., & Haastrup, H. K. (2018). Cultural Critique: Re-negotiating Cultural Authority in Digital Media Culture. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 34(65), 3–9. Lewis, T. (2008). Smart Living. New York: Peter Lang. Marshall, P. D. (2010). The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media. Celebrity Studies, 1(1), 35–48. Marwick, A. E. (2015). Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy. Public Culture, 27 (1), 137–160. McDonald, R. (2007). The Death of the Critic. London: Continuum. McWhirter, A. (2016). Film Criticism and Digital Cultures: Journalism, Social Media and the Democratisation of Opinion. London: I.B. Tauris. Nichols, T. (2017). The Death of Expertise. The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-Thinking Science. Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity. Orlik, P. (2016). Media Criticism in a Digital Age: Professional and Consumer Considerations. New York: Routledge. Poole, M. (1984). The Cult of the Generalist—British Television Criticism 1936– 83. Screen, 25(2), 41–61. Purhonen, S., Heikkilä, R., Karademir Hazir, I. K., Lauronen, T., Fernández Rodríguez, C. J., & Gronow, J. (2019). Enter Culture, Exit Arts? In The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010. London: Routledge. Rixon, P. (2011). TV Critics and Popular Culture: A History of British Television Criticism. London: I.B. Tauris. Rixon, P. (2015). Radio and Popular Journalism in Britain: Early Radio Critics and Radio Criticism. Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 13(1), 23–36. Titchener, C. B. (1998). Reviewing the Arts. Manwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates. van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14. van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & de Waal, M. (2018). The Platform Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Verboord, M. (2014). The Impact of Peer-Produced Criticism on Cultural Evaluation: A Multilevel Analysis of Discourse Employment in Online and Offline Film Reviews. New Media & Society, 16(6), 921–940. Williams, R. (1976/1984). Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 2

Public Intellectuals on New Platforms: Constructing Critical Authority in a Digital Media Culture Mikkel Bækby Johansen

Introduction New online media platforms have restructured the institutional framework that conditions the practice of cultural criticism in Western societies. Cultural criticism is performed in the digital public sphere by a variety of actors, from culturally well-established figures, such as public intellectuals, to institutionally embedded professionals, such as journalists. New critical voices, such as media-made arbiters of taste, influencers, and everyday amateur experts, also engage in contemporary cultural criticism (Kristensen and From 2015). In this chapter, I focus specifically on the role of the public intellectual and how it is performed in new ways in the digital media culture. Social media, crowdfunding sites, and other digital platforms based on user-generated content constitute the cornerstones of a new mediated public intellectual space. YouTube, Twitter, and Patreon enable

M. B. Johansen (B) University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_2

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public intellectuals to connect with audiences without the interference of legacy institutions and gatekeepers, which in turn stimulates new forms of user engagement. Intellectual products circulate in new ways online, as users fund, share, edit, and discuss media content produced by public intellectuals. A significant example of this new practice is the so-called Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), a cohort of academics, media personalities, and commentators who have frequently been described by the media as both public intellectuals and YouTube stars. In the public discourse, members of the IDW have positioned themselves against identity politics, limitations of free speech, and various established institutions, which, in their perception, “have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought” (Weiss 2018). The term “dark web” is a pun on the notion of the “dark side” of the Internet, which is not indexed by search engines and often used for nefarious activities. Effectively unrelated to this, the term “Intellectual Dark Web” merely indicates a move away from legacy institutions and onto the online platforms mentioned above. In this context, there is nothing “dark” about the activities of the IDW members, as their conversation takes place in a very public forum, followed by millions of users on YouTube, Twitter, and various podcasts. The new digital platform infrastructure provides new opportunities for public intellectuals to construct critical authority. At the same time, platform architectures also influence the process of constructing authority, for example, by prioritizing certain kinds of content and affording new types of user behavior. In spite of the fact that contemporary public intellectuals increasingly circumvent traditional institutions to address public audiences, public intellectualism is not free from institutional influences; digital platform infrastructures merely constitute a new institutional order (Turner 1997). The changes in the institutional framework around public intellectualism require researchers to rethink the theoretical foundation on which future analysis of public intellectuals will rest. In his comprehensive historical analysis of public intellectualism in Britain, Absent Minds, Stefan Collini (2006, p. 52) defines the authority of public intellectuals as the outcome of four intersecting dimensions: a qualifying activity or achievement in a non-instrumental, creative, analytical, or scholarly field; the availability of media which reach a public audience; the expression of views on issues of general concern; and an established reputation for being likely and willing to engage with such issues through the appropriate media.

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However, these four dimensions are insufficient to explain the complexity of contemporary public intellectual authority. The emergence of online platforms and the increasing dominance of social media logics represent a horizontalization of the relationship between public intellectuals and their audiences (Van Dijck and Poell 2013). Consequently, this relationship has become less authoritative and more dialogical (Baert 2015, p. 188). At the same time, changing media logics also challenge established notions of institutional independence of public intellectuals. These changes emphasize the need to introduce new analytical dimensions, in order to fully grasp how public intellectuals construct authority in the digital media landscape. Therefore, I propose an explicit analytical focus on the relationship between public intellectuals and the institutional structure that surrounds them. I argue that contemporary public intellectual authority is a result of a complex interplay between intellectual qualifications, institutional affiliations, and the media infrastructures that facilitate public intellectual discourse, personal self-branding, and user engagement. Inspired by Collini’s (2006) theoretical approach, I will introduce a multidimensional framework for empirical analysis of public intellectualism and the process of constructing public intellectual authority in the digital media culture. The framework focuses on six interrelated dimensions: (1) qualification, (2) institutions, (3) media, (4) discourse, (5) personality, and (6) users. Each dimension will be elaborated in this chapter. However, the main focus will be on retheorizing the institutional embeddedness of public intellectuals with regard to the changes related to the emergence of new media platforms, including the renewed role of audiences. The motivation for this specific focus is a fundamental recognition that public intellectuals, in line with other cultural critics, operate within a dynamic institutional framework online and not as detached outsiders (Mah 2013). This perspective has largely been neglected in the academic literature on public intellectualism, and the changes in the institutional structure that result from emerging digital media platforms provide an opportunity to introduce new perspectives on the construction of public intellectual authority in the digital age. Drawing on a comprehensive body of literature from the interdisciplinary field of public intellectual studies, I begin by defining the public intellectual position in relation to the institutional structures of contemporary mediated public spheres. Then I present a multidimensional framework aiming to explain the different dimensions that contribute to

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the construction of public intellectual authority. Though this chapter is mainly a theoretical contribution to the study of public intellectuals and media studies more broadly, I will illustrate the theoretical arguments by empirical examples involving the IDW, because it essentially represents the phenomenon in question: public intellectuals on new platforms. I end by concluding that, in order to advance beyond the theoretical level established in this chapter and establish a more solid understanding of the complex process of constructing public intellectual authority, this work needs a comprehensive empirical foundation.

The Public Intellectual as a Critical Meta-Position In order to establish the role of the public intellectual within the realm of cultural criticism, it is important to reflect explicitly on the very complex, ambiguous, and evasive notion of culture. In the context of this study, culture is understood as the lived experience of individuals within a shared symbolic world of meanings. Culture embraces both social and institutional relations, unorganized everyday practices, ideas, values, and traditions, as well as the associated discourses and interpretations. Culture is the “social construction, articulation and reception of meaning,” and represents a “constitutive element of both collective and individual identity” (Fornäs 2017, p. 2). This rather abstract definition suggests an understanding of the concept of culture in a broad sense, as opposed to a narrow sense, which to a greater extent focuses on artistic expression in the shape of industrial products and objects. My inclusion of ideas in the definition of culture serves as a means to qualify a key practice of public intellectuals: the creation and dissemination of ideas, as an act of cultural criticism. Accordingly, I locate the practice of public intellectualism within a cultural public sphere that comprises the marketplace of ideas. Thus, public intellectuals are both acting as “cultural intermediaries” or “secondhand dealers in ideas,” shaping the tastes and opinions of the public, and as originators of critical ideas (Bourdieu 1984; Hayek 1949). In relation to this, I understand cultural criticism as the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of any given culture as defined above.1

1 This definition of criticism is inspired by The Oxford Dictionary Online, Lexico.com.

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When public intellectuals perform cultural criticism in the public spheres of society, they engage with many different institutions and professions, and consequently assume many different roles. Sometimes, public intellectuals are described in the media by occupational labels, such as writer, journalist, or academic, but meta-labels, such as expert, pundit, commentator, critic, thinker, and even celebrity are also used to describe the same phenomenon. In Dahlgren’s terms (2013, p. 53), public intellectuals “have no inner essence”; being a public intellectual “is not a job, nor a career, but rather a role that certain people assume, and even at some point leave behind them.” The fluid nature of the role suggests that public intellectuals can affiliate themselves with a number of institutions. Consequently, public intellectuals have different sources of income. Some public intellectuals are employed at universities or think tanks; others work at newspapers and TV stations. The fact that many contemporary public intellectuals monetize their content on online platforms constitutes a new form of institutional dependence, in this case, a platform dependence (Nieborg and Poell 2018). Nonetheless, independence has often been emphasized as an ideal for public intellectuals. Edward Saïd (1996, p. 73) described public intellectualism not as a profession, but as an individual vocation. This idealistic notion of the free and independent public intellectual has often made scholars hesitant to label individuals with institutional and professional affiliations as “true” public intellectuals. Instead, they have concluded that public intellectuals are in decline (Furedi 2004; Habermas 2009; Joffe 2003; Posner 2001). In recent years, however, the notion of decline has been challenged (see Desch 2016; Di Leo and Hitchcock 2016; Heynders 2016; Thijssen et al. 2013; Townsley 2015). The strictest ideological assertions of intellectual independence have been deemed “unrealistic or exaggerated,” since the social or institutional unattachment of any individual is impossible in practice (Collini 2006, p. 63). Individuals, including intellectuals, are always embedded in some or other social category, even if this category is simply labeled intellectuals (Mah 2013, p. 18). Embeddedness in institutional structures, including media infrastructures, is a condition of public intellectualism. Thus, it is an inescapable fact that public intellectuals are simultaneously exerting influence on and being influenced by the vast variety of positions, practices, roles, resources, norms, and values that come with the institutional structure that surrounds them (cf. Turner 1997, p. 6). The public space in which the public intellectual

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performance takes place is built on infrastructures which are not valuefree; it is inhabited by competing truth definitions, types of authority, topics, and styles of argument (Jacobs and Townsley 2011, p. 80). The practice of public intellectualism is thus always performed in a reciprocal relation to this institutional dynamic. Therefore, some level of institutional embeddedness is an ontological premise and a necessary condition of public intellectualism. In other words, the public intellectual is not, and has never been, free. In order to accommodate this recognition theoretically, I suggest approaching the position of the public intellectual as a meta-position. Adopting this perspective will enable researchers to study the many different roles that public intellectuals assume. Moreover, it allows future empirical studies to investigate how public intellectualism is enabled and influenced by institutional affiliations and the platform infrastructures on which public intellectuals operate. The claim that the intellectual role is now being performed by “other” actors, such as pundits, experts, talk show hosts, or even comedians is not necessarily wrong (Habermas 2009, pp. 54–55). However, it is my claim that, in principle, all these actors can be studied as public intellectuals, provided that the role is considered a meta-position. In this sense, some individuals appear, in terms of occupation, as comedians or journalists in one specific context, while their roles as public intellectuals only become visible as a complete picture when addressing the various dimensions that constitute the picture frame that is the multidimensional structure of public intellectual authority presented in the following pages.

Public Intellectual Authority In line with Stefan Collini (2006, p. 47), I define the kind of authority that public intellectuals possess as the culturally established license to address a non-specialist public. The opinions or ideas of those in authority tend to be accepted by others (Furedi 2013, p. 9). The concept of public intellectual authority that I use here is similar to Collini’s “cultural authority” (2006, p. 53) and to Odile Heynders’ “intellectual profile” (2016, p. 22). However, the notion of cultural authority is somewhat unclear, because it suggests that this type of authority might as well be possessed by other actors, who are not necessarily perceived as intellectuals by the public. Similarly, intellectual profile seems to imply an interest in any given occupation, which might possess intellectual qualities—for instance,

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the intellectual profile of a writer. Since I focus on the kind of authority which specifically adhere to the public intellectual meta-position, I suggest applying the term public intellectual authority. This term is meant to clarify the analytical starting point of the present framework: the public intellectual practice, not the initial occupation from which an intellectual profile might have evolved. Inspired by Collini’s (2006, pp. 56–57) conceptual approach to explaining the process of constructing authority in relation to intellectuals, I understand public intellectual authority as a result of an intersection between a number of overlapping dimensions. In this framework, I have identified six dimensions: (1) qualification, (2) institutions, (3) media, (4) discourse, (5) personality, and (6) users. In analytical terms, dimensions 1–3 are related to context, while dimensions 4–6 focus on content. The outer ring of the framework consists of three dimensions relating to the contextual structure in relation to which a public intellectual constructs authority and performs his or her role. An analysis of these contextual dimensions will provide insights into the enabling factors that facilitate and influence the process of constructing public intellectual authority. The inner ring of the framework features the three dimensions focusing on content in some form or another. Whereas the contextual dimensions pertain to structure, the content dimensions relate to agency, fundamentally in the shape of communication. Studying public intellectual content means collecting and analyzing material produced both by public intellectuals and media users, since public intellectual authority is increasingly “co-produced” by audiences. The goal of such empirical analysis is to show how the enabling dimensions of the outer ring in fact relate to public intellectual output, ultimately providing a more holistic understanding of public intellectual practice. The multidimensional framework is to be understood both on a theoretical level and an analytical level, mirroring the dialectic relationship between structure and agency in relation to public intellectualism. Thus, the two rings are to be perceived not as detached, but as dialectically related. There have been published numerous empirical studies of public intellectuals and the contexts in which they operate. Some of these studies contain quantitative methodological approaches (see Posner 2001; Duller et al. 2017; Jacobs and Townsley 2011), while others use qualitative case study approaches (see Baert 2015; Collini 2006; Heynders 2016; Svendsen 2018). For empirical studies based on the analytical framework

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below, a combination of methods is possible. However, the methodological reflections presented in the following are merely indicative, because of the heuristic nature of the framework. Empirical analysis may result in analytical adjustments or an addition of dimensions which need to be addressed (Fig. 2.1).

Fig. 2.1 Multidimensional structure of public intellectual authority

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Qualification Qualification refers to the achievement(s) that lead an individual to be recognized as an intellectual in the general public. As such, qualification is a result of agency. However, this dimension focuses on preexisting dispositions or structuring mechanisms in the culture, which help to determine whether or not an individual in fact qualifies to be considered an intellectual in the eyes of the public (Collini 2006, p. 57). According to Collini (2006, p. 52), public intellectuals commonly attain an initial level of achievement in a “non-instrumental, creative, analytical, or scholarly activity.” Some public intellectuals are generalists, who are recognized on the basis of their ability to reason about a wide range of issues (Dahlgren 2013, p. 53). Others are specialists, who transcend their own specialized fields when expressing their views on topics that resonate with a non-specialist public (Habermas 2009). Through rhetorical adaptability, public intellectuals move fluidly between intellectual and public domains (Young 2014, pp. 143–145). In doing so, they transmit different kinds of authority between various forums, for example, by combining scientific and charismatic authority when intervening in political discussions or performing cultural criticism. It is often possible to empirically identify certain incidents in which an academic or an artist steps out of his or her professional field and into the political realm to intervene in the public discussion. A commonly used historical example is Émile Zola’s intervention in the Dreyfus affair in 1898. A more recent example is Jordan B. Peterson’s 2016 criticism of the Canadian government’s bill C-16. Zola’s open letter was published in the French newspaper L’Aurore, while Peterson voiced his criticism on YouTube. As public intellectuals rely on reputation, public intellectualism can most usefully be conceptualized as a “pattern of behavior” (Collini 2006, p. 56). It is thus insufficient to isolate one qualifying event, since the individual in question might withdraw from the public eye immediately afterward. Therefore, analysis must be performed over time, examining the different debates to which the particular public intellectual contributes across genres and platforms (Heynders 2016, p. 10). In order to study the qualification dimension, I suggest an exploratory approach that aims to identify a particular individual as an empirical case. This approach enables researchers to draw on the previously mentioned distinction between departing from the public intellectual meta-position vis-à-vis the occupational role of the writer, journalist, or academic.

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Accordingly, empirical studies will benefit from investigating the public use of labels, such as intellectual, thinker, and other related terms (see McLaughlin and Townsley 2011). I perceive the public use of labels as the different types of media content, such as news articles, books, blogs, tweets, and social media comments that refer to a given individual by the aforementioned terms. It is a key feature of public intellectuals that they appear in various media, since publicness entails media use. Townsley (2015, p. 60) uses the term “media intellectual,” because public intellectuals are increasingly required to develop an understanding of the media logics that organize the public sphere, in order to ensure that their intellectual products (criticism or ideas) reach a public audience. Thus, the words public and media become somewhat synonymous when discussing public intellectuals, which is why I argue that media content should serve as both the explorative point of departure and as analytical objects in an empirical study. Moreover, searching public discourse for the use of terms such as “public intellectual” will enable researchers to avoid the disadvantageous exercise of deductively listing criteria of public intellectualism in order to empirically identify the people who meet them. Similarly, Bauman (1987, p. 2) claims that “[i]t makes little sense to ask the question ‘who are the intellectuals’ and expect in reply a set of objective measurements or even a finger-pointing exercise.” In empirical studies, the researcher should thus not be entrusted with the task of determining who is a public intellectual and who is not, since public intellectuals already exist in that particular position as a function of various media and audiences attaching the label to certain individuals. As media or audiences’ use of labels might not harmonize with the theoretically established ideal types, an abductive movement between empirical data (labeling practices) and theory might be a fruitful way to continuously inform the development of the scholarly understanding of public intellectualism. It is important to note that the word intellectual should be considered neither an honorific term nor a demonizing label (Collini 2006, pp. 53–54). It merely refers to a critical position with roots in a certain cultural tradition. However, intellectual traditions differ from country to country. Conceptions of the public intellectual role may therefore vary in French, German, British, or American studies (Collini 2006, p. 23). The IDW is an example of public intellectual activities shaped mainly by an American tradition and performed within an Englishspeaking culture. Nevertheless, the global influence of Anglo-American culture, combined with the IDW’s characteristic use of digital platforms

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used by audiences around the world, stresses the global nature of this particular case of public intellectualism.

Institutions Laments about intellectuals being swallowed by institutions have been expressed in academic literature for as long as the public intellectual role has been discussed (Collini 2006, pp. 58–59). The first half of the twentieth century has been described as a golden age for free and independent intellectuals. Scholars have claimed that some of the most notable figures among these traditional intellectuals thrived in opposition to the institutional systems of society. They were dissidents living in exile, either literally or metaphorically (Saïd 1996, p. 52). According to Saïd (1996, p. 55), Theodor W. Adorno was “the quintessential intellectual, hating all systems, whether on our side or theirs, with equal distaste.” The “socially unattached” intellectual stratum, as described by Karl Mannheim (1936, pp. 154–155), has become an ideal, since its alleged lack of attachment provides intellectuals with a certain legitimacy; being outside the system makes criticisms of it seem more legitimate. Intellectuals have thus often been condemned for conforming to the establishment (see Chomsky 2017). The main reasons for this criticism are several allegedly corrupting social processes, including institutionalization, professionalization, commercialization, and celebritization (Misztal 2012). The dominance of institutionally embedded actors, including journalists and other media persons, in the public spaces of opinion has been said to supersede the traditional role of the public intellectual altogether. In spite of the fact that institutional journalism has traditionally served as a “key domain” for public intellectuals in terms of publishing their ideas, being a professional journalist and a public intellectual are often regarded as mutually exclusive, since the ideal of the individual vocation entails independence (Dahlgren 2013, p. 60; Habermas 2009, p. 55). Habermas (2009, p. 54) argues that the competition for attention in the public sphere between commentators, pundits, celebrities, politicians, and journalists does not “leave any room to be filled by an intellectual.” In other words, the public sphere is populated by people who have been granted the license to address the public for all the wrong reasons. They speak out not as intellectuals, but as professional representatives of various institutional interests, or they appear in the public sphere only as a function of

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their celebrity status, rather than intellectual acknowledgment. Thus, public intellectuals’ activities become influenced by interests other than “engag[ing] with the global issues of truth, judgement and taste of the time” (Bauman 1987, p. 2). However, as previously discussed, institutional embeddedness is a condition of public intellectualism. Thus, an analysis of the institutions dimension aims at accentuating the vast variety of institutional and professional factors that add to the process of constructing public intellectual authority, including the various norms, values, rules, resources, and practices that constitute any given institution and structure the ways in which organizations and individuals operate (Turner 1997). For instance, academic public intellectuals are subject not only to the logics of the media and platform architectures, but also to the values and practices of universities and the field of academia as a whole. Correspondingly, representatives of think tanks and NGOs acting as public intellectuals also follow institutionalized practices when working to influence policymakers. Although individual public intellectuals may be similarly educated, “their professional surroundings inevitably shape the way they think about ideas” (Drezner 2017, p. 215). In the case of the IDW, many members have (or had) affiliations with academia. When Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, first qualified to enter the public intellectual arena, he built on an institutionalized authority obtained in the academic field. He published YouTube videos in which he referred to himself as a “professor against political correctness.”2 Similarly, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, who both resigned their jobs as professors at Evergreen State College in 2017 following a dispute with the faculty administration about discrimination and free speech, have built their public intellectual practices on academic authority; on Heying’s website, she brands herself as a “professor in exile.”3 Invoking the word professor implies that institutional capital or authority can be used as a positioning strategy to construct public intellectual authority. At the same time, other institutional backgrounds might serve similar purposes. For example, IDW members Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin both started their careers in comedy, thus possessing a level of institutionalized entertainment capital that academics

2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvPgjg201w0&t=265s. 3 http://heatherheying.com/.

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lack. Different institutional trainings create different approaches to argumentation; in turn, it may shape audiences’ expectations regarding the performance of a particular intellectual. Intellectual self-positioning often involves the positioning of institutions or concepts as well (Baert 2015, p. 167). As the previous examples illustrate, IDW members position themselves by contrasting their views with certain institutional regimes that, in their perception, dominate academia and public discourse more broadly. Peterson, Weinstein, and Heying have positioned themselves against “political correctness” and “free speech limitations.” Similarly, academics Jonathan Haidt and Steven Pinker, who are also members of the advocacy group Heterodox Academy, both position themselves against what they believe to be an institutional orthodoxy in academia.4 Christina Hoff Sommers contrasts her beliefs with what she perceives to be the institutionalization of identity politics in feminism, while also being employed at the think tank American Enterprise Institute. These positioning strategies indicate how institutions play an important role in public intellectuals’ construction of authority. Although the collective position of the IDW is assumed to be located in opposition to institutionalized thought, it still builds on various institutional forms of authority. Moreover, as institutional structures change, the notions of opposition and marginalization must be revisited. In a 2018 New York Times article, Jordan Peterson mentioned that, each month, he “pulls in some $80,000 in fan donations” on Patreon (Weiss 2018). As of February 2020, Peterson’s YouTube channel has 2.5 million subscribers. In terms of economy and public visibility, this does not indicate marginalization (Drezner 2018). An institutional perspective is particularly applicable when conducting comparative case studies of public intellectuals who are anchored in different institutions. For example, the increased interchangeability between academic intellectuals and think tank intellectuals is closely related to institutional changes within both fields. As universities are developing into “profit-seeking corporations,” the empirical differences between being embedded in a university vis-à-vis a think tank constitute a relevant focus for future research (Misztal 2012, p. 133). Moreover, public intellectuals have changing degrees of institutional anchoring (Dahlgren 2013, p. 62). The institutional embeddedness of a

4 https://heterodoxacademy.org/the-problem/.

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given public intellectual may even shift over time, ultimately contributing to the complexity of the different types of authority on which the intellectual activities rest. An institutional perspective on public intellectualism is meant to empirically foreground these different types of authority. Additionally, what qualifies as a non-instrumental, creative, analytical, or scholarly activity, in which a public intellectual attained his or her initial achievements, is contestable. For example, an entrepreneur with institutionalized authority rooted in the field of business who publicly expresses his or her philosophy about the direction of society may not be perceived as a public intellectual by academics who typically study public intellectualism, but he or she might be perceived as an intellectual by certain audiences (Collini 2006, p. 47). Entrepreneurship is inherently instrumental in terms of pursuing profit, but there is equally an element of creativity in the field. This is why the conceptual ambiguity in trying to demarcate the institutional backgrounds that “count” as relevant intellectual contexts must also be addressed when conducting empirical analyses.

Media As hinted at in the previous section on intellectual qualification, media constitutively facilitates the public part of public intellectualism. This applies regardless of whether media is perceived as a social institution (e.g., journalism), as individual organizations, or in terms of communicative affordances. Therefore, media is emphasized as an analytical dimension in its own right. An analysis of this dimension thus concentrates both on the specific communicative affordances of the different media used by the public intellectual in question, and the impact that media infrastructures have on his or her activities. For example, contemporary public intellectualism is being heavily influenced by the emergence of the “platform society.” Van Dijck et al. (2018, p. 2) describe how the wealth of online social networks has restructured society and organized it in a way that makes its citizens less dependent on legacy institutions. In the case of media, this means bypassing traditional publishers and news organizations. This point is illustrated by the IDW and their activities on online platforms. The IDW circumvents traditional media outlets by building “their own” communication channels online, because, according to The New York Times, they feel “locked out of legacy outlets” (Weiss 2018).

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However, the transition from traditional media to online platforms only means moving from one institutional order to another, because “[p]latforms are neither neutral nor value-free constructs; they come with specific norms and values inscribed in their architecture” (Van Dijck et al. 2018, p. 3). Although an online platform is fundamentally understood as “a programmable digital architecture designed to organize interactions between users,” it still embodies the structuring capacities of any legacy media outlet (Van Dijck et al. 2018, p. 4). The point is that what I call the platformization of the public intellectual conversation is not to be understood as a realization of the ideal of freedom and independence. On the contrary, the platformization process only illustrates the fundamental point that institutional infrastructures, including media platform architectures, both enable and influence the practice of public intellectualism. A useful way to contextualize this point is to examine public intellectuals’ historical use of different types of media. Throughout most of the twentieth century, public intellectuals have used different media platforms and genres to present their ideas. In the mid-twentieth century, Jean-Paul Sartre expressed his criticism and ideas through novels, plays, newspapers, and magazines (Baert and Morgan 2018, p. 332). During the 1960s and 1970s, Noam Chomsky used many of the same formats, as well as appearing in numerous documentary films from the 1990s onward. Similarly, both Naomi Klein and Slavoj Žižek have made documentary films. Others, such as Umberto Eco and George Orwell, have written novels that have been adapted to various other media. Most of these individuals are recognized as writers, philosophers, or academics, but as Heynders (2016, p. 6) points out, filmmakers, visual artists, politicians, journalists, scientists, and economists have acted as public intellectuals in the era of mass media. A notable example of the latter category, economists, is Milton Friedman, who hosted the television series Free to Choose, broadcast on American public television in 1980. Utilizing the potential of mass media, Friedman’s show has been said to have had a remarkable influence on the public perception of the libertarian economics that has dominated American politics from the 1980s onward (Jack 2018, p. 514). Thus, different media logics and affordances have long played a key role in the success of intellectuals in spreading their ideas to the public. For the same purpose, intellectuals have also historically used the institutional framework of journalism as a platform. By acting as editors of

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newspapers or magazines, intellectuals such as Walter Lippmann, Josef Joffe, and Rune Lykkeberg have made use of their stable access to the public discussion for intellectual activities. As Lykkeberg (2018, p. 20, my translation), current editor-in-chief of the Danish newspaper Information, says: “Gradually, I came to realize that matters of intellectual and philosophical import, matters to which I had dedicated my life, could be conveyed in the newspaper.” This quote illustrates how closely the activity of public intellectualism is related to media, whether perceived as communication channels or authority-providing institutions. In this case, being centrally embedded in a news organization, or in the social institution of journalism more broadly, provides the authority necessary to fulfill certain intellectual ambitions or, in Saïd’s terms (1996, p. 73), the intellectual vocation. However, being embedded in journalism in a Western context also entails working within a structure of shared practices, ethics, and ideals of fairness, objectivity and autonomy, commercial interests, and holding the powerful accountable. Consequently, an analysis of the media dimension needs to be informed by an analysis of the institutions dimension. The various historical examples of public intellectuals engaging with different media illustrate a simple point: as times change, so do public intellectuals’ use of media. In some periods, print media, including books, newspaper articles, and periodicals have been the dominant channel for communication, while television and the Internet have dominated other periods (Collini 2006, p. 54). Different media prescribe different types of audience engagement, and as a consequence, intellectuals’ relation to the public changes. The shift from the more authoritative intellectual, who is characterized by a top-down relation to the public, to contemporary intellectuals, whose relationship with the public is more horizontal and dialogic, is closely related to the developments in the media landscape (Baert 2015, p. 188). Today, social media and the increased accessibility of information online are adding to this, as digital media affordances generate new opportunities for both public intellectuals and users to engage with ideas of common concern. The traditional superior knowledge position of intellectuals has become more ambiguous, ultimately emphasizing the need for public intellectuals to continuously engage with media innovatively in order to establish the necessary public intellectual authority. Nevertheless, Habermas (2009, p. 54) warns that the “wrong” kind of media use has a corrupting impact on the reputations of public intellectuals.

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He argues that media blurs the boundaries between discourse and selfpromotion, ultimately leading to a loss of differentiation of the intellectual from other public figures. Ideally, intellectuals addressing a public should not be motivated by a desire to be watched, but by a genuine interest in deliberation on matters of common concern. Therefore, the public should be “composed, not of viewers, but of potential speakers and addressees who are able to offer each other justifications” (Habermas 2009, p. 54). In the contemporary media culture, this ideal seems to have come closer to reality. On social media, the public addressed has an opportunity to actively comment and engage in the various debates that are initiated by public intellectuals. In this sense, contemporary public intellectuals are embedded in the audience, as they are subject to the same media platform conditions as their audience members (Heynders 2016, p. 4). Some of the most popular online media platforms have strict content limitations. Twitter, for example, has a character limit of 280 (until November 2017, the limit was 140), which arguably does not support in-depth and nuanced intellectual argumentation (Dahlgren 2013, p. 63). Consequently, social media has contributed to an acceleration of the public conversation, ultimately making new demands for public intellectuals to respond quickly and to be constantly visible (Heynders 2016, p. 10). Conversely, not all online media platforms limit intellectual discourse. Members of the IDW, such as Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan, have YouTube channels that feature videos lasting two to four hours with millions of views. These examples illustrate how new media platforms are in fact used to consume ideas and engage in the public intellectual discourse. Thus, an empirical analysis of the media dimension entails a specific focus on how a given medium facilitates production and curates content created by the public intellectual in question. The various elements that influence the production, distribution, and consumption of content have unequal weight, depending on the particular type of media. A newspaper, understood as an analog media platform, has different news genres, editorial idiosyncrasies, agendas, and segmented audiences. In turn, social media has algorithms and privacy policies. TV has different programs, schedules, and hosts. Additionally, media platforms differ in terms of financial models and public access. Patreon, for instance, is a membership crowdfunding platform, while platforms such as YouTube and Reddit are relatively open to the public. Some TV stations and newspapers require subscriptions, while others do not. Still others are hybrids. In any of

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these cases, public accessibility constitutes an issue, which I will elaborate in relation to the dimension concerning users. Needless to say, many platforms share these infrastructural elements in the digital age of convergence. The point, however, is that they all enable and structure the production and circulation of intellectual products in different ways. In terms of both production and distribution in the case of the IDW, YouTube represents a relatively unedited way of contributing to the public conversation, at least compared to legacy media. As mentioned, YouTube enables IDW members to have hour-long discussions, which are not wellsuited to broadcast television. Moreover, contributing with audiovisual content, as opposed to written content, enables public intellectuals to communicate different aspects of their personality and thus strengthen their public identity or voice. Additionally, specific media platform policies and interests influence the production and distribution of public intellectual content. Many online platforms monetize user activities in various ways. YouTube, for example, acts as patron, “materially supporting and exerting control over, but not originating, creative work” (Burgess and Green 2018, p. 78). YouTube takes an active role in curating content and shaping user behavior on their platform. For example, YouTube, along with Facebook and Patreon, recently banned, or deplatformed, several right-wing conspiracy theorists and provocateurs on the basis of hate speech restrictions. This sparked a discussion about free speech and censorship, ultimately leading IDW members Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Dave Rubin to leave Patreon (see Bowles 2018). Peterson responded by developing a new platform, Thinkspot,5 with an explicit anti-censorship policy of only removing content if “ordered to by a US court of law” (Peterson, quoted in Weaver 2019). The dispute between the IDW members and Patreon was essentially about the interpretation of the fundamental democratic value of freedom of speech, and illustrates how value-based platform architectures influence public intellectual activities in a very direct way. The relatively lenient content policy of Thinkspot will potentially influence public intellectual conversations in other ways as well; for instance, by allowing content which is considered hate speech on other platforms. It will be an important task for future empirical studies to investigate whether a

5 As of February 2020, Thinkspot only exists in a beta version; see Twitter, June 17, 2019: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1140390492158476288.

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completely unregulated and constructive intellectual discourse between public intellectuals and users is realizable.

Discourse The discourse dimension refers to the topics of discussion, rhetorical modes, and styles of argument that characterize public intellectual utterances and conversations. Empirical analysis must aim to identify the kind of topics that resonate with a wider public and to characterize what constitutes intellectual discussions in the specific historical context of the study. Methodologically, such studies will benefit from a variety of approaches commonly used within the academic disciplines of sociology, rhetoric, and media studies, including quantitative content analysis, rhetorical analysis, framing analysis, critical discourse analysis, and genre analysis. What qualifies as specific intellectual topics and modes of argumentation cannot be determined before an empirical analysis, since they are characterized by a high level of historical contingency. No specific topic is by definition more suited to be a common point of reference in intellectual discussions than others. However, historical examples of public intellectual discussions have revolved around issues concerning truth, justice, and rights (Collini 2006, p. 56). Similar issues or frames include morality, religion, and identity. Examples of more specific contemporary themes discussed in Western public intellectual conversations include climate change, identity politics, migration, and populism. Moreover, the genres and rhetorical styles used by public intellectuals also differ. Some public intellectuals publish jeremiads with prophetic argumentation. Others produce selfimprovement videos and assume the style of the guru. Still others make satires or parodies, representing a more comedic style (Jacobs and Townsley 2018, p. 345; Posner 2001, p. 9; Young 2014). The themes and perspectives that characterize intellectual discourse at a given time are also closely related to other analytical dimensions of the framework, including qualification and institutions. For instance, the public presence of an intellectual with a degree in cognitive neuroscience (e.g., Sam Harris) is more frequent today than it was a hundred years ago, since the field was not yet established as an academic discipline. Therefore, perspectives with roots in such disciplines are more common now, whereas, previously, the humanities had a more dominant role (Heynders 2016, p. 6).

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Personality Analyzing the personality of a particular public intellectual means focusing on the individual idiosyncrasies and characteristics that add to the construction of his or her public voice and persona. According to Heynders (2016, p. 23), a public intellectual uses several “aesthetic devices” to highlight elements of his or her own life and integrate them into intellectual discourse. Communicating different personality traits influences public perception of the particular intellectual and shapes his or her reputation. Accordingly, the main goal of studying the personality dimension is to clarify the charismatic aspects of a public intellectual’s authority (Weber 1978). Studying personality entails an analytical focus on individual details, such as appearance, voice, mannerisms, and gestures. Conceptualizing public intellectual practice as a performance is useful, since it features mediated stages, dramaturgical elements, roles, audiences, and other theatrical qualities (Baert and Morgan 2018, pp. 325–326). Studying the personality dimension will therefore benefit from incorporating analytical approaches from disciplines such as performance, celebrity, and persona studies.

Users As contemporary public intellectual activities increasingly take place on online platforms that rely on user contributions, public intellectuals’ relationship with audiences changes. Thus, an analysis of this dimension entails a focus on the renewed role of the audience in the process of constructing public intellectual authority. Authority is fundamentally constructed in a “two-way relationship between speaker and publics,” regardless of the changing hierarchical nature of this relationship (Collini 2006, p. 57). However, the construction of public intellectual authority is a complex process, because of the reciprocity between the different dimensions. For example, user participation is a constitutive element of certain media infrastructures. User agency is increased on social media platforms, as users have the ability to engage more directly with both public intellectuals, the content they produce and with each other. As Heynders (2016, pp. 5–6) points out, audiences tend to project their own ideas onto public intellectuals. This tendency is augmented heavily on platforms such as YouTube. Through the functions of liking, sharing, following, commenting, uploading videos, and participating in Q&As,

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audiences play an increasingly active role in shaping, disseminating, and repurposing intellectual products. In the case of the IDW, user engagement includes posting fanedited video clips and compilations on YouTube, often enhancing the confrontational and polemic elements of the debates in which figures such as Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris participate. Some of the titles of the videos include “Jordan Peterson’s Most Savage Comebacks” and “Jordan Peterson Destroys British Feminist,” “Jordan Peterson OWNS everyone,” or “SAM HARRIS OWNS JP [Jordan Peterson] WITH EPIC COMEBACK.”6 These examples illustrate how the intellectual practice of communicating ideas online has been integrated into Internet meme culture. A “meme” can basically be understood as an idea that spreads between organisms (in this case, Internet users) and evolves into new ideas. In contemporary online media culture, memes come in the form of catchphrases, images, and videos (Mapua 2018, pp. 10–12). Mixing public intellectuals’ statements with typical Internet slang, such as the words “own” and “epic,” and making them into memes demonstrates a new form of user agency, driven by online platform cultures, in shaping the public intellectual conversation. Today, contributing to the marketplace of ideas means contributing to the “marketplace of memes” as well. It thus becomes clear that studying user-generated content is closely related to the media dimension. These user activities also emphasize the relevance of analyzing the two previous content dimensions regarding discourse and personality. In this case, controversial topics, polemic rhetoric, and personal characteristics of certain public intellectuals are in fact being cultivated by users; polemic rhetoric seems to be a valuable currency in the attention economy. The focus on user engagement and participation also relates to another central question in public intellectual studies: What constitutes a public? Speaking of a general public sphere as the public intellectual’s ideal audience is slightly misleading when carrying out empirical studies. In reality, public intellectuals often have different followings and varying levels of popularity and impact within different social groups, micro-publics or

6 The YouTube videos were accessed through the following URLs: https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=EOh1Gflu7Uw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_qo3CNRSGg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AEW4pHQPt0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = v1djPYD3W_Q.

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counter-publics (Posner 2001, pp. 10–11). Although this phenomenon might be more pronounced in the fragmented online public sphere, it is not new, considering Antonio Gramsci’s (1986) notion of organic intellectuals. Thus, the distinction between generalists and specialists is not only related to qualification and institutional background, but also to the composition of the publics addressed. As Collini (2006, p. 55) claims, it is “unlikely that any message reaches ‘society as a whole.’” Therefore, a public intellectual can be a specialist in that he or she might focus primarily on issues related to a certain audience. However, the fact that many contemporary public intellectuals use online platforms that are not restricted to a specific national context enhances their status as globalists in terms of public outreach (Dahlgren 2013). In sum, user agency takes on new forms on online platforms. Audiences play a central role in circulating intellectual ideas in the digital public sphere. Empirical analysis of contemporary public intellectualism will thus benefit from studying user-generated content such as videos, comments, blogposts, and tweets. Such analysis will provide empirical insights into the audience dimension of public intellectualism, which has largely been overlooked in previous studies. Studying both the types of user engagement and the composition of a public intellectual’s audience will provide insightful knowledge about the fundamental mechanisms of constructing public intellectual authority.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have presented a multidimensional framework that aims to explain how public intellectual authority is constructed through a complex interplay between intellectual qualifications, institutional affiliations, and media infrastructures that afford different types of agency to both public intellectuals and their audiences. On a theoretical level, the framework is fundamentally an attempt to explain the structural conditions of public intellectualism. On an analytical level, it can be used to direct future empirical studies in analyzing how particular public intellectuals communicate their ideas, how they perform their persona, and how their ideas circulate among users in the digital public sphere. Drawing on examples from the Intellectual Dark Web, I have illustrated how public intellectuals use new online platforms to produce and distribute content and engage with users in new ways. These examples show how changing media logics related to the platformization

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of the public intellectual conversation have transformed the process of constructing public intellectual authority. I have argued that digital platform infrastructures constitute a new institutional order that continuously enables and shapes the activities of contemporary public intellectuals. I have based this argument on the fundamental recognition that embeddedness in institutional structures, including digital platform infrastructures, is an ontological premise of public intellectualism and not an occasion to disqualify individuals who speak out from positions within the institutional system. In order to accommodate the different institutional backgrounds, user activities, and media logics that contribute to the construction of public intellectual authority, I have reconceptualized the role of the public intellectual as a meta-position. Adopting this notion, empirical analyses will be able to transcend the previously dominant normative approaches that have often led to the conclusion that public intellectualism is in decline. Accounts of the decline of public intellectuals are misrepresentative, since the practice of public intellectualism is in fact recurring under new circumstances in the digital age. The examples used throughout this chapter imply that there exists empirical material to support this assertion. Using the framework presented here, it is the task of future empirical studies to scrutinize how members of the IDW and other contemporary public intellectuals develop and use their critical authority to disseminate ideas, shape public opinion, and challenge established convictions. Such empirical studies will benefit from applying a comparative perspective on how public intellectual authority is constructed within different national contexts around the world.

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Jacobs, R. N., & Townsley, E. (2011). The Space of Opinion: Media Intellectuals and the Public Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jacobs, R. N., & Townsley, E. (2018). Media Meta-Commentary and the Performance of Expertise. European Journal of Social Theory, 21(3), 340–356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431017740720. Joffe, J. (2003). The Decline of the Public Intellectual and the Rise of the Pundit. In R. M. Zinman, J. Weinberger, & A. M. Melzer (Eds.), The Public Intellectual: Between Philosophy and Politics (pp. 118–130). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kristensen, N. N., & From, U. (2015). From Ivory Tower to Cross-Media Personas: The Heterogeneous Cultural Critic in the Media. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 853–871. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1051370. Lykkeberg, R. (2018). En tænketank, et politisk projekt, et stykke åndshistorie og et kammeratskab. In H. S. Kjær (Ed.), Hele verden forfra: Dagbladet Information 1993–2018 (pp. 11–23). Informations Forlag. Mah, H. (2013). The Intellectual in the Public Sphere: Projections, Contradictions and Dilemmas Since the Enlightenment. In P. Thijssen, W. Weyns, C. Timmerman, & S. Mels (Eds.), New Public Spheres: Recontextualizing the Intellectual (pp. 13–26). Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Mannheim, K. (1936) [1929]. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Mapua, J. (2018). Understanding Memes and Internet Satire. Enslow Publishing, LLC. McLaughlin, N., & Townsley, E. (2011). Contexts of Cultural Diffusion: A Case Study of “Public Intellectual” Debates in English Canada. Canadian Review of Sociology, 48(4), 341–368. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2011. 01268.x. Misztal, B. A. (2012). Public Intellectuals and Think Tanks: A Free Market of Ideas? International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 25(4), 127–141. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-012-9126-3. Nieborg, D. B., & Poell, T. (2018). The Platformization of Cultural Production: Theorizing the Contingent Cultural Commodity. New Media and Society, 20(11), 4275–4295. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818769694. Posner, R. A. (2001). Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saïd, E. (1996). Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Vintage Books. Svendsen, E. (2018). Danske intellektuelle på Facebook: Eksemplificeret ved Svend Brinkmann og Carsten Jensen. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 34(65), 54–75. https://doi.org/10.7146/mediek ultur.v34i65.104886. Thijssen, P., Weyns, W, Timmerman, C., & Mels, S. (2013). New Public Spheres: Recontextualizing the Intellectual. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

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Townsley, E. (2015). Public Intellectuals, Media Intellectuals and Academic Intellectuals: Comparing the Space of Opinion in Canada and the United States. In M. Keren & R. Hawkins (Eds.), Speaking Power to Truth: Digital Discourse and the Public Intellectual (pp. 41–67). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press. Turner, J. H. (1997). The Institutional Order: Economy, Kinship, Religion, Polity, Law, and Education in Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective. New York: Longman. Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14. https://doi.org/10.12924/mac2013.010 10002. Van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & De Waal, M. (2018). The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weaver, M. (2019, June 13). Jordan Peterson Launches Anti-Censorship Site Thinkspot. The Guardian. Retrieved August 26, 2019, from https://www. theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/13/jordan-peterson-launches-anticensorship-site-thinkspot. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Weiss, B. (2018, May 8). Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web. The New York Times. Retrieved on August 28, 2019, from https://www.nytimes. com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html. Young, A. M. (2014). Prophets, Gurus, and Pundits: Rhetorical Styles and Public Engagement. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

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 Steffen Moestrup

Introduction New agents and practices are coming to the attention of contemporary cultural criticism, creating a need for both new conceptualizations and new methodological approaches. Two recent studies exemplify these new trends. In her study on YouTuber PewDiePie, Louise Yung Nielsen suggests that PewDiePie draws on indie discourses in the production of video content to embed his criticism of YouTube and mainstream news outlets as a stylistic element in his brand (Nielsen 2018). In a case study of film star Emma Watson, Helle Kannik Haastrup analyzes how Watson’s presentation of self informs her recommendations of feminist literature on her Instagram account and certifies her image as a gender equality activist, using her celebrity to authorize her cultural criticism (Haastrup 2018).

S. Moestrup (B) Danish School of Media and Journalism, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_3

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These two cases are among the many new agents who are performing and negotiating cultural criticism in the digital landscape. The emergence of new critical voices, such as amateur bloggers, YouTubers and “mediamade arbiters of taste” (Kristensen and From 2015), is conditioned by the possibilities opened up by changes in the relations between producers and users as well as the technological changes, including the spread of social media and a multitude of online platforms. In response, scholars are calling for the expansion of the notion of criticism (e.g., Gillespie 2012; Kristensen and From 2015; Kristensen et al. 2018, p. 7). Gillespie suggests a useful distinction between review and criticism. Review is defined as “an evaluation of the art/artifact/product itself with the intention of alerting other consumers/audiences to the product’s quality or shortcomings or both” (Gillespie 2012, p. 62). On the other hand, Gillespies defines criticism as “less about alerting consumers or even audiences to a product’s quality or shortcomings, but rather helping audiences see the object in a new way, using a specific vocabulary or perhaps developing new grammar or terms or even concepts” (Ibid. 63). Contextualization is a key word in Gillespie’s understanding of criticism. However, Gillespie primarily thinks of context as for instance historial context and societal context, whereas my analysis will display how it is useful to also speak of a personal contextualization, when the critic for instance situates the cultural product within the context of his or her personal life. In this chapter, I subscribe to the broad understanding of cultural criticism as proposed by Kristensen et al. (2018, p. 4) pointing to: “the wide range of culture critical actions in today’s digital media landscape, which go beyond the review and judgement of artistic or cultural products.” This broad approach includes a number of criticism practices such as taste-making, expressing opinions about societal and cultural trends and challenging established hierarchies and power structures. The “mediamade arbiter of taste” is an example of the expanded domain of criticism and points to a critic “who is closely linked to practical experience with cultural productions as well as repeated media performances” (Kristensen and From 2015, p. 10). This expanded and remixed domain resonates with the discussion that calls for a broader definition of what a cultural journalist and a cultural critic do. All consumer products and representations are subject to criticism: Topics such as food and wine have emerged, in foodie culture and beyond, as areas that should be included

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in this more inclusive understanding of culture (Kristensen and From 2012). The case to be studied in this chapter—Danish wine critic and journalist Poul Pilgaard Johnsen—is an example of the inclusive understanding of culture as well as the expanded notion of criticism. In his cultural criticism, he particularly has a focus on the consumer product wine, and he does so in ways that supports the expanded understanding of criticism. I argue for the need to include the staging and usage of the critic’s personality in a broad understanding of criticism. Critics such as Poul Pilgaard Johnsen root their work in a staging of their own lifestory, making their own personality so intrinsic to their assessment and creation of cultural products that I have named this kind of criticism persona-driven (Moestrup 2019). I define the approach as “journalism and criticism where the performance of the journalist’s or critic’s personality is a fundamental part of the media text” (Moestrup 2019, p. 7). Although subjectivity in journalism and criticism—in terms of witness and taste—has a long history, using a textual “I” or for instance applying a gonzo-style approach, the persona-driven approach creates a qualitatively different media style that stages the journalistic persona in a profound, continuous and diverse arc across media, platforms and time. In this chapter, I propose a qualitative approach to analyze personadriven cultural criticism and point to the usefulness of applying a cross-disciplinary framework. Theoretically, the chapter draws on conceptualizations and concepts from persona studies and performance studies. Based on these theoretical frameworks, I present five concepts to define an analytical model for a case study of persona-driven cultural criticism. Then, I introduce the empirical case at the center of the chapter; Danish journalist and cultural critic Poul Pilgaard Johnsen. Taking into account his institutional affiliations, I analyze the persona-driven criticism practices of Johnsen. Finally, I argue that Johnsen’s performances across media demonstrate an aesthetic style of being which becomes a foundational element in Johnsen’s mediated persona as well as in his cultural criticism. The chapter should be read as a methodological proposal to be used in the study of journalism and criticism where the mediated performance of the journalist and/or critic’s personality plays a fundamental part.

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Theoretical Foundation In this section, I will sketch a methodologically useful theoretical framework for studying persona-driven criticism. The framework combines concepts and ideas from persona studies and performance studies. This allows us to engage with the case study maintaining a focus on how the self is constructed in a relation between agency and structure and in the performance of the media materials. My use of the term “persona” to describe a certain type of criticism is indebted to the works of David Marshall. According to Marshall, who has pioneered the field of “persona studies”, it makes sense to differentiate persona from the notion of person in a communicative setting. Person implies an interiority-based agency, whereas persona (from the Latin word for the masks used by actors in plays) is the expression of “the external representations and manifestations of the self” (Marshall 2016, p. 1427). As such, persona is inseparable from the performance of the self. Marshall claims that one of the most significant cultural traits of contemporary society is the predominance and use of personas, or in Marshall’s words, an increase in the “publicisation of the self” (Marshall 2013, p. 154). Marshall argues that persona studies should be seen as a “wider study of how self and public intersect” (Marshall 2013, p. 153), distinguishing it from the study of celebrities in as much as the latter mainly deal with a representative system in a confined field, whereas persona studies examine the expansive and pervasive presentation of the self. Engaging with the term as a variation of strategic communication underlines the close correspondence between persona and performance. Marshall draws on the work of Judith Butler, arguing that the manifestations of personas take place in a performative space as “a resignification of identity that relies on what is playable and performable in a public world” (Marshall and Barbour 2015, p. 5). By reading personas in line with the notion of performativity, Marshall underlines how agency is articulated in the ongoing negotiation or even power struggle over what a journalist or critic can be. I will argue that Marshall’s work can be fruitfully put into discussion with the renegotiation of contemporary cultural criticism outlined above. Performance studies, firstly, provide a theoretical framework that makes it possible to unpack the relationship between agency and structure. Secondly, the framework proposes to read performances as an ongoing performance across time, fields and media. And—thirdly—performance

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studies also emphasize the performance of a material rather than the material itself. I propose to engage with performance studies, more specifically the broad-spectrum approach, as a way to examine the use of persona. The broad-spectrum approach was defined by Richard Schechner and is centered on the idea of performance understood as “restored behaviour”. Schechner argues that “restored behaviour is living behaviour treated as a film director treats strips of film”, and it is “me behaving as if I am someone else” (Schechner 1985, p. 36). This is not to be interpreted as a personality someone takes on, but rather as if there were “multiple me’s in each person” (Ibid. 36) which makes the broad-spectrum approach seem suitable for a study looking at the idea of persona created from a multitude of doings. Schechner also points to an important notion, which will form a guiding principle in the analytical parts of this chapter: “focus is on the ‘repertory’, namely what people do in the activity of their doing it” (Schechner 2013, p. 1). In other words, I am interested in the doing of creating and using a persona, and therefore, what I want to examine is the various practices where this is done. The notion of repertory stems from the work of Diana Taylor, whose distinction between repertoire and archive seems useful in unpacking the practices employed by Johnsen. An archive refers to “supposedly enduring materials (i.e. texts, documents, buildings, bones)”, while the repertoire consists of “embodied practice/knowledge (i.e. spoken language, dance, sports, ritual)” (Taylor 2003, p. 19). The repertoire is whatever is being done to outline, establish, manifest and use a persona, whether it is a particular way of interviewing, a certain writing style, personal appearances, disclosing details from one’s private life, certain bodily behavior, etc., while the archive is the container in which these repertoires are collected and where they form a solid text. In the present study, this would translate into a mediated product such as an article in a printed newspaper, a radio show or a social media update. The archive will consist of a repertoire of doings that underline the persona of the doer. In the analysis, the doings of the repertoire will be examined by operationalizing five analytical concepts in connection with the media materiality of the specific archives and repertoires. The concepts are introduced in the following conceptualization of the analytical framework.

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Analytical Conceptualization Drawing on Taylor, I analyze the various ways the persona is being used (the repertoire) within formulaic media formats (the archive), which each exist in different media materialities. Each of the five defining concepts will help to identify different aspects of the performative continuum. Performance analysis is an interpretive, eclectic approach rooted entirely in the spectator’s point of view (Auslander 2004, p. 4), meaning that the analyst must engage with the material in an explorative and abductive manner (Counsell and Wolf 2001). By using the research strategy of abduction (Jensen 2012), I continuously travel back and forth between the empirical material and the theoretical framework. It is by way of abductive exploration of the empirical material that I was led to recognize the five concepts that enable us to grasp the multitude of doings that are in play in the empirical material. Theatricality Theatricality is rooted in a quality that relates to the world of theater (Davis and Postlewait 2003, p. 15) and extends to the stylization of material that is rooted in spectatorship and acting, marking itself as being spectated and role played. Theatricality is a concept that is useful when dealing with elements that are by nature (or norm) not theatrical, but which can be allocated the attribute of theatricality by the doer. When the analyst looks for theatricality in the material, he should ask questions such as: How does this seem dramatic to us? What has been done to make it feel like theater? Body As the focus of this present study is on various types of doings, it seems natural to address body and bodily doings. I distinguish between bodily exteriority and bodily interiority in the analysis of mediated personas. The notion of bodily exteriority should cover elements such as appearance, ways of dressing, gesture, manner, body language, posture and verbal utterances, while the notion of bodily interiority should include factors such as emotion, attitude, opinion, thought, belief and life approach. Bodily interiority is expressed or presented in gestures, verbal utterances, etc. Showcasing a public self by for instance dressing up in the same

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kind of attire again and again can underline a certain life approach, form the correlative of a mood, etc. However, I want to emphasize that the word interiority should not be understood as a kind of core essence, the authentic self. Similarly, exteriority should not be understood as necessarily more fake or more constructed than interiority. I engage with both exteriority and interiority as something that likely also resonates between the stable, the fluid and the constructed. When the analyst looks for body in the empirical material, he should ask questions such as: How is the body used in the material? Which elements and practices make the body of the agent appear to us? Voice This concept should not be understood literally as the human voice of the agent, since this way of addressing voice is part of the body concept as outlined above. By voice here I am referring to what could be called the agent’s position and point of view within a situation. This could for instance be a confessional “I” sharing details from her private life or the instantiation of a authorial-like character that functions within a given framework and gestalts itself in specific ways to drive forward a narrative. It could also be a conversational voice (marked by orality-based features) manifesting itself through verbal interaction with other voices that may or may not be fictitious. When the analyst looks for voice in the empirical material, he should ask questions such as: What kind of voice is being used? From which position does the agent speak to us? What is the function of this voice in the performance? Spatiality The concept of spatiality is useful in order to examine how the personas make use of space and how the spaces are part of the persona manifestation. It is useful to differentiate between “the media space” and “the life space”. Both the analyst outside the particular event and the agents within will be drawn to the relations between these two spaces in order to understand the total performance. Interestingly, the two spaces overlap and intertwine, as the life space, for instance a geographic location such as a specific street, is both a space that the persona body can use as a performative scene and a space that is located within a media space such as a printed article or the media space of a radio show. When the analyst

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looks for spatiality in the empirical material, he should ask questions such as: What kind of space is present in the material? How does the agent use this space? What is the relationship between life space and media space? Personal Narrative Performance The notion of personal narrative performance should be understood as a concept that in many ways combines the ideas of body and voice (Langellier and Peterson 2006, p. 152). This body has experienced something, which is given the shape of a narrative, and by creating the narrative, it becomes possible to actually speak of the experience in ways that make sense to other people as well. The narrative produces that to which it refers (Benjamin 1936/1969, p. 87). When the analyst looks for personal narrative performance in the empirical material, he should ask questions such as: How does the agent use personal experiences in the material? How does the experience become a narrative in the material? Although these five concepts can be separated for analytic purposes, they overlap somewhat and work best analytically when applied together. Before embarking on the empirical analysis, I will make a few remarks about the methodological design.

Methodological Design The chosen method—the case study—is a way to accumulate knowledge of a given field in society as well as a way to force the researcher to stay away from “ritual academic blind alleys” and enter “continued proximity to the studied reality” (Flyvbjerg 2006, p. 223). This also implies that the forms of interpretation resulting from a case study “owe their legitimacy and power to the exemplary knowledge of case study, rather than to its generalizability” (Thomas 2010, p. 576). For methodological reasons, the case to be studied—Danish wine critic and journalist, Poul Pilgaard Johnsen—was deliberately chosen as an “extreme/deviant case” (Flyvbjerg 2006, p. 34). The extreme case is “especially good in a confined sense” and “well-suited for getting a point across in an especially dramatic way” (Flyvbjerg 2006, pp. 229–230). In the present study, Poul Pilgaard Johnsen was chosen, because he uses his persona in highly distinctive and emphasized ways, creating a higher degree of substantiality and complexity for the analysis.

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After choosing Poul Pilgaard Johnsen as my focus, I read a multitude of media texts that gave me the opportunity to register samples of his media presence where the persona was either made distinct or directly in use. The corpus consisted of 18 newspaper articles and 52 episodes of a radio show. The material in focus in the analysis is the material which most clearly and most radically showcases the persona usage. The Case As a wine critic and journalist, Poul Pilgaard Johnsen clearly displays and stages an ongoing and repetitive criticism strategy that constructs and uses his persona. Johnsen has fulltime employment at the Danish national weekly newspaper Weekendavisen and hosted the conversational wine radio program on Radio24syv titled “Spirit of the Bottle”.1 Additionally, Johnsen runs his own small-scale publishing company, Bianco Luno. He has published a number of books, among these a memoir-like wine book also entitled “Spirit of the bottle”. Both media institutions—Weekendavisen and Radio24syv—belong to the conservative section of the Danish media landscape. The business strategy of both Weekendavisen and Radio24syv is to brand themselves as personality-driven media. Weekendavisen used to promote the tag line “The Newspaper of Personalities”, but their strategy refocused on the branding of the individual journalists. This can for instance be seen in the weekly promotional newsletter emailed to subscribers a few days before the publication of an issue, which advertises upcoming articles and specific reporters, journalists and critics. At Weekendavisen, Johnsen also writes other kinds of journalistic pieces besides those falling under the “cultural” rubric. When the national Danish radio station Radio24syv began airing on November 1, 2011, it distinguished itself radio-wise with its clear and upfront vision of being an alternative voice compared to the other radio stations of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). DR is owned by the state and is the most important public service media institution in Denmark (Kammer 2020). DR operates on a number of platforms 1 The show—which in Danish is called “Flaskens Ånd”—first aired in 2011, and the last episode aired on Radio24syv in October 2019. In December 2019, the radio show relaunched as a podcast hosted on the digital platform of Weekendavisen, the national weekly newspaper where Johnsen has his fulltime employment.

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including radio, television and online media and has for many years been the primary radio provider. Radio24syv was the result of a political decision to counterbalance the vast array of radio stations run by DR. Radio24syv, however, stopped airing on October 31, 2019, when the state decided to allocate the radio frequency to a new provider, the radio station Radio4. Three keywords were often repeated in the publicity around Radio24syv: The management wanted to apply an experimental approach to radio, they wanted to create radio programs that gave listeners an experience, and finally, they wanted to allow new kinds of voices to be aired (Ramskov and Knudsen 2011). Or put differently: They wanted to do talk radio in ways that departed from the norm. By working for both Weekendavisen and Radio24syv, Johnsen fluctuates between the media of print and the media of radio. Looking for a cross-media persona to understand what persona traits continue across different contexts, his career gives us a strong analytical opportunity to examine how the persona can draw on different media materialities. Besides drawing on Johnsen’s work in radio and print media, the analysis also includes his Facebook presence, thus completing his exemplary media archive.

Analysis The analysis focuses on Johnsen’s wine-centered criticism. I should note that Johnsen also creates a lot of journalism that for instance deals with higher education, manor houses and historical topics. I will demonstrate how Johnsen uses wine to create and display a persona rooted in an aesthetic style of being. As outlined above, one of Johnsen’s occupations is hosting the conversational wine show “Flaskens Ånd” (“Spirit of the Bottle”), first aired on Radio24syv and later as a podcast hosted by Weekendavisen, the newspaper where Johnsen is employed fulltime as a journalist. The show was aired every Friday and ran for 55 minutes. Currently, the show is having a longer break and the latest show was aired as a podcast in April 2020. The show is recorded live-on-tape in Johnsen’s private apartment and with little/limited postproduction. The concept of the show is that Johnsen invites a person to share a bottle of wine with him, thus hosting the person in his apartment, and enters into a conversation. Johnsen has produced 431 episodes of the show to date (November 17, 2020). The title of the show recycles the title of

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Johnsen’s book from 2003. On the homepage of Radio24syv, the show was described the following way by Johnsen: We talk more over a glass of wine than about wine. When drinking great wine, one can be brought through all the basic feelings of existence. From the outstanding and the most beautiful to the gloomy and the dim. One can come near the inexpressible. That is what “The Spirit of the Bottle” is all about. This is what the program craves along with guests who have or will cultivate a relationship with wine. (Available online at: https://www.radio24syv.dk/programmer/flaskensaand).

This presentational text points to the show’s use of personalization, since it openly centers an affect (“feelings of existence”) as the show’s great attraction for the audience. Wine is explicitly connected with emotion and spirituality, but the relational aspect that emerges over wine is also foregrounded. Johnsen wants the guest to either share his or her relationship with wine or build a relationship with the wine during the show. Additionally, the text’s opening line suggests that conversation is key in the show. The show is not a wine review show even though the wine is occasionally rated and talked about in review terms. The wine is rather a prop central to Johnsen’s staging of the wine drinker, and it guides the conversation but also helps to loosen and relax the conversation. Creating Intimacy A significant aspect of Johnsen’s conversational wine show is its choice of location. Of the 52 episodes sampled for this study, 49 take place in Johnsen’s private apartment in Copenhagen. The apartment is located on the top floor of an old, grandiose building in a fashionable neighborhood. In the apartment, there is an oriel, which is where the radio show is being recorded. The photo in Fig. 3.1 gives an impression of the setup. The image shows the setup from the radio show. The host is seated on the left and the guest on the right. The two individuals are separated by a table, which also works as a functional space for the wine and the glasses. The microphones are not visible, but likely pinned discreetly to the clothing of each individual. The furniture is classic, perhaps even antique, and made from dark wood ornamented with golden details. The candle lights create a cozy, homely atmosphere which together with the trappings of wealth and the location in one of Copenhagen’s affluent neighborhoods (Frederiksberg) connotes an upper class, perhaps even an elitist lifestyle.

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Fig. 3.1 Journalist and critic Poul Pilgaard Johnsen is recording his radio show in the oriel in his own apartment in Copenhagen. Photo courtesy of Poul Pilgaard Johnsen

Three elements create the auditory atmosphere or mood on the show: the mentioning of place markers, such as the oriel and the apartment; the action of sharing and drinking wine and the conversation itself. The oriel is often explicitly referenced in the show. This is a way of specifying to the listener from where the speech is coming. The media materiality of radio is naturally one driven primarily by audio; radio is thus an invisible or blind media (Crisell 1994, p. 3). By making reference to the oriel repeatedly, Johnsen makes it easier for the listener to connect with the space in which the conversation takes place, despite it being invisible to the listener. The listener can create “inner images” and, by doing so, get a sensation of the place (Jauert 2009). It could be argued that there is no apparent need to mention the oriel for the audience to understand the content of the show. It is mentioned simply to accentuate the intimacy and privacy of the space that Johnsen invites the listener to enter alongside himself and his visitor. Situating the radio show in the oriel is a doing (and

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belongs to the repertoire) but continuously mentioning that the show is situated in the oriel is a repertoire and constitutes a showing of the doing (Schechner 2013), which further accentuates Johnsen’s persona. It can be argued that instead of entering a radio studio, which is a real space and can be treated as a life space, Johnsen transforms his life space (his apartment) and turns it into a media space by recording the show at home. Using a private life space as the foundation of the media space allows for the staging of intimacy. This is re-affirmed by the production setup: Only the guest, Johnsen and his producer are present during the recording of the show. The recording of the show in Johnsen’s oriel specifically is also a way to signal the intimacy of the space. An oriel is a smaller space within a greater space (often within a living room) and thus connotes proximity and perhaps even confidentiality. The oriel can also be considered a stylistic prop suggesting a sophisticated, civilized or affluent lifestyle which becomes an important factor in the construction of Johnsen’s persona. The oriel also occasionally appears in Johnsen’s Facebook profile, as in the update presented in Fig. 3.2, which also works as a visualization of the radio space that Johnsen shares with the listeners. The update reads “new tenant from Greenland in the oriel” and not only references the oriel as something Johnsen shares with his audience but also showcases the extravagant polar bear skin rug alongside elegant, perhaps antique furniture. The image connotes a range of identity markers, including a merging of theatricalized masculinity (the hunter symbolized by the dead polar bear and colonialism suggested by the update specifying that the bear comes from the former Danish colony Greenland) with the more sophisticated, perhaps feminine quality communicated by the elegant furniture and minimalistic decor. Other parts of the apartment are occasionally integrated into the radio show, for instance, in the episode featuring artist Augusta Atla. In that show, Johnsen is cooking a chicken that he is going to serve for some other (private) guests later. Now and again during the show, he needs to check on the chicken. Early in the show, he asks Augusta Atla to say something about herself, while he runs off to check on the chicken in the kitchen (Spirit of the Bottle, episode aired August 17, 2016, 6:02–6:28). Later in the show, he interrupts Atla to comment on the delicious smell of cooked chicken wafting through the apartment. Johnsen is cueing in his audience, the users of a medium relying solely on auditory communication. He does so by using both a self-reference and making his private life that much more ostensibly public. His staging of the conversation

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Fig. 3.2 Update from Johnsen’s Facebook profile: “new tenant from Greenland in the oriel”

not only tells us how something looks, and how the smell of chicken is filling the space, but is as well inducting the audience into the distinctive atmosphere of the show.

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This type of mentioning helps construct an intimate space out of a media space, homeliness out of a staged radio program. Additionally, the occasional peeps into Johnsen’s private life, albeit somewhat mundane, all add to the persona layers and create this figure of passion, a sensual man of pleasure. He could have decided to cook the chicken another day (the doing) or refrain from mentioning the chicken (the showing of the doing) on the show. By cooking the chicken during the show, he demonstrates that he is a man who enjoys cooking and the good things in life (such as a home-cooked chicken), while making this part of his media presence. He is staging his life world as a media event. The Functions of the Wine Now, I turn to the function of wine in regard to spatiality, conversation and confession. The wine show, being rooted in conversation and wine drinking, obviously infers a sensuous level. The intake of wine is a bodily action that has a physical as well as a more spiritual or sensual layer. These two layers coexist and add to the creation of the intimate media space. This happens in several ways. First of all, there is the way the explicit physical level is presented as we hear the sound of wine being poured into the glasses, the sound of glasses touching when Johnsen and his guest have a toast, and the bodily sounds of drinking: the wine entering the mouth, the wine being swirled around inside the mouth and the wine being swallowed. Occasionally, these wine drinking sounds are even mentioned in the conversation, such as in the episode aired January 20, 2018 (time code 06:30). Drinking, and perhaps especially wine drinking, is actually quite an oral and auditory activity, which makes it useful in the composing of the soundscape of the show. As a radio show, the listener is not in a position to see, taste, smell or touch the wine; the listener can only be guided by sound. By creating a soundscape that allows the listener to come close to the wine, Johnsen and his producer try to use the media materialities of radio to connect with the listener. Mood is a particularly important notion in Spirit of the Bottle, where the understanding of wine itself seems to suggest that wines are not merely objects to quench thirst, but have higher functions: They can alter and refine a person’s mood. Furthermore, the activity of drinking wine creates a bodily and symbolic relation between the guest and Johnsen. The relation is bodily because the two bodies in the room will soon share the same wine and

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that sharing creates, ritualistically, a bodily connection (Varriano 2010). It is also a symbolic relation connoting mutual acceptance. Johnsen offers the guest a drink, and the guest accepts his offer and starts drinking the wine. The show almost always opens with this gesture. Johnsen (or occasionally his guest) opens the wine bottle, and he often describes this gesture verbally, which is both redundant and functional in as much as it shows the doing. It is a ritualistic and theatrical deed that marks the beginning of the show and the beginning of the conversation. The conversations vary greatly in content depending on which guest has been invited to the show, but a recurring topic is often related to ways of life, being a sensual being and living an aesthetic life (perhaps because many of the guests belong to the arts sphere). As discussed in the theoretical section, the bodily actions (in this case opening a bottle of wine, pouring a glass and drinking the wine) are important to include in a performance analysis that ideally does not privilege verbal utterances nor the use of language (Taylor 2003). It is by removing attention from language (whether oral or written) that the importance of other kinds of doings begins to stand out when it comes to persona elucidation and use. In Johnsen’s case, it is crucial to analyze his multiple uses of wines, which are more than just his way of speaking about wine. A third way wine is used on the radio show is to create an atmosphere that permits spontaneous conversation, and perhaps even an especially friendly or even confessional conversation. Wine induces relaxation due to the alcohol in the wine (and the spirit in the bottle according to Johnsen), but the wine also creates a sensation of intimacy and trust due to its cultural significances (Varriano 2010, pp. 22–26). Additionally, the wine drinking creates natural pauses in the conversation. After a toast, both the host and guest drink simultaneously, creating a shared space where no one says a word and where the sole focus is on the wine drinking. For the listener, this pause creates room for anticipation as well as room for listening in on the drinking of the wine and thus getting a sensation of the wine. The toast often allows Johnsen to move on to another topic in the conversation. These natural pauses underline the liveness of the show (Auslander 2015). It gives the show the appearance of spontaneity, even though technically the show is not broadcast live but rather recorded liveon-tape and edited minimally afterward. The performative act of drinking wine establishes a presence of the two people in the apartment as well as a presence of the listeners, eavesdropping on two people having a glass of

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wine. The fact that Johnsen often speaks about how the wine makes him feel also underlines the “aliveness” of the show rather than the liveness. The bodily presence of the persona is elucidated by Johnsen repeatedly speaking about the activity of drinking wine and using the soundscape of wine drinking. Before further discussing the type of cultural criticism that is being carried out by Johnsen, I would like to touch upon an example from his written journalism, which also deals with wine. It is an important point to repeat that when carrying out a persona analysis the analyst needs to look across media types and platforms in order to get a comprehensive material with which to build the analysis. In the newspaper article “See Burgundy and bark”, Johnsen travels to Burgundy to test some of the red wines from the region. The article mixes two genre elements. One is the reporting on the wine and the different tastings that Johnsen participates in with his fellow wine critic colleagues. The other element is of a more confessional nature and often involves Johnsen alone in his hotel room contemplating life. The later has a more melancholic and theatricalized feel to it, emphasized by the fact that Johnsen’s sister is ill and dying at the time of the writing. Early on in the article, Johnsen fronts the entanglement of the media world and life world by quoting an email from a lady friend he has been seeing. She writes that she would like to know more about him. His reply, which he quotes in the article, reads: I answer her briefly and send her a couple of articles from my archive. ‘To me there is not much difference between my work life and my life in general, so in these articles you will find all the deliberations, all the sorrow, all the happiness, all the shaking and the trembling, all the joy and enthusiasm’ I explain to her.

Johnsen here not only uses physical material from his private life, i.e., a personal email, he uses it to explain that there is no clear boundary between the private and the public in his media life: That his life also takes place in the media, and that his work consists of revealing certain details from his private life in the media. Johnsen remixes the archives of two spheres that are normally kept apart by using the repertoire of confessing. The email from the lady friend can be seen as a private archive, and Johnsen’s repertoire of confession allows him to move the archive from the personal sphere into an archive that is a newspaper article and

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thus belongs to a public and accessible sphere. In the example, Johnsen even points to the “showing of the doing”, as Schechner phrases it. This happens when Johnsen explains to the reader how he responded to the email and now puts this reply in the newspaper article. This is the showing of the doing of confessing. In the piece, Johnsen also situates himself among fellow wine critics. By doing so, he claims a space within a certain media environment and credentials as a wine critic. At the same time, Johnsen structures the article around his time alone as if to point to the fact that he may be part of a media circle consisting of wine critics, but he is also not the kind who is merely filing consumer reports or separating his tastes from the rest of his existence; he stages this difference by contemplating life in his hotel room, letting the reader in but not the fellow wine critics. Being Different Through a vast number of articles and the radio show, Johnsen continuously brands himself as a person knowledgeable about wine, which can be argued to be part of the ethos-creating element in being a reviewer. Johnsen demonstrates his expertise, for instance, by situating himself among fellow respected wine critics in the media circle. It also seems clear that Johnsen has a specific ambition as a reviewer of wine that aims at changing the genre. On several occasions, he criticizes what he calls “the dominant way” of speaking about wine, which often involves describing the wine in terms of comparative notions such as “hints of liquorice”, “a touch of cherry on the nose” and other wine jargon phrases of a somewhat technical nature. Johnsen wants to understand the “spirit” of wine in a more profound way, combining the wine with the feelings that he associates with the wine: The different ways wine can affect you and make you feel. He turns the wine into an occasion of theater. Johnsen has explicitly expressed his aspiration on the show on several occasions, for instance, on the show aired March 4, 2017, where Johnsen’s guest is the fellow wine (and food) critic Søren Frank. Johnsen and Frank engage in a discussion about whether one should opt for the traditional way of describing and evaluating wine, or whether Johnsen’s more sensual, existential approach is better. When addressing the spiritual potentiality of a wine, Johnsen often connects the wine with other life spheres that connote the sensual and the spiritual. He makes this connection in the episode with Danish poet

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and filmmaker Jørgen Leth (aired November 5, 2011), where the two speak about the relationship between wine and the erotic, and also in the episode with painter Martin Bigum, where Johnsen alludes to the creative property of wine (Spirit of the Bottle, May 24, 2014). Characteristically, Johnsen’s style encompasses not only the traditional comparing wine to other sensual domains but also personalizes it, describing how the wine makes him feel and how it evokes a certain mood. On the show aired January 27, 2018, he opens the wine and says cheers to his guest. After the conversation has been going on for a while, he suddenly interjects: I don’t know if it is this wine that had an effect on me, but suddenly I just fell into myself and I let my eyes travel to the streets below. Then I felt completely relaxed. I almost felt like you should do all the talking and I should stop asking any further questions. (Spirit of the Bottle, episode aired January 27, 2018, time code 19:20– 19:48).

This is a common way for Johnsen to respond to the wine. He often responds out of the blue in the middle of a conversation, inserting observations that are rarely dialogical nor inclusive. It is solely about Johnsen’s emotions and bodily responses to the wine. This way of addressing wine becomes a Johnsen touch and part of the Johnsen persona, simply because it is distinct, continuously talked about (showing the doing), and being done (the doing). The Johnsen touch has been carried out in several print articles, in the book titled Spirit of the Bottle, and in the radio show with the same title, which has now been running almost every week for more than 8 years. Johnsen is not alone in his ambition to counter the dominant critical approach. In an extensive review article, sociologist Steven Shapin outlines historical and contemporary approaches to what he terms “wine talk” (Shapin 2012, p. 2). Shapin documents how the talk has developed from the spare to the elaborate, and from a concern with goodness to analytic descriptions of component flavors and scents. Shapin argues that contemporary wine talk, including wine reviewing, is dominated by the use of a comparative vocabulary which involves the wine user and wine critic trying to describe flavors and scents by comparing them to tastes in other domains. The use of reference descriptors such as “cherry on the nose” and “a hint of liquorice” has generated a reaction among some

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wine critics, who prefer to discuss and critique wine in a different way (Shapin 2012, pp. 3–4). Some critics favor a more simplistic approach, using a more limited vocabulary (as was the custom in the sixteenth and seventeenth century), while other critics, like Johnsen, aim for a more spiritual and sensual approach. The Johnsen approach resonates with several historical approaches to wine talk, for, as Varriano phrases it, “the capacity of wine to transform the spirit has been the basis of one of mankind’s most enduring narratives” (Varriano 2010, p. 10). Addressing wine in terms of how it makes you feel is a way to signal aliveness and thus ensuring that the persona comes into being. When treated critically, wine needs to physically enter the body, as opposed to a movie or a painting. Because Johnsen wants to address the spiritual potential of wine rather than merely describe and evaluate the wine based on standard reference descriptors, the liquid must enter the body rather than simply be reported on as it is tasted on the tongue. It must be drunk. This further manifests the persona as a living entity that needs to be present in order for it to carry out this type of criticism.

Concluding Remarks This chapter has demonstrated that the Danish wine and cultural critic Poul Pilgaard Johnsen’s approach to cultural criticism is rooted in the personal or even existential realm, which leads me to argue that his take on wine criticism is also a display of an aesthetic way of life. Aesthetics is often thought of as something that has to do with art and a discussion of the beautiful (e.g., the Kantian notion of aesthetics), but in the case of Johnsen, it makes more sense to think of Baumgarten’s conceptualization of aesthetics. According to Baumgarten (2013), aesthetics is a way of being in the world. Baumgarten proposed that the aesthetic can be a vital form of cognition in terms of how humans sense and imagine the world and should run parallel to reason. As demonstrated in the analysis, Johnsen elucidates and uses his persona in ways that suggest a style of being that is driven by pleasure and a sensuous approach to life. In Johnsen’s case, wine becomes a review object that can embody his persona’s engagement with the world. At the same time, the sensual persona becomes the agent Johnsen can draw on when engaging critically with wine. All the pieces form a demonstration of Johnsen’s style of being rooted in a Baumgartian notion of aesthetics.

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Johnsen’s criticism practice can be interpreted as a way to counterbalance or challenge dominant ways of critiquing wine and thus speaks to the functions of the broad definition of cultural criticism discussed in the beginning of this chapter. When Johnsen applies his personadriven approach to wine criticism, he carries out the critic function of taste-making regarding the wine itself but even more so regarding life approaches and styles of being in which wine plays a part. By doing so, he applies what I would call a personal contextualization situating the wine within his personal life sphere. By displaying a life approach and a style of being as a foundational element in his criticism, he counterbalances the prevailing approaches to wine critique. The analysis of Johnsen’s practice underlines how the persona-driven approach feeds into the ongoing renegotiation of what a critic does and what criticism is. This analysis demonstrates the need to consider new ways of conceptualizing the notion of reviewing and critiquing and thus supports the arguments raised by, Kristensen et al. (2018), Kristensen and From (2015) and Gillespie (2012) as discussed above. The goal of this chapter was to present a case of persona-driven cultural criticism in a field that has not been well explored in the literature and to propose a method to analyze this phenomenon. While the use of an extreme case does not allow generalization on an empirical level, the cross-media methodological approach offered in this article pulls out characteristic themes that offer new insights into the ways we can think of the phenomenon in question. As such, the work presented here constitutes a theoretical and analytical generalization that is applicable to future studies of mediated personas in and beyond the area of cultural criticism.

References Auslander, P. (2004). Performance Analysis and Popular Music: A Manifesto. Contemporary Theatre Review, 14(1), 1–13. Auslander, P. (2015). On the Concept of Persona in Performance. In Kunstlicht, 36(3), 62–80. Baumgarten, A. (2013). Metaphysics (Courtney D. Fugate & John Hymers, Trans.). London: Bloomsbury. Benjamin, W. (1936/1969). The Storyteller. In Hannah Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (h. Zohn, Trans.). New York: Schoken (Original work published 1936).

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Counsell, C., & Wolf, L. (2001). Performance Analysis: An Introductory Coursebook. New York: Routledge. Crisell, A. (1994). Understanding Radio (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge. Davis, T., & Postlewait, T. (2003). Theatricality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800405284363. Gillespie, R. (2012). The Art of Criticism in the Age of Interactive Technology: Critics, Participatory Culture, and the Avant-Garde. International Journal of Communication, 6, 56–75. Haastrup, H. K. (2018). Hermione’s Feminist Book Club: Celebrity Activism and Cultural Critique. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 65, 98–116. Jauert, P. (2009). Radio I Hverdagslivet. In S. Kolstrup, et al. (Eds.), Medie- og Kommunikationsleksikon. Samfundslitteratur: Frederiksberg. Jensen, Bruhn K. (2012). A Handbook of Media and Communication Research. London: Routledge. Kammer, A. (2020). Denmark. In D. L. Merskin (Ed.), The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. Kristensen, N. N., & From, U. (2012). Lifestyle Journalism: Blurring Boundaries. Journalism Practice, 6(1), 26–41. Kristensen, N. N., & From, U. (2015). From Ivory Tower to Cross-Media Personas: The Heterogeneous Cultural Critic in the Media. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 853–871. Kristensen, N. N., & Haastrup, H. K., & Holdgaard, N. (2018). Editorial: Cultural Critique. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 34(64), 3–9. Langellier, K. M., & Peterson, E. E. (2006). Shifting Contexts in Personal Narrative Performance. In D. Soyini Madison & Judith Hamera (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Marshall, P. D. (2013). Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self. Journalism, 15(2), 153–170. Marshall, P. D. (2016). Person, Persona. In Robert T. Craig (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (Vol. 1). Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Marshall, P. D., & Barbour, K. (2015). Mapping Intellectual Room for Persona Studies: A New Consciousness and Shifted Perspective. Persona Studies, 1(1), 1–12. Moestrup, S. (2019). Performing the Persona: A Case Study of Persona-Driven Cultural Journalism and Cultural Criticism. Det Humanistiske Fakultet: Københavns Universitet.

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Nielsen, L. Y. (2018). PewDiePie og “indie” som platform for kulturkritik. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 34(65), 31–55. Ramskov, J., & Knudsen, L. (2011). Radio24syv Public Service Redegørelse 2011. Accessed on 9 September 2019. http://data.radio24syv.dk/buckets/publicser vice/publicserviceredeg_relsetilweb.pdf. Schechner, R. (1985). Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schechner, R. (2013). Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Shapin, S. (2012, October). The Tastes of Wine: Towards a Cultural History. In Rivista di estetica, Issue Titled Wineworld: New Essay on Wine, Taste, Philosophy and Aesthetics. Issue 51. Taylor, D. (2003). The Archive and the Repertoire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thomas, G. (2010). Doing Case Study: Abduction, not Induction, Pronesis, not Theory. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(7), 575–582. Varriano, J. (2010). Wine: A Cultural History. London: Reaktion Books.

CHAPTER 4

Fans, Fun and Homophobia: Mischievous Criticism on the Czecho-Slovak Film Database Ondˇrej Pavlík

Introduction I strive for the most erudite criticism, by the sweat of my brow I enrich film theory with progressive terminology that will soon appear in textbooks, I set an example for the young degeneration and take care of quick and smooth development of cardiovascular failures for the old, but then comes some fucking amateur, picks a sentence that is possibly the worst thing I have ever vomited in a momentary cocknitive disorder, violently pulls it out of context of my oh-so-deep fount of critical wisdom, and without any sort of notice misuses my philantropy for something as despicable as a sales promotion. (verbal 2015b)

This chapter deals with fan film criticism, also known as the school of fandom (McWhirter 2016). It is a contested, fluid and understudied subject that is linked to many different research areas and concepts, such as digital criticism, geek cultures and online communities. For this

O. Pavlík (B) Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_4

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reason, this chapter will be framed within the context of two interrelated, but rarely integrated strands of academic inquiry, fan studies and research on contemporary film criticism. Both perspectives are needed not only to better capture fan criticism as a boundary-crossing activity, but also to reveal its strengths and weaknesses in the so-called democratized landscape of digital media. As the opening paragraph of this chapter indicates, fan critics can develop quite a complex and distinctive writing voice. Specifically, this paragraph shows how a film fan called “verbal”, an infamous and highly 1 reacted ˇ popular member of the Czecho-Slovak Film Database (CSFD), when he found out that a quote from his review of the film Wild Tales (2014) was used to promote the movie online. It is in many ways a contradictory, stylistically dense, tonally rich reaction that illustrates verbal’s characteristic use of sarcasm, insulting word play and profane language. Despite the claim he aims to provide “erudite criticism”, his reviews, while cleverly and carefully composed, are completely opposite—unapologetically anti-intellectual, playfully obscene and vulgar. While verbal in the aforementioned comment partly distanced himself from his quote that was used for promotional purposes, he also, in his typical insulting way, expressed some self-satisfaction with his newly gained status of a publicly quoted expert. Tellingly, there were two experts cited in the ad, the other one being Mirka Spáˇcilová, perhaps the best-known (but also quite controversial) professional film critic in the Czech Republic. As verbal smugly mentioned in his response, “I guess I will now send my ceevee to [the nationwide newspaper] Mladá fronta and Mirka will find herself unemployed” (verbal 2015b). In verbal’s fantasy, the pseudonymous film fan would actually replace the well-established pro.2 Indeed, such a scenario in which the masses of uneducated film enthusiasts threaten the authority and steady employment of professional

1 CSFD ˇ is the most popular local film website with more then 450 thousand registered users. Its purpose and functioning is roughly comparable to IMDb, in that both sites enable mostly non-professional film fans to publicly rate films and write film reviews. At ˇ the same time, CSFD is—in comparison with other databases like IMDb or MUBI—more socially oriented and community-driven. 2 I will refer to verbal as he/him, even though we can’t be completely sure of his actual gender identity. What’s more important, however, is that verbal’s persona is performed as white, male and heterosexual (Butler 1988).

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critics has long been discussed by critics, columnists and scholars. Films,3 books and opinion pieces (Haberski 2001; Kallay 2007; James 2008) have warned us that, in the digital age, film criticism is experiencing an unprecedented crisis that could seriously undermine its cultural significance or even lead to its demise. Other well-researched articles and books have tempered these claims and provided a more nuanced analysis of the state of contemporary criticism. We have learned that this sense of a crisis is nothing new, and that it had been felt and articulated by critics many times throughout the brief history of film criticism (Frey 2015). We have also learned that, however revolutionary the rise of digital media may seem, it has not transformed film criticism so radically. In fact, many argue that despite the assertions that Internet has democratized criticism, a large portion of traditional hierarchies and barriers between professionals and amateurs have still remained in place (Frey 2015; McWhirter 2016; Walmsley-Evans 2018). What has been largely missing on both sides of this conversation, however, is the perspective of film fans, enthusiasts and amateurs. While we now have a thorough understanding of the current challenges and practices of (mostly Anglo-American) professional film criticism, journalists, critics and editors of printed and online magazines, the same is not true for non-professionals. This does not mean that film fans, cinephiles and members of the participating general public have been completely ignored in said literature. However, as scholars have largely focused on the perspective of professional critics, the non-professionals have received only cursory attention. In short, we still only have a vague idea about what exactly these amateur film critics do and how do they challenge established critical practice. One branch of academic research that has, in a broader perspective beyond the niche area of film criticism, thoroughly covered the amateur in digital media culture is studies of fandom and anti-fandom. Generally speaking, scholars tend to frame fans either as a creative or as a destructive force but rarely as both. On the one hand, fans—similar to cinephiles— have been described as passionate, informal and personable critics (Jenkins 1992; Behlil 2005; McWhirter 2016) and as engaged activists (Jenkins 2006, 2015). On the other hand, fans have been labeled as hateful, bullying and toxic (Gray 2003; Moody 2017; Proctor 2017; Nieborg 3 Here, I am mostly referring to Gerald Peary’s documentary For the Love of Movies: The History of American Film Criticism (2009).

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and Foxman 2018). Even though Jenkins in his seminal Textual Poachers (1992) notes that “the fans’ response typically involves not simply fascination or adoration but also frustration and antagonism, and it is the combination of the two responses, which motivates their active engagement with the media” (p. 23), such affective duality has rarely been explored in existing research. The tendency to view fans in terms of a generalized affective and ideological stance is also related to the fact that fans often act en masse, as evidenced by #boycottStarWarsVII, #blackstormtrooper, #Gamergate and other online campaigns that expressed collective hatred toward film franchises or geek cultures (Rozsa 2014; Lees 2016). Any attempt to capture these group activities understandably depends on general concepts like geek culture and geek masculinity (Massanari 2017) and mostly ignores differences between individual users and other ambiguities. In light of this tendency, research needs to go beyond these generalizations. As Proctor and Kies (2018) point out, contemporary fan studies should contest stereotypical ideas about fandom and produce more nuanced and unbiased accounts of their behavior. This chapter proceeds in three steps. The next part introduces key theoretical concepts that can help illuminate the multifaceted nature of fan criticism, ranging from postcritique, affective economies and the concept of trolling to unpaid labor and online communities. The following methodological section explains how data was selected, gathered and analyzed. Finally, the analytical section looks at the practice of fan film criticism from three perspectives, all of them revolving around the affective ambiguity of this practice. This chapter thus proposes to move past the dichotomy of creative/destructive fandom by suggesting that both can be in fact closely interrelated. At the same time, I suggest that we also need to develop a more complex affective register to describe fan activity, i.e., to go beyond love and/or hate. While closely following one significant film fan—the aforementioned verbal—this chapter puts forward the category of mischievous criticism. This concept encompasses writing that aims to be both hateful and funny, creative and destructive, honestly passionate and self-reflexively sarcastic. As this chapter argues, mischievous criticism makes hate speech even more spreadable through word play, blurs the line between ideological and subjective criteria of film evaluation and despite its controversial status establishes itself as an indispensible part of an online community. By approaching fan criticism as a practice based on ambiguous affect, we can better understand what fan film critics do and why some of them are so influential.

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Toward Affective Fan Criticism “Mischievous” is not the sort of adjective that would be commonly used to define a certain kind of criticism. This means there is some terminological clearing up to do. Usually, types of criticism are defined by their adherence to a certain school of thought. There is ideological criticism, formalist criticism and descriptive criticism. Some schools of criticism are also tied to a concrete historical and geographical context, like the movement of New Criticism (Brooks 1979; Jancovich 1993). Other schools are organized by their institutional background, for example, the academic school or trade school of contemporary film criticism (McWhirter 2016). Mischievous criticism is different because it is defined not by its form of reasoning but by its dominant affect. Here, I am relying on the work of postcritical theorists of literary criticism who have drawn attention to the mood, tone and the general affective disposition of critical texts. As Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski (2017) put it, “[c]ritique is, among other things, a form or rhetoric that is codified via style, tone, figure, vocabulary, and voice and that attends to certain tropes, motifs, and structures of text at the expense of others” (pp. 3–4). Even though these theorists are concerned chiefly with academic or essayistic criticism, their approach can be usefully applied elsewhere, including popular culture. Seeing that fan criticism has usually been identified by its strong emotionality, defining it affectively can also help us illuminate its complexity. Mischievous criticism then presupposes that critics approach their writing with a certain rougish frame of mind and project this mood into their style. What exactly does “mischievous” entail? What sorts of affective characteristics can we attribute to this critical disposition? In choosing this term, I have been inspired by the language used to describe online trolling. In her book on trolls, Whitney Phillips (2015) evokes the metaphor of a trickster who is “amoral, driven by appetite, and shameless, […] creative, playful, and mischievous” (p. 9). This list of adjectives already points to the ambiguous nature of trolling which may be considered malevolent, antisocial and fundamentally harmful but sometimes productive and pro-social (Kirman et al. 2012). Trolls also tend to possess a “comedic aesthetic […] expressed through a highly distinctive vernacular, […] tortured, ungrammatical syntax and delight in improper spelling, inappropriate word choices, and bizarre anachronism” (Phillips 2015, p. 38). As these examples indicate, the nature of trolling—its uneasy blend of

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destructive and creative behavior, playfulness and malevolence—largely overlaps with my definition of mischievous criticism. While verbal definitely could be (and often is) described as a troll, it may not be the most accurate and corresponding label. Trolling, for example, does not conventionally include evaluating artworks which is what verbal’s activity has been mostly based on. Hence, mischievous criticism, a style of evaluative writing about films, is shaped by a trolling mindset. At the same time, framing film criticism in affective terms does not mean ignoring its broader social impact and relevance. Rather than locating the political dimension of criticism in its interpretative mechanisms and routines, the politics of affect are more often to be found in the use of language, in its style and tone. In order to capture how hateful affects are produced and how they circulate, I draw on Sara Ahmed’s concept of affective economies. According to Ahmed (2004), “[h]ate is economic; it circulates between signifiers in relationships of difference and displacement” (p. 44). Hate thus does not originate in individuals but rather is distributed across various bodies. Moreover, “it is the circulation of hate between figures that works to materialise the very ‘surface’ of collective bodies” (Ibid., p. 46), mostly through repetition, sticky expressions and language in general. The economics of hate is then fueled by the sustained existence of othered “them”, an abstract collective entity such as refugees, Muslims or homosexuals. In verbal’s case, we will see how homophobic affects circulate in his writing and that they circulate even more forcefully because of his excessive use of word play. There is also the question of the environment where affects are constructed and in which they circulate. In this case, it is the environment of an online film database. How then do online community platforms ˇ such as CSFD work to encourage or limit the circulation of hateful or mischievous affects? According to Nancy K. Baym (2010), online communities tend to possess a certain style that influences how members conduct themselves on the platform. Among other factors, this style is shaped by participant characteristics, platform’s infrastructure or group purposes. Online communities tend to share distinctive use of language which might contain insider lingo and other idiosyncracies. More generally, there are norms that determine how members communicate. These community norms can be both implied and explicitly stated, as they are “displayed, reinforced, negotiated, and taught through members’ shared behaviors [but also] enshrined through FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions files)” (Baym 2010, p. 80). They are also influenced and formed

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by the site’s interface (Barnes 2018). Finally, standardized norms of behavior are maintained, enforced and challenged, either by moderators and administrators or by members themselves. How do online communities allow for hateful behavior and how do they attempt to regulate it? With reference to game communities which are notorious for their high level of toxicity, Barnes (2018) suggests that norms of behavior can be successfully “dictated by technological affordances and institutional policies” (p. 16). User content can be moderated either before or after it gets published. When moderation is visible and publicly enforced, it can elicit a negative response from users who may perceive it as unwarranted censorship. Curation of content is another way how platforms can influence what members see. This can be achieved with the help of an invisible algorithm or through other means, such as a comment voting system (Barnes 2018). ˇ While online platforms like CSFD more or less succesfully aim to limit circulation of hateful affects, they also profit from content generated by users. Because fan activity, including writing short film reviews, is often seen as a “marginal, recreational, just-for-fun activity, not as central to person’s professional development” (De Kosnik 2013, p. 109), it is almost never considered as labor. Yet with regard to large online sites and corporations whose revenue heavily relies on user-generated content, the notion of free labor (Terranova 2003) constitutes a relevant problem. As fans are largely pseudonymous and have been historically subjected to rejection, criticism or even ridicule, it is even harder for them to demand compensation for their contribution. For some of them, compensation may simply be freedom to write what they want, to have the use of public (but also privately owned) space to express themselves. As we now see, studying mischievous criticism encompasses several interconnected areas. It is, in its core, a type of writing defined by an affective disposition that is both hateful and light-hearted. Even though it is a practice based on evaluating works of art, its hateful affects nevertheless require sensitivity to their circulation and larger impact. Finally, we have to consider the role of the online platform, its policies and community norms, as it both enables and profits from mischievous criticism.

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Methodology This qualitative research is grounded in actor-network theory (ANT); a research method that is suitable for several reasons. Actor-network theory proposes to rethink the deeply-rooted meaning of the word “social” by recognizing that there are human and non-human actors. Various phenomena cannot be explained only as an effect of strictly human actions and relations. Instead, they need to be seen within a network of social but also technological, biological, linguistic, etc., associations (Latour 2005). ˇ In this case, I will consider mischievous criticism on CSFD as embedded within the interface of the site, its regulations and algorithms. This does not mean that I suggest a simple causality between technology and activity of certain users; rather, the technology may “allow, afford, encourage [or] permit” (Latour 2005, p. 72) such activity. At the same time, ANT insists on terminological instability. The dedicated researcher should therefore avoid relying on essentialist explanations and predetermined categories or labels. On the basis of participant observation, I singled out verbal as the main ˇ research focus of this study. Despite his controversial status on CSFD and ˇ elsewhere, verbal is also the most popular CSFD user of the past decade. His unprecedented popularity on the database is best illustrated by him ˇ occupying a fifth place on the list of CSFD’s most popular users.4 While there are several users more popular than verbal, all of them registered ˇ their profiles within the first year of CSFD’s existence (between April 2002 and May 2003), meaning they have had a significant advantage in establishing their presence and popularity on the site over users that registered later. Since verbal’s profile was registered in November 2009, his prominent position on the list attests to his rapidly growing, exceptionally high popularity among the current user base. Closely examining verbal should therefore help us understand not only this user’s persona ˇ and activity on the site but also CSFD’s discourse in general: points of consensus and conflict, alliances, preferences and values. 4 This list is hierarchically structured according to the number of points of every user. Each point represents a single follower; a user who started following another user by placing them in their own personal list of twenty favorite users. Verbal’s standing on the list has remained the same for the whole duration of this research and writing of the chapter. However, at this point, on April 30, 2020, verbal has caught up with the user called KevSpa on the 4th place as they both have exactly 5491 points. It is likely that ˇ verbal is going to surpass KevSpa in the near future. CSFD (n.d.).

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The study consists of 1767 film reviews, 44 diary entries and the contents of verbal’s main profile page. This data is archived in the form of 66 PDF files (screenshots of verbal’s profile) which include text, image and the dates on which the archived reviews/diary entries were originally posted. Because the data-gathering period ended in November 2019, the ˇ archived data may have changed since then, as CSFD enables users to later edit or delete their own reviews and comments. By tracing associaˇ tions and relationships with other actors (CSFD’s administrators, the site’s ˇ policies and interface, other CSFD users, reviewed films and their protagonists…), I have identified three salient features of verbal’s mischievous criticism: the circulation of homophobic affects, evaluative aspect of hate and relationship to the database. The following sections of this chapter introduce these features in detail and explain their significance for this specific case and for mischievous criticism in general. Finally, this chapter deals with a subject that is often deemed controversial by scholars, popular media and the general public. While researching and writing on this subject, I was aware of its controversial dimension and tried my best to maintain an unbiased perspective. The material is mostly offensive and I consider its harmful nature whenever possible.5 At the same time, the goal of my research is not to condemn the practice of mischievous criticism and explore its destructive effects but rather to be sensitive to its multidimensionality and ambiguity, while hopefully illuminating and understanding it as a complex phenomenon with larger relevance for both fan studies and studies of film criticism.

Mischievous Criticism as Word Play When hate is examined within studies of fandom and anti-fandom, it is usually in relation to a popular object, a star, a franchise or a TV show (Gray 2003; Click 2019). Otherwise, research of geek cultures usually approaches online hate as a more organized and politicized phenomenon, for example, as part of the alt-right movement (Blodgett and Salter 2018). Verbal’s hateful reviews, comments and expressions, however, need to be understood differently. His mischievous nature is first and foremost a 5 Translating verbal’s ramblings full of weird neologisms, distorted words and dirty puns from Czech to English was a challenge. While I tried to provide a faithful transcript whenever possible, some quotes slighly deviate from the Czech original but always in order to better capture its spirit in a different language.

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central element of his carefully cultivated online persona which is visually represented by photoshopped pictures of a corpulent, mentally deficient white man who often poses nearly naked, dressed only in speedos or in a huge diaper. In a deliberately provocative, sometimes even satirical manner that strikingly resembles trolling, verbal approaches everything with a mischievous tone. This does not mean that verbal dislikes every film he reviews. It means that the uneasy mix of hateful and playful affects consistently finds its way even into his highly positive reviews. Such calculated mischievous criticism poses a challenge when dealing with its hatefulness. Is it meant sincerely or is it all a part of a tasteless joke? Despite the doubts we could have toward verbal’s true motivations, I suggest that his mischievous style contributes to an intensified circulation of hate. More specifically, verbal’s homophobic comments and expressions constitute a recurrent motif in his comments, as the following analysis will show. While homophobia usually sticks to queer bodies in the economics of hate, it is, in verbal’s case, frequently attached to heterosexual ones as well. This sort of affective transfer of homophobia across queer and non-queer bodies is mostly achieved through word play— obscene puns, neologisms, mangled names and expressions. It can be argued that it is this creative transformation of language that very much contributes to its more destructive effects, i.e., more forceful circulation of homophobic affects. When verbal (2018b) writes in his review of Bohemian Rhapsody (2018b) about “the band Queer led by an immensely talented, sexually disoriented princess with an East German pornomoustache,” and calls its lead singer “a sensitive brownish colonoscoper with the nickname Mercurial Alfred,” it is clearly related to Freddie Mercury’s homosexuality. Often, however, verbal makes homophobic allusions that are not substantiated by the film’s subject, theme or subtext. Writing about the sci-fi film Alita: Battle Angel (2019a), verbal (2019a) complains that “the boys [director Robert Rodriguez and screenwriter and producer James Cameron] moronically appealed to the underaged Hungergays,” meaning, of course, teenage fans of the young adult franchise Hunger Games. Elsewhere, comedy becomes “cockmedy” (verbal 2018e), comics becomes “homix” (verbal 2017) and Avengers: Endgame (2019b) becomes “Assvengers: Endgay” (verbal 2019b). Referring to sophisticated lovers of art cinema, verbal repeatedly calls them “artsy ass-splitters,” (verbal 2019c) creating a dirty pun on the Czech word for a hairsplitter. As evidenced by these examples, the homophobic insults are thrown not

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just at fictional film characters but also at whole groups of fans or even ˇ CSFD members. For example, the owner of the database Martin Pomothy whose user nickname is POMO has been rechristened as HOMO by verbal. Notably, verbal’s homophobic expressions—often in the form of mangled names—stick not just to queer bodies but to non-queer bodies as well. On the one hand, such practice does not seem all that unusual given that insults like “fag” and similar homophobic language is frequently used to emasculate men online (Jane 2014). This applies especially to sites where trolling is commonplace. For example, at 4chan, arguably the Mecca of trolls, the word fag is treated as a universal suffix, mainly to distinguish between various types of forum users (newfags, oldfags, causefags, etc.) (Phillips 2015). On the other hand, verbal’s use of homophobia is quite specific. Since there is such a wide spectrum of entities that are “made gay” by verbal, this causes an intensified circulation of homophobic affects. Yet these are not just simple insults but also puns, neologisms and twisted words. By systematically relying on word play, verbal spreads homophobia that can be both abusive and destructive, and creative and funny. In this sense, verbal’s original expressions become a significant part of his online brand which is largely based on linguistic ˇ dexterity, provocation and inventiveness. The fact that other CSFD users frequently acknowledge verbal’s authorship when reusing his mischievous expressions serves as a further proof of his influence.

Mischievous Criticism as Evaluation What other purposes do verbal’s mischievous remarks serve in his film reviews? If we say that criticism is “a matter of evaluation grounded in reasons” (Carroll 2009, p. 153), what are verbal’s reasons for rating films good or bad? And how do insults and profanities fit into this? Contrary to how anti-fans hate on specific artworks, verbal employs hateful vocabulary in most of his reviews, no matter if positive or negative. In other words, verbal’s mischievous comments and provocative expressions seem to be partly divorced from his process of film evaluation. At the same time, however, these remarks also reflect verbal’s taste and his opinion on individual films. It is as if next to verbal’s trollish persona, determined to insult and provoke large groups of people, there is also a persona of a

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film fan who consistently applies his taste criteria. The conflicting coexistence of these two personas results in affectively ambiguous criticism which often includes both hate and strongly positive appreciation. How do we make sense of verbal’s taste and style of argumentation? We can start by looking at the list of his ten favorite films of all time (verbal n.d.). This list suggests that he is most passionate about Hollywood action movies from the 1980s and 1990s. Among the listed films are the famous buddy movies The Last Boy Scout (1991) and Lethal Weapon (1987), the fantasy spectacles Excalibur (1981) and Conan the Barbarian (1982) and classic thrillers from this era like Heat (1995) or The Usual Suspects (1995). This selection suggests that verbal gravitates toward these films because they—apart from their relative similarities in terms of genre and time of release—express conservative ideas about masculinity.6 These ideas could then shape verbal’s style of writing and reasoning, including his seemingly haphazard homophobic remarks aimed at major comic book franchises and art cinema. It could indicate that verbal generally perceives comic book movies and art films as weak and effeminate, i.e., not masculine enough, at least compared to action films from previous decades and newer films in this vein. We can support this reading by looking at how verbal frames his positive and/or negative evaluation of films in terms of heterosexuality and homosexuality. For example, verbal (2018d) opens his unfavorable review of Phantom Thread (2018d) by stating that “the big-mouthed, flagellating artsy ass-splitters have already cummed enough, and now is the time for an opinion of a reasonable heteroviewer who believes that films should fulfill their most elementary function: deliver fun.” In another negative review, this time of the film Only the Brave (2017) about a group of heroic firefighters, verbal (2018c) links the poor quality of the movie to the (presumed) sexuality of its authors: “[T]his remembrance ceremony for the Volunteer fire department of Marlboroland could have been more action-packed, fun, tasteful and without anal fissures if only there were heterosexual screenwriters involved.” Then he goes on to criticize the film for depicting “pathetic telenovelized masculine teasing of manly, half-naked, perfectly depilated, macho ultranice boy scouts[…]” (verbal 2018c). Finally, among the reasons for giving the horror film 6 To an extent, this is a generalization. Looking at The Last Boy Scout and Lethal Weapon, for example, we find that these films “renegotiat[e] a new hegemonic masculinity without abandoning this idea completely” (Bothmann 2017, p. 214).

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A Quiet Place (2018a) an excited five stars, verbal (2018a) states it is a “dream world for many suffering domesticated males, a world where the bitch finally shuts up and doesn’t bother you with every insignificant bullshit[.]” As these examples suggest, verbal’s mischievous criticism is partly based on a conservative, sexist and heteronormative ideology that shapes how films and their characters are interpreted and evaluated. Such reasoning is largely in line with the existing image of toxic fandom which is “deeply influenced by gendered expectations of female characters and of women broadly” (Holladay and Click 2019, p. 149) and relies on heteronormative viewing practices. At the same time, the opposition of heterosexual and homosexual goes beyond ideological concerns and is used by verbal to differentiate between what is good and what is bad in relation to his own taste. Verbal’s personal evaluative criteria are shaped mostly by his age, aesthetic preferences and nostalgia. The presence of personal criteria is most apparent in reviews that break the mold and force verbal to temporarily suppress his dogmatic attitudes. For example, despite repeatedly expressing contempt for Marvel, verbal has nonetheless appreciated two of their films, Iron Man Three (2013) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Although the reasoning is largely based on highly emotional judgments and shrouded in dense wordplay, verbal also shows clear preference for certain filmmakers or aesthetic conventions. In his review of Iron Man Three, verbal (2013) attributes the film’s exceptional quality to its director and screenwriter Shane Black who also wrote screenplays for The Last Boy Scout and Lethal Weapon, two of verbal’s favorite movies. Commenting on Guardians of the Galaxy, verbal (2014) is delighted by the presence of “thoroughly likeable cool anti-heroes” who he immediately positions against “deadly serious” superheroes whose insistence on saving the world he apparently dislikes. Even though verbal (2014) again insultingly calls these serious superheroes “Supergay, Spiderwoman or Transisthor”, it is implied that his preference is also rooted in specific aspects of storytelling, worldbuilding and tone: light-heartedness or the presence of rougish characters. When we consider that Guardians of the Galaxy abounds with references to 1980s popculture, it is likely that this sense of nostalgia influences verbal’s appraisal as well. Since verbal repeatedly refers to himself as “uncle” and addresses his readers as “kids”, he seems to perform the role of a relatively older fan whose taste is very much shaped by the films he grew up with. From this perspective, verbal’s homophobic comments aimed at whole genres or types of films are not only affected by

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hateful ideologies or traditional notions of hegemonic masculinity but are also expressive of his idiosyncratic personal taste. Moreover, this blurring of ideological and subjective criteria contributes to the affective ambiguity of verbal’s reviews, as they are often simultaneously offensive and appreciative. Such combination of hateful and supportive behavior can be linked to the practice of football fans who participate in homophobic chanting during matches and interpret these chants as a way of helping one’s team (Magrath 2017). In this sense, we can think of verbal as a “hooligan” who resorts to destructive conduct, while at the same time, he creatively “roots for” his favorite films. The difference is that verbal’s comments, unlike spontaneous and impulsive chanting, seem deliberate and self-aware. They are part of a reviewing style that is multifaceted and not easily categorizable. On the one hand, the constant stream of mangled words, insults and vulgarities corresponds with verbal’s penchant for trolling. On the other hand, the reviews also reveal a consistent set of taste preferences. Verbal’s strongly positive reviews then point to a conflict between his own passionate, honestly expressed relationship to films and his tendency to insultingly comment on films as well as the surrounding discourse from a sardonic distance. From the evaluative perspective, offensive remarks serve several purposes in mischievous film criticism; they emphasize judgment, reflect personal taste, project hateful ideologies and contribute to the reviews’ affective ambiguity.

Mischievous Criticism as (Un)Regulated Practice Reading through verbal’s reviews surely raises some questions about his ˇ continued existence on CSFD. Why has such a homophobic, chauvinistic and all-around awful member not been banned yet? Why is he ˇ in fact so popular and influential among other CSFD users? Similar to his homophobic word play and the mischievous style of his writing, the combination of excessive creativity and destructivity is also key to understanding verbal’s position on the platform. Together with affective ambiguity of hatefulness and light-heartedness, the creative and destructive qualities of verbal’s mischievous criticism have not only led to his highly popular, controversial status but also allowed him to thrive. Despite ˇ his trollish nature, constant provocation and hostile stance toward CSFD’s

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admins, verbal does not necessarily defy the platform’s norms and poliˇ cies. On the contrary, the relationship between verbal and CSFD remains symbiotic. ˇ First of all, what are CSFD’s community norms? How are they explicitly codified and implicitly practiced? What measures are put in place to moderate user-generated content and punish those who cross the line? ˇ guidelines and rules For such an important site with busy traffic,7 CSFD’s for user conduct are not very comprehensive. A list of community norms can be found on the site’s FAQ page, which is accessible only to registered users. This list, however, does not address the problem of vulgarity or hate ˇ speech. In the short paragraph titled “What is forbidden on CSFD?” the ˇ FAQ page mentions the two major sins of a CSFD user: rating a film that the user has not seen and begging other users to become their followers. In another section called general conditions of use, which was only added in April 2018 in order to meet the requirements of the GDPR regulation ˇ as introduced by the EU, CSFD (2018) declares itself not responsible for the content created by users. At the same time, the platform reserves the right to delete any user-created content, “especially because it is harmful ˇ […] or out of keeping with good manners.” CSFD also keeps the right to assess what is deemed as harmful. Such selective and insufficiently formulated rules of conduct and complete absence of an ethical codex provide the institutional basis for a community style which tolerates profanities, insults and other harmful user behavior. ˇ CSFD’s approach to moderation is also decentralized and not very transparent. This is most evident in the way the moderating responsibilities are distributed and structured. Regarding the official group of ˇ CSFD’s employees and volunteers, none of them are listed as moderators of the site. There are twelve editors, seven of which are responsible for approving various types of user-created content: biographies of filmmakers and stars, film synopses or trivia. However, none of them are assigned with moderating user profiles, reviews and comments.8 Moderators are ˇ only visibly assigned on CSFD’s message board where every thread has its own moderator, either one of the site’s administrators or a regular 7 On average, there are two million unique visitors each month on CSFD ˇ (Úšela 2019). 8 For regular users of the site, there is also no way to find out if someone else’s review

was removed by moderators. Verbal (2011) himself only once reported that his review was deleted, described it as a violation of the freedom of speech and reposted the deleted ˇ review in his CSFD diary.

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ˇ CSFD user. Since there is no central ethical codex and moderating rights are automatically assigned to whoever starts a new thread, the message boards suffer from a lack of oversight and allow for hateful and extremist content. How to explain this sort of administrative negligence? In order to ˇ understand CSFD’s lax approach to policy and moderation, we first need to take a closer look at statements of the site’s CEO Martin ˇ Pomothy. Talking about the vision he had for CSFD when he set it up back in 2001, Pomothy mentions that he has not tried to emulate film databases like IMDb and that he has been more inspired by the Czech message boards of Okoun and Lopuch—loosely moderated pseudonymous websites similar to geek-friendly forums and troll sites like Something Awful, Reddit or 4chan (Candra and Melichar 2014). As Pomothy ˇ notes in his personal message on the CSFD’s FAQ page, he wants to create an online space where all sorts of film enthusiasts could meet, discuss their favorite films and recommend each other what to watch next. Pomothy’s childhood story about his passionate film debates with schoolmates leads us to another important point: his public self-image. During ˇ interviews, Pomothy notoriously downplays his role as the CSFD’s owner and manager, while he paints himself as just another film fan (Tuma ˚ 2012; Úšela 2019). This attitude also translates into the overall relaxed atmoˇ sphere of CSFD where almost all of the official statements are written in an informal tone, as if administrators and users were on a first-name basis. Pomothy’s stance toward vulgarity and hate speech on his site seems to be especially pragmatic. When asked about verbal, he answers: “I could easily delete his profile. But he has a lot of fans and people want ˇ him to stay on CSFD” (Úšela 2019). Instead of being a rare display of explicit populism, this quote rather makes more visible some of the ˇ crucial underlying principles of CSFD’s administrative style. The platform’s openness to each and every film fan and Pomothy’s identification with this label may appear very democratic but also serves as an excuse for a hands-off approach that tolerates and sometimes even rewards hate and/or abuse. By saying that he would not ban verbal because of his popularity, Pomothy also implicitly admits that verbal’s output—however controversial—is quite precious to his platform. In providing a constant stream of reviews, diary entries and comments, ˇ verbal performs valuable labor that keeps many other CSFD users and site visitors satisfied, which makes them return to the site and thus helps generate ad revenue for Pomothy. Even though it is not recognized as

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labor, verbal nevertheless receives some sort of compensation for his activity. Apart from the great number of followers and the cultural capital, verbal is also compensated by having the freedom to write and post virtually whatever he wants. Drawing on the typology of free labor developed by Fast et al. (2016), we can see that verbal’s work is not easily definable. He could be called a Hobbyist, as this category also includes fans who engage in affective labor and “get paid” by having fun and feeling fulfilled. However, verbal does not necessarily consider “the labor process as a goal in and of itself” (Fast et al. 2016, p. 8), as he seems to be motivated by all the negative and positive attention he receives and by the resulting authority, influence and status. Similarly, categorizing verbal as a Carer would acknowledge the way he contributes to “[m]aintaining affective ties and community links” ˇ (s. 6) on CSFD. However, unlike Carers who usually provide security and positive emotional support, verbal creates very polarized affective ties that range from disgust to amusement. Even though he stirs controversies and ˇ presents himself as being against the CSFD “establishment”, verbal is an important asset for the site. ˇ This paradoxical and symbiotic relationship between verbal and CSFD is best illustrated by the one instance when Pomothy and his team actually tried to censor vulgar language in a systemic way. On September 25, 2015, Pomothy announced the implementation of a new algorithm that would recognize and automatically bleep profanities in reviews submitted by users. The bleeped reviews would then be sent back to users through a private message so that the user could rewrite the censored parts in unoffending words. According to the official announcement, any attempts to bypass the algorithm—for example, by deliberately misspelling the profanities to make them undetectable—would be punished by a lifetime ban on reviewing. Verbal (2015a) responded to this announcement with anger and vigor, while he framed his response in terms of an ideological struggle ˇ “for freedom of speech on CSFD.” Verbal quickly figured out how to bypass the algorithm, mainly by creatively misspelling the profanities or by formatting the words as bold, thus making them stand out even more. Instead of eradicating vulgar language, the censoring mechanism ironically had the opposite effect. It made all of the offensive expressions even more visible and allowed verbal to appear as a rebellious, inventive and mischievous character. The algorithm was then silently pulled back, most likely by January 2016 at the latest.

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As this incident shows, verbal’s destructive tendency to hate and abuse succeeds because it is accompanied by excessive creativity and playfulness. Considering that among desirable user qualities the website mentions on its FAQ page “activity, creativity and expressive language skills,” it is no wonder that verbal belongs to the most popular users and is tolerated by Pomothy. Verbal’s command of these skills is in fact so exceptional that his ˇ presence on CSFD seems to be implicitly tied to the steady growth and economic health of the platform. Such importance and prominence of ˇ users without any professional background in journalism on CSFD challenge claims about online aggregator sites prioritizing professional critics and preserving existing hierarchies (Frey 2015; Walmsley-Evans 2018). ˇ While CSFD largely consists of amateur enthusiasts, there are users with significant professional experience as well, with some of them also being ˇ influential voices on the platform. But because CSFD does not formally or structurally distinguish between professionals and non-professionals in any way, it strives to provide a more democratic, albeit more vulgar discourse.

Conclusion While verbal’s many different attributes seem to be very unique and tied ˇ to the specific environment of CSFD, his idiosyncracies are precisely what makes such a singular case relevant for a more nuanced understanding of fan criticism. Abusive tendencies of fans have often been regarded as primarily a hateful, ideologically motivated group activity, symptomatic of geek cultures and their general toxicity (Rozsa 2014; Massanari 2017; Blodgett and Salter 2018) or as a way to respond to a particular franchise or star (Gray 2003; Click 2019). In contrast to this tendency, verbal’s mischievous criticism presents itself as more individualistic and affectively ambiguous. Such ambiguity can help us better understand the seemingly paradoxical popularity of fans like verbal, as well as their relationship to online communities and social platforms. At the same time, focusing on individual fans, rather than groups of fans or geek cultures more generally, can allow us to grasp their activity in a more complex way. This chapter has also suggested that boundaries between professional and amateur film critics become more blurred in digital media culture. Distinctive fan critics like verbal seem to be regarded as influential figures whose popularity and authority are comparable to well-known film critics from established media. This suggestion can be further supported by

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looking at the role emotion and affect play in the work of professional and amateur critics. Johana Kotišová (2020) argues that cultural journalists use the ritual of objectivization of emotionality to “carefully reflect upon their feelings and other subjective responses […], and consciously search for the objective features […] that provoked them” (p. 12). Such emotional labor, Kotišová suggests, is used by critics to reclaim their professional legimitacy in the digital era. Yet as this chapter shows, these strategic rituals are not a privilege of professional journalists; fan critics also perform emotional labor, although in a different way. In the case of verbal, emotional labor may not entail carefully reflecting upon feelings and objectivizing them, but it does consist of carefully cultivating a provocative critical persona. Mischievous criticism succeeds in its disruptions not only because it is highly emotional, but also because it is affectively complex (hateful and playful), and thus harder to contain. Perceiving and categorizing film criticism in affective terms have also implications for its language and style. As the latest crisis conversation about the impending demise of film criticism in the digital era showed us, a high degree of emotionality in critical writing is still mostly associated with anonymous online discourse and recognized as a threat; as a sign of irrationality and naive fanboyish incompetence threating to drown out or even replace the rational, informed and sophisticated discourse of more traditional film criticism (McWhirter 2016; Walmsley-Evans 2018). However, what if this suspicion toward emotion and affect is not all that useful? Maybe seasoned critics could learn something new and be inspired if they carefully read and took more seriously some of the “oddballs […] in cyberspace” (Walmsley-Evans 2018, p. 160) as the controversial film critic Armond White has called them. Of course, this does not mean that film critics should simplify their writing, forget about context, rely on their knee-jerk responses or become more hateful. However, as verbal’s case illustrates, matters of tone and emotion are also matters of style, language and its politics. Using word play, neologisms or puns need not be only decorative but also expressive in every sense of the word: strengthening judgment, carrying affect or characterizing the film’s aesthetics and themes. By focusing more on excentric, enthusiastic fan critics like verbal, we may begin to think about how to better transmit emotions through our writing; not just hateful and mischievous affects but also love, empathy and everything in between.

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References Ahmed, S. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Anker, E. S., & Felski, R. (2017). Introduction. In E. S. Anker & R. Felski (Eds.), Critique and Postcritique (pp. 1–28). London: Duke University Press. Barnes, R. (2018). Uncovering Online Commenting Culture: Trolls, Fanboys and Lurkers. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Baym, N. K. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity. Behlil, M. (2005). Ravenous Cinephiles: Cinephilia, Internet, and Online Film Communities. In M. de Valck & M. Hagener (Eds.), Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory (pp. 111–124). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Blodgett, B., & Salter, A. (2018). Ghostbusters Is for Boys: Understanding Geek Masculinity’s Role in the Alt-Right. Communication, Culture and Critique, 11(1), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcx003. Bothmann, N. (2017). Action, Detection and Shane Black: Antiessentialist Genre Theory and Its Application. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Brooks, C. (1979). The New Criticism. The Sewanee Review, 87 (4), 592–607. Butler, Judith. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40, 519–531. Candra, R., & Melichar, M. (2014, June 2). Martin Pomothy: Nic jiného ˇ než CSFD.cz dˇelat nechci. Radio Wave. https://wave.rozhlas.cz/martin-pom othy-nic-jineho-nez-csfdcz-delat-nechci-5239575. Carroll, N. (2009). On Criticism. New York: Routledge. Click, M. A. (2019). Introduction: Haters Gonna Hate. In M. A. Click (Ed.), Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age (pp. 1–24). New York: New York University Press. ˇ CSFD. (n.d.). Nej uživatelé. https://www.csfd.cz/uzivatele/. ˇ CSFD. (2018). Všeobecné podmínky užívání. https://www.csfd.cz/vseobecnepodminky-uzivani/. De Kosnik, A. (2013). Fandom as Free Labor. In T. Scholz (Ed.), Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (pp. 98–111). New York: Routledge. Fast, K., Örnebring, H., & Karlsson, M. (2016). Metaphors of Free Labor: A Typology of Unpaid Work in the Media Sector. Media, Culture and Society, 38(7), 1–16. Frey, M. (2015). The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gray, J. (2003). New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6, 64–81. Haberski, R. J. (2001). It’s Only a Movie! Films and Critics in American Culture. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Holladay, H. W., & Click, M. A. (2019). Hating Skyler White: Gender and AntiFandom in AMC’s Breaking Bad. In M. A. Click (Ed.), Anti-Fandom: Dislike

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and Hate in the Digital Age (pp. 147–165). New York: New York University Press. James, N. (2008, October). Who Needs Critics? Sight & Sound, p. 16. Jancovich, M. (1993). The Cultural Politics of the New Criticism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Jane, E. A. (2014). “Your a Ugly, Whorish, Slut”: Understanding E-bile. Feminist Media Studies, 14(4), 531–546. Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. London: Routledge. Jenkins, H. (2006, August 27). Fan Activism in a Networked Culture: The Case of Stargate SG-1. http://henryjenkins.org/2006/08/fan_activism_in_a_netw orked_cu.html. Jenkins, H. (2015). “Cultural Acupuncture”: Fan Activism and the Harry Potter Alliance. In L. Geraghty (Ed.), Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences, Paratexts (pp. 206–229). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Kallay, J. (2007, September–October). The Critic Is Dead. Film Ireland, pp. 26– 27. Kirman, B., Lineham, C., & Lawson, S. (2012). Exploring Mischief and Mayhem in Social Computing or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Trolls. CHI ’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 121–130. Kotišová, J. (2020). An Elixir of Life? Emotional Labour in Cultural Journalism. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920917289. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. New York: Oxford University Press. Lees, M. (2016, December 1). What Gamergate Should Have Taught us About the ‘Alt-Right’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ 2016/dec/01/gamergate-alt-right-hate-trump. Magrath, R. (2017). “To Try and Gain an Advantage for My Team”: Homophobic and Homosexually Themed Chanting among English Football Fans. Sociology, 52(4), 709–726. Massanari, A. (2017). #Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures. New Media & Society, 19, 329–346. McWhirter, A. (2016). Film Criticism and Digital Cultures. London: I.B. Tauris. Moody, S. (2017). Bullies and Blackouts: Examining the Participatory Culture of Online Book Reviewing. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 25(5–6), 1–14. Nieborg, D., & Foxman, M. (2018). Mainstreaming Misogyny: The Beginning of the End and the End of the Beginning in Gamergate Coverage. In J. R.

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Vickery & T. Everbach (Eds.), Mediating Misogyny: Gender, Technology, and Harassment (pp. 111–130). Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Phillips, W. (2015). This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Proctor, W. (2017). “Bitches Ain’t Gonna Hunt No Ghosts”: Totemic Nostalgia, Toxic Fandom and the Ghostbusters Platonic. Palabra Clave, 20(4), 1105– 1141. Proctor, W., & Kies, B. (2018). Editors’ Introduction: On Toxic Fan Practices and the New Culture Wars. Participations, 15, 127–142. Rozsa, M. (2014, December 2). The Racist #BlackStormtrooper Backlash Shows the Dark Side of Geek Culture. Daily Dot. https://www.dailydot.com/via/ racist-black-stormtrooper-backlash-star-wars/. Terranova, T. (2003, June 20). Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy. Electronic Book Review. https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/ free-labor-producing-culture-for-the-digital-economy/. ˇ Tuma, ˚ O. (2012, March 31). Martin Pomothy: CSFD.cz je pro mˇe jen koníˇcek, ne byznys! Peníze.cz. https://www.penize.cz/spotrebitel/233640martin-pomothy-csfd-cz-je-pro-me-jen-konicek-ne-byznys!. Úšela, J. (2019, August 10). Jsem spíš filmový fanda než obchodník, databáze ˇ osm let nevydˇelávala ani korunu, ˇríká šéf CSFD Pomothy. Hospodáˇrské noviny. https://byznys.ihned.cz/c1-66618040-jsem-spis-filmovy-fanda-nezobchodnik-databaze-osm-let-nevydelavala-ani-korunu-rika-sef-csfd-pomothy. ˇ verbal. (n.d.). Oblíbené filmy. CSFD. https://www.csfd.cz/uzivatel/195357-ver bal/oblibene-filmy/. ˇ verbal. (2011, February 12). NECHUTNÁ CENZURA !!! (Diary Entry). CSFD. https://www.csfd.cz/uzivatel/195357-verbal/denicek/strana-7/. ˇ verbal. (2013, May 16). Iron Man Three (Comment). CSFD. https://www.csfd. cz/film/254420-iron-man-3/komentare/?comment=9343921. verbal. (2014, November 14). Guardians of the Galaxy (Comment). ˇ CSFD. https://www.csfd.cz/film/320638-strazci-galaxie/komentare/?com ment=9917311. ˇ verbal. (2015a, September 27). HOMOpamfletek. CSFD. https://www.csfd.cz/ uzivatel/195357-verbal/. verbal. (2015b, June 28). Verbal análnˇe zprznˇen hnusnou zelenou mrdkou! ˇ (Diary Entry). CSFD. https://www.csfd.cz/uzivatel/195357-verbal/den icek/strana-3/. ˇ verbal. (2017, March 6). Logan: Wolverine (Comment). CSFD. https://www. csfd.cz/film/370872-logan-wolverine/komentare/?comment=10632141. ˇ verbal. (2018a, May 8). A Quiet Place (Comment). CSFD. https://www.csfd. cz/film/502297-tiche-misto/komentare/?comment=10932535.

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ˇ verbal. (2018b, November 9). Bohemian Rhapsody (Comment). CSFD. https:// www.csfd.cz/film/300902-bohemian-rhapsody/komentare/?comment=110 50336. ˇ verbal. (2018c, February 2). Only the Brave (Comment). CSFD. https://www. csfd.cz/film/453194-hrdinove-ohne/komentare/?comment=10859434. ˇ verbal. (2018d, February 20). Phantom Thread (Comment). CSFD. https:// www.csfd.cz/film/457248-nit-z-prizraku/komentare/?comment=10873485. ˇ Verbal. (2018e, July 2). Tag (Comment). CSFD. https://www.csfd.cz/film/512 218-mas-ji/komentare/?comment=10965100. ˇ verbal. (2019a, February 18). Alita: Battle Angel (Comment). CSFD. https:// www.csfd.cz/film/235607-alita-bojovy-andel/komentare/?comment=111 27613. ˇ verbal. (2019b, May 13). Avengers: Endgame (Comment). CSFD. https://www. csfd.cz/film/393332-avengers-endgame/komentare/?comment=11180246. ˇ verbal. (2019c, November 11). Midway (Comment). CSFD. https://www.csfd. cz/film/637290-bitva-u-midway/komentare/?comment=11286957. Walmsley-Evans, H. (2018). Film Criticism as a Cultural Institution. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

CHAPTER 5

When Golden Globes and Stars Align: The Awards Show as a Platform for Cultural Criticism Helle Kannik Haastrup

Introduction Movie awards shows are usually not connected with cultural criticism in the traditional sense. However, we are all familiar with awards and how they are often used as markers of distinction concerning excellence in literature, theater and film. This chapter analyzes how a movie awards show, such as the Golden Globe Awards, can contribute with an alternative type of cultural criticism, performed at a live media event, by film stars and cultural critics through selection-as-evaluation. Previous research on awards shows as media events have focused on the Oscars (Dayan and Katz 1992; Haastrup 2008; Kellner 2003; Levy 2003), the Nobel Prize ceremonies (Ganetz 2018), the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival (Valck 2007), or discussed the role of cultural awards in general (English 2005). In contrast, this study examines the perhaps lesser known Golden Globe Awards, focusing on how the ceremony, as a live media

H. K. Haastrup (B) University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_5

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event (Dayan and Katz 1992), can be viewed as a kind of cultural criticism (Carroll 2009) carrying a certain authority within the film industry (English 2005; McDonald 2013). The Golden Globe Awards show is the third most watched awards show in the US following the Oscars and the Grammys and is reportedly broadcasted in 167 countries (Golden Globe 2020). The awards show is not organized by the industry but by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HPFA), an association of cultural journalists. The authority of the award lies both in the history of the organization (Dayan and Katz 1992) and in the organization’s tradition of giving awards to more complex artworks compared to awards shows like the Oscars. The HFPA was founded in 1944 at the end of the Second World War to establish “favorable relations and cultural ties between foreign countries and the United States” (Golden Globe 2019). The awards show has been broadcast live since 1964. The HFPA is a much smaller organization than the Academy of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars. In 2018, HFPA had 90 members, representing international journalists working in Hollywood, compared to the Academy’s 6000 members, who represent the Hollywood industry. The 2018 Golden Globe Awards show was watched by 19 million viewers in the US, while the Academy Awards were watched by 24.4 million people in the US in the same year (Variety 2019a, b) Thus, the Golden Globes, as an organization drawing a slightly smaller audience to its event, represents the outsider among awards shows. The HFPA represents experts but also third parties who are neither producers nor audiences (Gillespie 2012). On several occasions over the years, the reputation of the Golden Globe Awards show has been tarnished. Allegations have been made of a lack of transparency in the voting process and of voting corruption in response to perks provided by the film industry (Adam 2011). The authority of the HFPA is therefore not unblemished. In spite of its history of having close ties to the industry, the HFPA has maintained the authority of representing international cultural critics. The organization has also consistently been credited with a keen eye for current and challenging artworks within the Hollywood industry. Thus, while the moral authority of the event may have been harmed on occasion, its symbolic capital and authority seem to have remained intact owing to its consistency in awarding winners outside of the immediate mainstream. The 2018 Golden Globe Awards show took place when the #MeToo movement was at its highest, after widespread allegations of sexual abuse

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had been presented against Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. This provided a particular cultural and political context for the 2018 event. The allegations revealed the scope of the abuse of women in the workplace, both in Hollywood and on an international scale. On January 1, 2018, the founding of the Time’s Up movement was officially announced in an open letter in the New York Times calling for solidarity across all industries in support of women in the workplace (e.g., with support for legal representation) and for equality and parity (Time’s Up Now 2019). In the days leading up to the Golden Globe Awards show, many of the actresses who would be attending announced on their social media profiles that they would be wearing black at the live event. Explanations of “Why I Wear Black” were posted on Instagram and other platforms—for example, it was a statement “for equity and parity [and] for inclusion of all women and marginalized people”—thereby communicating that an activist action would take place at the ceremony (e.g., Dern 2018, Portman 2018). The Time’s Up organization succeeded in framing the event on social media and highlighting the female participants’ black dresses as a political statement. Before the ceremony, the interviews at the red carpet were different from previous years, as the journalists asked questions about Time’s Up, diversity and gender equality in the movie business rather than fashion. This political focus and broader criticisms of gender representation on and off screen in the movie industry became the atypical backdrop for the acceptance speeches, which communicated cultural criticism in relation to specific artworks. The Time’s Up initiative was also welcomed in the scripted parts of the 2018 awards ceremony and the HFPA both incorporated the zeitgeist and supported the activist action. Taking these particular circumstances into account, I will focus on how the 2018 Golden Globes ceremony, as a platform, presented an alternative kind of cultural criticism. The chapter will be guided by the following research questions. How did the show serve as a platform for cultural criticism for the HFPA through the selection of winning films and television series? How were the aesthetic criteria for awarding particular prizes presented by the HFPA president? How do acceptance speeches at awards shows work as a platform for performing cultural evaluation?

Theory This theoretical framework combines theories of criticism (Carroll 2009), the characteristics of alternative types of cultural criticism and the genres used to communicate in digital media culture (Gillespie 2012). Collin’s

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notion of the celebrity serves to shed light on how a film star can function as a critic when sharing specific cultural preferences. In order to understand the status of the awards show as a platform for cultural criticism and a specific kind of authority, English’s notion of “the middle-zone of cultural space” concerning the significance of cultural awards is productive (English 2005, p. 12). In addition, McDonald’s study of the Hollywood industry contributes perspectives on how the authority of the movie awards show is established (McDonald 2013). My characterization of awards shows as live media events is based on Dayan and Katz’s (1992) notion of three scripts for live media events (Dayan and Katz 1992). This framework can tease out the key aspects of how awards shows can communicate an alternative kind of cultural criticism. Elements of Cultural Criticism and Alternative Cultural Critics Awards shows do not present cultural criticism as an elaborate reasoned argument. Nonetheless, elements of cultural criticism do take place within the confines of the awards show. In order to identify specifically how cultural criticism is expressed at an awards show, Nöel Carroll’s definition of criticism is useful (Carroll 2009, p. 7). In the following, the application of Carroll’s definition of criticism is limited to three basic concepts for the analysis of an awards show. The concepts included are reasoned evaluation in the form of aesthetic criteria (Carroll 2009, p. 7); selectionas-evaluation (Carroll 2009, p. 23) and cultural context, which provides the audience with a framework for understanding the artwork (Carroll 2009, p. 45). These three concepts provide the basis for analyzing how cultural criticism is communicated in acceptance speeches and through the selected award winners at the awards show. With a basic definition of what is at stake when it comes to communicating cultural criticism, it is also relevant to characterize where and by whom it is communicated. While Carroll focuses on traditional written criticism in mainstream media, Gillespie (2012) proposes that other media genres can legitimately communicate cultural criticism and that criticism in these media genres in turn can be performed by other cultural actors than regular critics. Concerning the question of who can provide cultural criticism, Gillespie argues that cultural criticism is always provided by a third party. Thus “proper cultural criticism”, he argues, comes neither from the producer of an artwork nor from its audience (Gillespie 2012, pp. 61–62). Thus, according to Gillespie, the critic is a “third party” who

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needs to have a certain amount of autonomy from the market, and this contributes to their perceived authority. However, Gillespie argues that the criticism does not have to be in print or in legacy media but can be found on other platforms such as social media. Following Gillespie’s argument that a wide range of genres can serve as platforms for cultural criticism, I suggest that this can include awards shows as well. A film star who expresses evaluations about cultural products is not usually regarded as a cultural authority or a third party. The celebrity, and by extension the film star, performs a kind of cultural criticism but in a different capacity, as Jim Collins argues in his study of celebrity book clubs (Collins 2010, pp. 22–35). Collins proposes that in book clubs the audience responds favorably to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, who take a personal approach when selecting books to read (Collins 2010, pp. 104– 114). When a celebrity, rather than a cultural critic or an academic, recommends a book, it is relevant in a different way because they are “revealing their own personal tastes” (Collins 2010, p. 83). The audience is interested in the celebrities—not as experts, but because they reveal their personal cultural preferences. The film star can be regarded as a source of inspiration and aspiration (Stacey 1994, p. 151), and this can include their cultural activities, such as selecting and evaluating particular books (Collins 2010, p. 85). When celebrities recommend cultural products that they personally prefer, they can serve as lifestyle guides rather than experts, e.g., as regards literature or film (Lowenthal 2006 [1961], pp. 132–140). We can thus distinguish between the cultural critic as an autonomous expert associated with traditional institutional authority and knowledge, and the film star who evaluates by, for example, selecting literature based on personal taste, and is associated with the authority that stems from their status as a celebrity (Collins 2010, pp. 22, 83). Cultural Awards and Movie Awards Generally speaking, awards are also a recommendation—if a film wins a prestigious award, it is a marker of distinction which is often mentioned on the poster or in reviews. Like written cultural criticism, the cultural award passes judgment on a work of art, but it differs from written criticism in that the award is disclosed and communicated through an event. English argues that the cultural prize works as a kind of cultural exchange, by promoting and evaluating works of art (English 2005, p. 8) in what he calls “a middle-zone of cultural space” (English 2005, p. 12). This

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middle-zone of cultural space is characterized by three distinct functions that are central to our understanding of how cultural awards work: a spectacular event, a specific authority and criteria for aesthetic evaluation (English 2005, p. 54). English emphasizes that the cultural award is an expression of symbolic capital, as defined by Pierre Bourdieu (English 2005, pp. 8–9). First, a spectacular event (English 2005, pp. 51–52) is required to ensure extensive media coverage and disseminate cultural communication, such as a live media event, like an awards show. Second, the organization presenting the award has to have authority that is grounded in a particular field. For films, this could be the Oscars (awarded by the AMPAS) or the Golden Globes (awarded by the HFPA) in the United States, or the Cannes Film Festival in Europe, whose jury is appointed by the Cannes Film Festival Board. Third, the cultural award is based on criteria for aesthetic evaluation depending, again, on the specific field. If we follow Carroll’s (2009) notion of aesthetic criteria in relation to awards shows, we may observe that the Oscars seem to award epic dramas of individual struggle, whereas the Cannes festival prefers films that break new ground for cinematic narratives, often with a political agenda. Thus, the works of art chosen for specific awards often become part of a public discussion of what artistic quality is (English 2005, p. 54). A recent example was the debates about whether Bob Dylan’s lyrics qualified as literature, when he won the Nobel Prize in 2015 (Sheffield 2016). English argues that awards operating in this middle-zone do not measure up to the cultural criticism of actual reviews, with their close readings of individual artworks. However, evaluation by selection is one of the ways in which awards communicate cultural criticism (English 2005, p. 54). English is thus in agreement with Carroll on the importance of evaluation as part of criticism, as argued above. Within the film industry, awards shows are important as middle-zones of cultural space, and they have different levels of prestige. In the US, the Oscars are the most famous awards ceremony, with the Golden Globes a close second, while Cannes is the most important festival in Europe, followed by the festivals in Berlin and Venice. Paul McDonald argues (2013, p. 213–253) that within the creative media industries, and especially within cinema and television, the authority of the awards show depends on four factors: the type of films selected and evaluated, the status of the organization presenting the award, the positioning of the awards ceremony in the annual awards

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schedule and the symbolic value of the ritual of exclusion by industry peers (McDonald 2013, p. 230). Movie awards shows, and the selection-as-evaluation that they make, are frequently contested and discussed. As argued by Janet Wasko, “the artistic and creative merit of these various awards can be disputed endlessly, the promotional and potential financial benefit is less debatable” (Wasko 2003, p. 211). Thus, winning an award can convert symbolic capital into financial gain, start a public discussion about the quality of the award-winning films and be the beginning of more successful career paths. The awards show is thus dependent on cultural visibility as a spectacular event in order to maintain authority and successfully communicate the aesthetic evaluations (English 2005; McDonald 2013). The high visibility of the awards show in this middle-zone of cultural space is central to their authority (ibid.). In addition, according to McDonald (2013), the types of films selected for awards also play a key role in maintaining the authority of awards shows in the industry. Live Media Events and the Three Scripts The awards show is usually a spectacular occasion, and Dayan and Katz’s definition of the live media event sheds light on how one can understand the awards show as a media genre (Dayan and Katz 1992, pp. 143–144). Dayan and Katz present three “scripts” that characterize the live media event—the conquest, the coronation and the contest. The movie awards show as live media event is basically a combination of all three scripts. The contest script concerns the dramatic structure of the event from the lineup of players to the eventual winners. The nominees are presented as “competitors” on the red carpet before entering the auditorium. Each category of awards has a number of nominees but only one winner, and usually the award for “best motion picture” is the most prestigious award and the final award of the evening. The awards show also employs the coronation script, which celebrates tradition. The coronation script is concerned with the ritual of honoring tradition and celebrating continuity (Dayan and Katz 1992, pp. 34–35). In awards shows, the coronation script comes into play, not with a literal crowning, but when the winner is handed over “the sacred symbol” in the shape of the award statue (Dayan and Katz 1992, pp. 34–35). This ritual of handing over the award was staged in a particular way in 2008 when Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar for Best

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Director, because it was his colleagues directors Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg who presented him with the award and thus confirmed that he was finally “deserving” of the sacred symbol (Dayan and Katz 1992). The conquest script is used when traditions are broken or redefined. Dayan and Katz use the moon landing as example of conquering new ground, but within the awards show, the conquest script is understood as a metaphor, as in 2010, when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director and thus broke new ground. The movie awards show is a particular kind of live media event. In the following, I explore how these shows communicate cultural evaluation of movies and how they operate with the three scripts discussed above: the contest, coronation and conquest scripts. Additionally, I consider how movie awards shows exemplify the middle-zone of cultural space, communicate symbolic capital in a spectacular way and communicate their specific authority in a way that is closely connected to their aesthetic evaluations. However, the line of approach of the analysis needs to be addressed first.

Methodology This section presents the methodology of the qualitative analysis, the selection of empirical data and how the theoretical framework is applied in the analysis. The analysis presents a case study (Yin 2009, pp. 40–44) of the live broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards on January 7, 2018 (NBC 2018). The analysis is divided into two main sections. The first part shows how the 2018 Golden Globe Awards Show served as a platform for cultural criticism for the HFPA through the selection of award-winning films and television series and the president’s presented aesthetic criteria. The analysis focuses on how the three scripts of the media event unfolded and how the authority of the Golden Globe Awards is established (Dayan and Katz 1992; McDonald 2013). This part of the analysis also addresses how the selection-as-evaluation is expressed in the choice of award winners in categories of the best film and television series and examines the HFPA president Meher Tatna’s speech. The speech is regarded as an embedded unit of analysis (Yin 2009, p. 46) in the understanding that speeches are an integral element of the awards show, but it is analyzed as a specific genre (Haastrup 2016, p. 415) using a three-part structure, presented below.

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The second part of the analysis concerns how acceptance speeches function as a platform for performing cultural evaluation at an awards show. To shed light on this, I analyze acceptance speeches as a specific genre (Haastrup 2016) that is integral to the event and thus as embedded units of analysis (Yin 2009). There were 14 acceptance speeches by actors at the ceremony but not all included elements of cultural evaluation. In terms of Carroll’s understanding of cultural criticism, only six speeches included cultural evaluation—i.e., aesthetic criteria or the cultural context of an artwork—and two of them were selected for qualitative analysis. The six acceptance speeches were held by Rachel Brosnahan, Sterling K. Brown, Laura Dern, Alison Janney, Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Moss. There was a certain bias toward women addressing issues of cultural criticism rather than men, which might be partly attributed to the Time’s Up initiative being led by female actors. However, the two acceptance speeches selected for analysis were chosen because they represented two different strategies of aesthetic evaluation. Both actors were part of the Time’s Up movement: Nicole Kidman used her personal history and Elizabeth Moss referenced literature. The analytical approach to examining the speeches has a three-part structure focusing on: (a) the authority of the speaker (Collins 2010; Gillespie 2012), (b) the communication of the aesthetic criteria of the media fiction (Carroll 2009) and (c) the cultural context of the media fiction (Carroll 2009). By using the case study as a line of approach and analyzing the speeches as embedded units of analysis, it becomes possible to focus on how and by whom cultural criticism is communicated. Because the awards show as a media text is wide in scope, this analysis can only address a limited selection of the cultural evaluations. However, it can still reveal key examples of how the Golden Globe Awards show is used as a platform for an alternative form of cultural criticism.

Analysis Part I: The Golden Globe Awards Show: Awards as “Selection-as-Evaluation” This part of the analysis first examines how the Golden Globe Awards operates in the middle-zone of cultural space as a live media event and how this is expressed in the HFPA president’s speech presenting the aesthetic criteria. Then, the “selection-as-evaluation” and how it is communicated in the choice of winners is examined, as well as how these choices adhere to the aesthetic criteria of the Golden Globe Awards versus the industry standards for commercial success.

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The Cultural Awards Show as Live Media Event and the Movie Awards Show as Authority The Golden Globe show occupies the middle-zone of cultural space, announcing award winners at a spectacular event and communicating specific aesthetic criteria on different levels during the event itself (English 2005). The Golden Globes primarily nominates films and television series from Hollywood. McDonald argues that because Hollywood is still the world’s leading market for film and television, it has a built-in appeal to global audiences (McDonald 2013). This global appeal of the nominated productions contributes to the authority of the ceremony. The ceremony is also a live media event and combines the competition, coronation and conquest scripts (Dayan and Katz 1992). The contest script at the Golden Globe Awards show is the narrative suspense of the show concerning who wins the prizes, which have a wider range of categories than most movie awards shows because the media fictions eligible for nomination include both films and television shows, and has separate awards for comedy and drama. The final award of the evening is for Best Motion Picture in the Drama category, and in 2018, the winner was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This win was not regarded as a big surprise considering that, during the evening, the film had won three other important awards for best screenplay and two awards for best acting. The ceremony also followed the coronation script, as when the young film actress Saoirse Ronan for the first time was regarded as deserving “the sacred symbol” and won a Golden Globe award for her titular part in Lady Bird. An example of the conquest script was when history was made at the awards show within the HFPA: In 2018, Sterling K. Brown became the first African-American to win the Best Actor in a Television Series award in the Drama category. Likewise, the Time’s Up movement’s activist action qualifies as a conquest that breaks new ground because (almost) all the women wore black dresses. Compared to other awards shows in the US, the Golden Globe Awards show is broadcast in January, relatively early in the awards season, with the Oscars being the final award show of the season, in March (McDonald 2013). Still, the Golden Globe Awards show has a different symbolic capital because it gives an outsider’s perspective on Hollywood, as its winners are selected by an association of foreign cultural journalists.

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The President’s Speech and the Aesthetic Criteria The aesthetic criteria (English 2005) of the Golden Globe Awards show were presented explicitly at the ceremony in a speech by the president of the HFPA, Meher Tatna, who represented the foreign cultural journalists in Hollywood. Tatna gave her speech at the beginning of the ceremony (Tatna 2018), presenting the criteria for the aesthetic evaluation of the awards and the agenda of her organization. First, Tatna engaged with the subject of activist action, placing the awards ceremony in a cultural context. She stated that the HFPA “stand in solidarity with all women and with the Time’s Up organization”, stressing that the agendas of Time’s Up and the HFPA were not at odds with one another. This was perhaps not a surprising statement, but might have been deemed necessary given the fact that Tatna, unlike all the other women present who were wearing black, wore a bright red and gold ball gown. Tatna did, however, wear a “Time’s Up” pin and pointed to it during her speech. Second, adding to her authority, Tatna mentioned that the HFPA had given two grants of $1 million each in 2018 to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (known for its investigation of the so-called Paradise Papers) and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Third, she presented a broadly reasoned argument and aesthetic criteria for the chosen works of art at the awards show: “As artists you bravely tell stories that allow us to see the world with the eyes of another. These stories are our best hope to reflect the world that we want to live in. We are privileged to share your work with the world.” This gives a cultural context to the media fictions that are given awards, and the normative statement suggests that the HFPA prefers to recognize artworks that provide new and different perspectives, address important issues and promote cultural reflection. The president’s speech also emphasized that the HFPA supported the Time’s Up initiative, and as an organization was engaged with the political issues of free speech and democracy by means of grants. In terms of cultural criticism, general aesthetic criteria were presented (Carroll 2009) concerning the kinds of media fictions that the HFPA finds relevant, and a normative indication was given of what media fiction can and should do. Thus, the speech positioned Tatna as an authority, and she succeeded in placing the awards show in a cultural as well as a political context.

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Selection-as-Evaluation: Golden Globe-Winning Films and TV Series in 2018 How did the films chosen for the Best Motion Picture and Best Television Series categories adhere to the criteria of quality presented by the HFPA president in 2018? The “selection-as-evaluation” (Carroll 2009) is exemplified with a focus on the genres, themes and protagonists of the films and television series selected for awards, and the award winners are compared in terms of how they adhere to the industry’s quantitative parameters of box office and viewership figures. The winners chosen for the Best Film and Television categories in 2018 were The Handmaid’s Tale for best TV drama (Hulu 2017–), Big Little Lies for Best Miniseries (HBO 2017–), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel for Best TV Comedy (Amazon, 2017–), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri for Best Motion Picture Drama (Martin MacDonagh 2017) and Lady Bird for Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical (Greta Gerwig 2017). In terms of genre, both motion picture winners were independent comedy dramas, whereas Big Little Lies was a crime melodrama, The Handmaid’s Tale a dystopian science fiction adaptation and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel a comedy drama. Overall, the HFPA’s choices were films and series that diverged from typical Hollywood storytelling. All the winning films had female protagonists, and they all focused on issues of gender and identity from different perspectives. According to the organization Women in Hollywood, 24 per cent of sole protagonists in the one hundred top-grossing Hollywood films in 2017 were women (Women in Hollywood 2017), thus indicating that female-led storytelling is not dominant in mainstream Hollywood films. Thus, these films do exemplify seeing “the world with the eyes of another”, choosing a different path than the mainstream (Tatna 2018). The themes addressed by the winning films and television series ranged from state-sanctioned systemic oppression of women (The Handmaid’s Tale), to fighting gender stereotypes in the late 1950s (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ), a multi-protagonist film about spousal abuse (Big Little Lies ), a coming-of-age mother and daughter story (Lady Bird) and the story of a mother seeking justice for her daughter’s unsolved murder (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). All the winning entries addressed topical, historical or potentially complex ways of “reflecting the world” (Tatna 2018) by way of their chosen genres, themes and protagonists.

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The Industry’s Quality Criteria Vs. Award Winners From the commercial perspective of the Hollywood industry, these films and TV series have been quite successful within their genres outside the immediate mainstream. The two independent films, Lady Bird and Three Billboards, respectively, earned $48 million and $54 million domestically according to Box Office MoJo, making them very successful. Both winning films were placed firmly at the low end but still in the top hundred (Box Office MoJo 2019). Viewership information is not available for The Handmaid’s Tale or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, because neither of the streaming services, Hulu and Amazon, make that information public. The only available viewership data for TV series was for HBO’s Big Little Lies, which had 1.7 million viewers per episode in the first season (Hollywood Reporter 2019). This is fairly successful for a niche TV series on cable. The Handmaid’s Tale, however, stands out because during 2017 the show became an unprecedented visual cultural reference: Women dressed up in the handmaid’s uniform of long red capes and white bonnets when they turned out on marches and in demonstrations against new restrictions on women’s reproductive rights in the United States (e.g., New York Times, 2017). To sum up, all the winning media fictions were examples of the general aesthetic criteria for evaluating artworks presented by the HFPA in the president’s speech (“to see the world with the eyes of another”). As such, this was an example of “selection-as-evaluation” (Carrol 2009). Both winning films were examples of successful independent cinema, and all the winning television series were niche TV series made for cable television. The winning films and television series at the Golden Globe Awards were chosen by cultural journalists (and decided upon through voting), and they were characterized by being outside of the mainstream, being either produced for cable television with niche audiences or not qualifying as major box office successes. By drawing on the expertise of cultural journalists who are “third parties” outside the industry (Gillespie 2012), the Golden Globe Awards can be regarded as an institutional version of cultural criticism but placed in the middle-zone of cultural space. The 2018 Golden Globes Awards show succeeded as a spectacular event (English 2005), attracting a US audience of 19 million. It was also broadcast around the world and gained strong exposure in the cultural public sphere due to the presence of the film stars and the Time’s Up action.

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Analysis Part II. The Golden Globe Awards Show: Acceptance Speeches and Cultural Evaluation The second section of the analysis focuses on the two acceptance speeches by award winners Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Moss and how they represent two different ways of performing cultural evaluation. In the awards show, the acceptance speech is included in the scripted part of the event, and the recipient is allowed a few minutes to speak. However, the speech itself is unscripted (even though nominees are asked to prepare a statement in case they should win). When the winner is announced, we see the sometimes very emotional reaction of the winner (and the losers), which is part of the attraction of the live media event—these moments of emotional outbursts in real time. On stage, the award is presented to the winner by other film stars (often former Golden Globe winners themselves), who physically hand over the statuette to the recipients, thereby performing the ritual of inclusion into this privileged club of successful winners (Dayan and Katz 1992, p. 43). The acceptance speeches usually include the following stock elements (Haastrup 2016, p. 415): thanking the organization (the HFPA), family, colleagues and fellow nominees and usually adding an anecdote or even a political statement. The two speeches selected for analysis are the ones using the moment to supplement the “stock elements” of the genre with a specific cultural evaluation by presenting aesthetic criteria and placing the art work in a cultural context (Carroll 2009). The celebrity’s personal cultural preferences in general are often communicated in other celebrity genres, such as magazine interviews and portraits (Lowenthal 2006 [1961]) and on personal social media profiles (Marwick 2015). This cultural criticism, however, is presented under specific circumstances (the awards show as a live media event), a particular moment of recognition (the acceptance speech) and, most importantly, the film stars address specific aesthetic criteria and provide the artwork with a cultural context. But as we shall see, they use two different strategies of cultural evaluation—the personal history strategy (Nicole Kidman) and the artwork-as-reference strategy (Elizabeth Moss).

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The Personal History Strategy: “My Mama Was an Advocate for the Women’s Movement” The personal history strategy is used in Nicole Kidman’s acceptance speech to connect the aesthetic evaluation to her personal history and to the character in the media fiction for which she was given the award (Kidman 2018). Nicole Kidman is a celebrity of merit (Rojek 2001, p. 17), a well-established film star known for her roles in Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge and The Hours. In 2018, Kidman won a Golden Globe in the category of Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Miniseries Drama) for her role in Big Little Lies (HBO 2018). In her speech, Kidman connected her own family history to her professional accomplishments (and implicitly referenced the Time’s Up movement), saying, “My mama was an advocate for the women’s movement when I was growing up and because of her I am standing here” (Kidman 2018). In this way, the cultural context was addressed. Later in the speech, Kidman described her character in Big Little Lies as a victim of spousal abuse, representing a social problem, thus praising the ability of media fictions to address social issues (cultural context). Furthermore, she emphasized that it matters how characters are portrayed on screen (aesthetic criteria): “And this character that I play represents something that is at the center of our conversation right now: abuse. […] we can elicit change through the stories we tell and the way that we tell them” (Kidman 2018). Kidman’s cultural evaluation is normative because it is deemed relevant that “the stories we tell” can “elicit change”, and she succeeds in making a connection between the media fictions that she is being awarded for and the cultural context of Time’s Up. To sum up: In Kidman’s acceptance speech, her authority is based on a combination of her position as a well-known film star and her new status as a Golden Globe winner. Her aesthetic criteria concerned the depiction of characters and storytelling, and this included connecting Big Little Lies with both personal and political issues, from her mother to Time’s Up. By suggesting that media fictions have the potential to provide us with new perspectives and reflections on society, Kidman supported the aesthetic criteria presented by Meher Tatna. The cultural context of Big Little Lies includes references to the revelations of abuse addressed by #MeToo and the Time’s Up movement.

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The Artwork-as-Reference Strategy: “We no Longer Live in the Gaps Between Stories” In her acceptance speech, Elizabeth Moss used a very different strategy to communicate her cultural evaluation: She addressed issues of representation using the artwork-as-reference strategy. In her speech, Moss read a literary quotation from Margaret Atwood concerning the representation of women in fiction, as a tribute to the author. Like Kidman, Moss has authority as a celebrity of merit (Rojek 2001), known primarily for her television work in West Wing, Mad Men and Top of The Lake. At the Golden Globe show, she was given the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in the category of Best Television Series, (Drama) for her role in The Handmaid’s Tale (Moss 2018). In her speech, Moss dedicated her award to the book’s author, novelist Margaret Atwood, and to “artists like her who dare to tell stories”, with a quote from the original novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood 1985): “We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gap between stories.” Moss continued: “We no longer live in the gaps between stories, we are the stories in print and we are writing the story ourselves” (Moss 2018). Reading the quote out loud as a tribute to Atwood also implies that Moss is familiar with the original novel, demonstrating her interest and dedication to her work as an actress. The quote was also used to contextualize The Handmaid’s Tale and to highlight the fact that several of the award-winning films and TV series of 2018 were atypical because they have female protagonists, are produced by women and tell stories about women. In addition, the quote also had a normative agenda: It worked to set out aesthetic criteria, evaluating women’s stories in particular as relevant, and gave a cultural context to the historical tradition of the limited representation of women in media fictions. Moss thereby reinforced her celebrity status and explicitly promoted aesthetic criteria (storytelling with women characters) as markers of quality. Rather than choosing to connect the award to her personal experience, Moss demonstrated her knowledge and appreciation of literature and thus indirectly shared her taste for high-brow, topical literature. The aesthetic criteria are communicated by proxy (Atwood) but are also a way for Moss to show her own cultural capital. The cultural context is presented when Moss celebrates Atwood as an artist and by the quote “we are writing the stories ourselves”, celebrating women scriptwriters in the film industry and female-led narratives.

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Thereby, Moss also supports the HFPA president’s aesthetic criteria and the Time’s Up agenda. Strategies of Evaluation: When Film Stars Share Their Taste in Movies This analysis of the cultural evaluation expressed in the two acceptance speeches demonstrates that the award winners promote certain aesthetic criteria concerning media fictions when they argue that telling stories with complex women characters is a marker of quality. However, these aesthetic criteria are also communicated when the award winners emphasize the importance of targeting social issues, such as abuse (the character in Big Little Lies ), and the importance of gender equality and the representation of women in media fictions more generally (the quote from The Handmaid’s Tale). The two acceptance speeches represent aesthetic evaluations in accordance with those presented by the HFPA: seeing world with “the eyes of another”, but from two different perspectives. However, in the year of Time’s Up activist action at the Golden Globe Awards show, both acceptance speeches are perhaps exceptions to the rule because they include aesthetic criteria and place the media fictions for which they are awarded in a cultural and a political context. Both celebrities address the issue of gender equality, but do so in different ways. They frame equality concerning the representation of women on screen as an aesthetic criterion and address social issues such as abuse (Kidman) and fictions with female leads (Moss). They also both address gender equality as a broader critique of the industry (cultural context) and voice the need for more women behind the camera and writing the scripts. These strategies of evaluation are communicated at the Golden Globes—an organization of cultural journalists, albeit with a slightly blemished authority, but still providing an outsider’s view of Hollywood regarding media fictions. In 2018, the Golden Globe became a platform for a different kind of celebrity activism with the Time’s Up action. Time’s Up was not a typical case of celebrity philanthropy, because the women in the movement had all experienced gender inequality themselves working in Hollywood. Time’s Up was a critique of the working conditions for women in the film industry and was about standing in solidarity with other women and addressing gender politics on a structural level (Farrell 2019). By dressing up in black, both actresses were also examples of celebrity activists championing equality, at the same time as they were recognized for their work. In that sense, the two stars were not, by any

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standard, “third parties” or “outside the industry” (Gillespie 2012). They both used their celebrity status to take part in a political action at the awards show, and they both benefitted from the attention they received as winners at the top of the cultural hierarchy (Krieken 2012, p. 50). They used the Golden Globe Awards show as platform to communicate their taste in media fictions (Collins 2010), in particular concerning the representation of women and social issues. Both used this live moment of recognition as an opportunity to voice their cultural evaluations (with explicit criteria and contexts) and thus to reinterpret the genre of the acceptance speech as a different kind of platform for cultural criticism in the public sphere.

Conclusion This analysis of the Golden Globe Awards show as a platform for cultural criticism has been guided by three research questions. The first question focused on how the Golden Globe Awards show as a live media event can serve as a platform for cultural criticism. The analysis demonstrated that the awards show functioned as a platform on different levels. First, the show had gained authority as a well-established spectacular event in the middle-zone of cultural space, and this was done through the “selectionas-evaluation” process of niche films and complex television series. The award winners were revealed and presented at a ceremony and broadcast as a live media event combining three scripts. The script of contest was expressed by creating suspense as to which film or television series would win awards, and the coronation script confirmed the tradition of choosing complex storytelling as winners: Big Little Lies, Lady Bird, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and The Handmaid’s Tale. The conquest script was present when Sterling K. Brown won the award for best actor in television drama as the first African-American. The analysis of the Golden Globe Awards show as platform for cultural criticism was thus an example of Carroll’s concept of selection-as-evaluation (2009). Second, the aesthetic criteria for choosing award winners had been communicated from the beginning of the event by the HFPA president in her speech as “looking with the eyes of another”. The criteria were in turn reflected in the chosen award-winning niche film and complex television series. Overall, the analysis of the Golden Globe awards show demonstrated how the ceremony as a media event served as a platform

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where an alternative cultural criticism with specific aesthetic criteria could be announced live and later confirmed with the selection-as-evaluation of the chosen award winners. The third research question was concerned with how the acceptance speeches can serve as platform for cultural evaluations at an awards show. The analysis showed that the acceptance speeches were expressions of the award winners’ personal cultural taste using aesthetic criteria and placing the media fictions, The Handmaid’s Tale and Big Little Lies, in cultural contexts. The two award winners did this dressed in black, thereby showing their support for the Time’s Up movement in their visual performance. The analysis of the acceptance speeches looked at two different strategies for cultural evaluation within this genre: the personal history strategy (Kidman) and the artwork-as-reference strategy (Moss). Both were shown to break new ground within the acceptance speech genre because each strategy demonstrated that film stars can provide an alternative kind of live cultural criticism in this situation. This case study has demonstrated how the awards show can communicate cultural criticism by applying a theoretical framework and examining how the awards show uses selection-as-evaluation and how the embedded units of analysis such as the speeches can express aesthetic criteria and provide cultural context. The conclusion of the analysis suggests that that the framework can be relevant for studies of other awards shows too, because it can contribute to a further understanding of how specifically these alternative ways of communicating cultural criticism are expressed. First, by recognizing and analyzing how new actors, e.g., celebrities with different kinds of authority because they are not “third parties” can still evaluate culture using concepts of traditional criticism, but expressed with individual strategies (Carroll 2009, Gillespie 2012). Second, by recognizing how new genres within the middle-zone of cultural space can communicate evaluation by selection, guide the audience by communicating specific aesthetic criteria at a live media event and succeed in creating debate in the cultural public sphere (English 2005). In 2018, critics and stars aligned at the Golden Globe awards show because both the HFPA and the award winners seemed to prefer complex media fictions told “with the eyes of another”. The stars had gender equality on the agenda, both in terms of characters and representation on screen and in their critique of the Hollywood industry. In addition, the HFPA critics awarded the main prizes to female-led media fictions addressing gender and identity from different perspectives. The Time’s

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Up movement made the 2018 awards show an atypical event and changed the conversation in both scripted and unscripted speeches compared to previous awards shows. The Time’s Up action presented the awards show with a particular context and perhaps even legitimated the strong focus on gender equality. The Golden Globe Awards is an internationally broadcast live media event and thus a known marker of distinction, guiding the audience when they choose a film or a television series to watch. In a contemporary media culture where “everyone can be a critic” (Frey and Sayad 2015), the movie awards show provides a platform for communicating an alternative kind of cultural criticism. In 2018, the Golden Globe Awards communicated cultural criticism both in the form of new voices, as in the film stars’ acceptance speeches as part of the Time’s Up movement, and through selection-as-evaluation, by awarding media fictions with complex storytelling and female protagonists. The odds were in the favor of the stars and Golden Globes when they aligned in the middle-zone of cultural space.

References Adam, G. (2011). Golden Globe Awards Tarnished by Allegations of Corruption. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/ news/golden-globe-awards-tarnished-by-allegations-of-corruption-2185198. html. Atwood, M. (1985). The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart. Box-Office MoJo. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.boxofficemojo.com/ yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2017&sort=wwgross&order=ASC&p=. htm. Carroll, N. (2009). On Criticism. London: Routledge. Collins, J. (2010). Bring on the Books for Everybody. How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1992). Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dern, L. (2018). https://www.instagram.com/p/BdqbKw4HyfF/. Accessed October 24, 2019. English, J. (2005). The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Values. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press. Farrell, N. (Ed.). (2019). Introduction: “Getting Busy with the Fizzy”— Johansson, Soda Stream, and Oxfam: Exploring the Political Economics of

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Celebrity. In N. Farrell (Ed.), The Political Economy of Celebrity Activism. London: Routledge. Frey, M., & Sayad, C. (Eds.). (2015). Introduction: Film Criticism in a Digital Age. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Ganetz, H. (2018). The Nobel Banquet Broadcast as Co-construction. Nordicom Review., 39(2), 111–126. Gillespie, R. (2012). The Art of Criticism in the Age of Interactive Technology. International Journal of Communication, 6(12), 56–75. Golden Globe. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.goldenglobes.com/aboutHFPA0. Golden Globe. (2020). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ Globe_Awards. Haastrup, H. K. (2008). One Re-Enchanted Evening: The Academy Awards as a Mediated Ritual within Celebrity Culture. Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook, 6(1), 127–142. Haastrup, H. K. (2016). Framing the Oscars Live: Analysing Celebrity Culture and Cultural Intermediaries in the Live Broadcast of the Academy Awards on Danish Television. Celebrity Studies, 7 (3), 412–418. Hollywood Reporter. 2019. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter. com/live-feed/big-little-lies-finishes-series-high-viewership-1226350. Kellner, D. (2003). Media Spectacle. London: Routledge. Kidman, N. (@nicolekidman). 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BsHx2dclkLE. Krieken, R. V. (2012). Celebrity Society. London: Routledge. Levy, E. (2003). All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards. London & New York: Continuum. Lowenthal, L. (2006) [1961]. The Triumph of Mass Idols: The Celebrity Culture Reader. In P. D. Marshall (Ed.), The Celebrity Culture Reader (pp. 124–152). London: Routledge. McDonald, P. (2013). Hollywood Stardom. London: Wiley Blackwell. Marwick, A. E. (2015). Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy. Public Culture, 27 (1 (75)): 137–160. Moss, E. (@elizabethmossofficial). (2018). Retrieved from https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=eQAFwA7Xmzc. NBC. (2018). 75th Golden Globes. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ playlist?list=PLGj3_S-PJanPkgbY5jqxXIun783M_qY1u. Sheffield, R. (2016). Why Bob Dylan Deserves His Nobel Prize. Retrieved from RollingStone.com. Stacey, J. (1994). Star Gazing. Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. London: Routledge. Portman, N. (@natalieportman). 2018. Retrieved from https://www.instagram. com/p/BdqJzj5hCfh/.

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Rojek, C. (2001). Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books. Tatna, M. (2018). Meher Tatna’s Speech. Retrieved from https://www.facebook. com/watch/?v=1884514108257265. Time’s Up Now. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.timesupnow.com/about_ times_up. Valck, M. D. (2007). Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephelia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Variety. (2019a). Retrieved from https://variety.com/2019/TV/news/goldenglobes-ratings-2019–1203100895/. Variety. (2019b). Retrieved from https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/oscars-rat ings-2019-1203144417/. Yin, R. K. (2009). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Cambridge: Sage. Wasko, J. (2003). How Hollywood Works. London: Sage. Women in Hollywood. (2017). https://womenandhollywood.com/resources/ statistics/2017-statistics/.

CHAPTER 6

The Dual Strategic Persona: Emotional Connection, Algorithms and the Transformation of Contemporary Online Reviewers P. David Marshall

Introduction Digital culture has produced a new information dualism in the contemporary moment. On one side—through the structure of our engagement, the regularity of our use and our general patterns of sharing online— we have collectively produced a level of data unfathomable in previous cultures. The conversion of our online activities into data aggregates that are bought and sold for the purposes of producing new streams of information that are structured back to our devices and applications through a kind of personalization more or less describes a new promotional culture organized around what appears to be a very sophisticated system of datacultivation advertising. On the other side—through these same applications which include Facebook, WeChat, Weibo, Instagram, Snapchat,

P. D. Marshall (B) Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_6

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Google’s variety of applications and search devices including YouTube, Twitter and a number of others—there is an expectation that we curate our individual selves for group-sharing and shaping our relationship to others through information and sharing of personal and collective news itself. In a pervasive and pandemic way, something is developing that a particular direction of current research into online culture has identified as persona (Marshall et al. 2020): A pandemic of billions are engaged in constructing a mediatized identity that is transforming information foundationally as it is being channeled through complex—and quite different from the past—relations of trust and emotional connection. Through a particular study of online entertainment reviewing, this chapter explores how a much wider new strategic persona is developing in contemporary culture. The “intercommunication industries” (Marshall 2016) have tactically advanced this second strategic persona by fostering a massive flow of interpersonal communication. The notquite-private and shared information and communication generated by online users and managed by the major online and platform-based corporations is now linked to a circuit of data-mining that allows corporations/companies/services to communicate directly in some way back to individuals. This new strategic, data-exchanged persona is in direct contrast to the curated strategic persona developed for particular ends and collective connection by billions of individuals through these same online platforms of social media sharing. Cheney-Lippold’s (2017) use of Deleuze’s concept of the “dividual” (1992, p. 5) is used in this study to help define how there is a clear separation of knowledge and curation between our everyday construction of ourselves online and its reconstruction in algorithms for commercial online trade by the major powerhouses such as Google and Facebook. There are many effects of this new and increasingly visible tension in contemporary culture—what could be accurately described as a cultural schizophrenia or dual public personality disorder where we are all learning and negotiating these dual formations of our online persona. What follows is an investigation of the way that the production of entertainment-related commentary, reviews and critiques online is increasingly defined by a complex relationship and intersection with this world of dual strategic persona as reviewers negotiate the new instability of contemporary information and formation of knowledge driven by these two strategic personas at play. The chapter concentrates on contemporary online film critics and reviewers and how they negotiate and curate their relation to these dual

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strategic personas operating in online culture with themselves and their “audiences” and “readers”. To understand this new review culture which shapes the flow of opinion, information and culture, the study draws its reviewers from and analysis of the popular website platform, Rotten Tomatoes , a site which focuses entirely on entertainment media review. Through a case study of a predominantly text-based reviewer and a second case study of two predominantly YouTube-based reviewers who are all visible on Rotten Tomatoes , this study is an investigation of how the production of their online reviews deals with their audience’s dual personas and their own dual personas. Because reviewers are part of this intercommunication industry of sharing identities, they are consciously and pragmatically negotiating their own dual personas, and this negotiation is imbricated in both their reviews and the way they circulate their public selves online. Online entertainment reviewers are analyzed in this study directly in terms of how they deal with these dual personas online world in the following way: 1. First, reviewers work very hard to construct their own personas for their audience and are very aware that their identities are linked to their followers’ curation of their own online personas in this elaborate world of shared curation; 2. Second, these same reviewers are also highly conscious of the conversion of themselves into a numerically aggregated, data-fied and ultimately algorithmic persona and how this algorithmic and aggregated structure of online identity can shift reviewer and reviews themselves. The new review culture then is producing two clearly dueling personas: the reviewer persona and the algorithmic/aggregated reviewer persona that serve as a cultivator and curator of the many other algorithmic personas that are generated as further versions of their followers, readers/viewers and fans. It is sometimes easy to presume that everything about online culture is new and different; but like any cultural phenomenon it builds from the past. To better understand the similarities and differences of these new dual personas in review, it is useful to work through how past structures of review connect and resemble these current online models.

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Shaping Information … and Opinion and Commentary---A Brief History Historically, cultural critique and review have found a number of homes and loci of activity, and some of these past styles have parallels to this new generation of opinion, commentary and information and less connection to more recent reviewing cultures. For instance, the development of English language magazines emerging by the mid-nineteenth century was very much attached to club-like associations of readers which can be likened to the followers of what are now called “influencers” on various social media platforms. Predating this and perhaps defining the organization of reviewers and related “followers” and audiences was the café culture from the 18th to the nineteenth century. Café culture has been linked famously by scholars such as Jurgen Habermas as a place of political debate, where an emerging public sphere gained visibility and formed a new “bourgeois” identity and engagement with culture (Habermas 1991). As much as café culture was linked to politics and a new reformation of a “representative public”, it was equally a site for the emergence of other forms of critique and study of popular cultural forms as well (Cowan 2008, 2016). Cowan’s work identifies a particular development of clearly new genres that he categorizes as news writing and life-writing that paralleled this urban café culture. The writing, reading and discussion of these new genres of reflection and review of public performances and presentations generated a new public self—a form of celebrity—that articulated a different mediated and mediatized constitution of the presentation of the self publicly (Cowan 2016). Antoine Lilti similarly claims that the eighteenth century was actually the invention of “celebrity” and thereby defined a new circulation of a public and visible self (Lilti 2017). This new generation of public selves is not identical to the contemporary construction via social media; nonetheless, it identifies how media are platforms for the transformation of the public self and ways in which new constructions of review and discussion have emerged in prior historical periods and led to a visible navigation of a parallel public sphere. By the late nineteenth century, patterns of review and the identification of performers, plays and musicals were a core element of a commercial press both in its everyday construction through newspapers, but also in book publishing (Hughes 2017; Faulk 2004). A small cadré of reviewers in major papers and magazines more or less served as one of the key channels for interpreting and critiquing popular culture and the creative arts

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more generally. By the early decades of the twentieth century, new media technologies generated a further shift in the constitution of public identity through film, radio and eventually television that produced a different accentuation of public comportment. Reviews and advertisements in the form of movie trailers and radio ads circulated around popular cultural productions with a tighter temporal relation to these cultural commodities. By the middle of the twentieth century, the relatively non-critical program called the talk show was one of the privileged ways in which a performance could be celebrated and promoted through the talk show host’s interviews with relevant stars and celebrities related to the cultural production (Munson 1993). Recent related work has identified this pattern of media as a “representative media and cultural regime” (Marshall 2010, p. 38; 2014, p. 160; Marshall et al. 2020, p. 241). Cultural commentary and critique were still predominantly organized in this structure even into the late twentieth century. Reviewers and commentators over the twentieth century became more clearly identified and, in a sense, celebrified (Driessens 2013) through their prominence in film, television and print culture that allowed their names to be circulated widely. Collectively, publics and cultures knew who to turn to and deferred to these critics and reviewers—along with related mediators such as talk show hosts on radio and television. These highly visible commentators represented the interpretive and critical debates around cultural productions and were thus part of this larger system of mediatized representation that defined what became known as public debate. By the latter third of the twentieth century, this form of cultural power and influence in the realm of cultural commentary had naturalized and normalized—still generally divided by language use but fundamentally and remarkably similar in form and structure throughout most of the world (Titchener 2006).

Presentational Media and Cultural Regime and Its Restructure of Commentary This structure of a representative media and cultural regime in the twentyfirst century has gradually reformed into what has been effectively called a “presentational media and cultural regime” (Marshall 2006, pp. 636– 637; 2010, p. 5; 2014, p. 260; Marshall et al. 2020, pp. 239, 241). Cultural critique and commentary have spread through our various online

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platforms and sites; but it is far from replicating the previous regime. A new ethos of pandemic participation has led to a parallel shift in cultural critique and commentary. Opinion columns and reviews still emerge strongly from the legacy media of the twentieth century—television, radio and print—but even the leading commentators connected to these media have reformed their identities to ensure that their comments and discussions move through the world of online culture and its structure of sharing. To capture this transformation of cultural commentary, there are several useful conceptual categories that help identify this differentiation and what follows is an analysis through the lenses of these categories.

Pandemic Persona: The Privilege of the Self in Its Real Ordinariness Online commentary has emerged from the many platforms now generally related to social media. At their core, these platforms as Gillespie’s work has underlined (2010, 2018) are designed to produce ways in which individuals can express themselves and share with others their everyday lives. Legacy media produced a clear delineation between those who exhibit and those who consume what is exhibited. In classic media theory, this differentiation would be the obvious divide between the media producers and the audience (McQuail 1987). In the era of social media, this divide is blurred through a different process and impetus behind the distribution of content. Although it may seem obvious, legacy media in any particular culture or region may have been dominated by a handful of public and private corporations. Social media in terms of its apparent structure of production is actually produced and distributed by billions. Hootsuite, a curator site, identifies that in January 2019, “57% of the world’s population is now connected to the Internet” and 3.484 billion are active social media users (Hootsuite 2019, para. 1) with an average worldwide use of eight social media platforms by each of those individuals to express themselves in some way (Hootsuite 2019). Each platform does generate distinct predispositions that are actually differently constituted in different regions of the world. For instance, the popular social media platform Twitter is often used for political commentary and a favorite for intellectuals in the English-speaking world (although this hardly constitutes its wealth of activity); but in Japan, it is the leading and most widely used form of social media across age groups and demographics (Neely 2018) and does not produce that kind of particular social media pathway.

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What this means is that the roughly 3.5 billion active platform users worldwide are generating some kind of content regularly and often. Critical commentary plays in this realm of pandemic online persona and its forms of connection. Across platforms there is an everydayness in the presentation of critique that often even the most followed commentators reach for. It is a discourse of what is best described as ordinariness because of this structure of massive sharing and, technically at least, an equality of any person/entity who has an account on a platform. Hou’s study of influencers links this move to ordinariness back to legacy media’s now almost 30-year generation of reality television and Graeme Turner’s concept of the “demotic” turn (Turner 2010) across media as they respond to this sense of wider online participation emerging and expanding around older media (Hou 2019, pp. 548–549). Our contemporary online world of critical commentary produces a similar parallel voice where anyone reading or watching the performance or presentation of online cultural critique can see an appeal to authenticity in their style of presentation that is both more folksy and interpersonal than the old broadcast structures of distance and reach.

The Aggregated Critic Persona Versus the Critic/Reviewer Persona: Rotten Tomatoes’ Dual Personas What is difficult to discern in this new culture of mediatized (See Hjarvard 2009) online persona is something that would be quite simple in legacy media and its hierarchical systems of representation: who is a reviewer/critic. Via various platforms there are identifiable “reviewers” and “cultural critics”; however, in any traditional genre—film, television, video, music and written fiction—these may number in the 100s of thousands in the English language and equal relative numbers in other major international languages via a variety of social media platforms, streaming services, websites and related podcasts. Some may have taken on the role of reviewer temporarily. Others get linked to ranking platforms for films organized by sites such as Rotten Tomatoes . Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregator of film and television reviews title-by-title and is owned by Fandango, a major movie ticket provider through its own website and other services and will serve as our guiding pathway into this transformed and complex online reviewing culture with fans and the reviewer personas it cultivates.

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It is important to further explain the elaborate new commercial structures of aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes to get a sense of the transformed interconnections between producers and reviewers and how the critical persona is dually transformed. Fandango, currently the owner of Rotten Tomatoes , is itself owned by Comcast, a telecommunications giant and also the second largest video service provider in the United States. Rotten Tomatoes works under this structure, and before its acquisition by Fandango in 2016, it was actually owned by Warner Brother’s Entertainment, a major entertainment conglomerate. Rotten Tomatoes had established its authenticity and perhaps even its sense of engagement and participation before this play of large commercial media entities. From 1998 to 2004, Rotten Tomatoes was originally managed and run by genre-driven film fans that were former University of California—Berkeley students in the San Francisco tech-scene (Barnes 2017). By 2004, it was drawn into the tech-world of venture capital and eventually more closely connected to entertainment corporations when it was bought by News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media. Its connection to regular visitors has grown over those years, from a 2009 figure of 1.9 million unique visitors per month to numbers that have ranged around 14 million per month by 2017 (Barnes 2017). Having this large direct pool of readers would generate considerable impact on the film industry. Augmenting this impact is Rotten Tomatoes ’ direct and visible connection to a major ticket distributor online (Fandango) that services 28,000 American film theaters and some internationally: Its reviews are posted as people buy tickets online for each of these theaters. This incredible visibility of their aggregated scoring of reviews has made Rotten Tomatoes one of the major influencers related to the success of a film (Barnes 2017). Their system of constructing an aggregated score from reviews is called Tomatometer which produces a numeric score and an icon that identifies how “Fresh” or “Rotten” a particular film is. When at least 60% of aggregated critic reviews are positive, the film receives a “Fresh” tomato rating. When fewer than 60% of aggregated reviews are positive (or more than 40% are negative), the film receives a “Rotten” green splat rating. Once a film is released, Rotten Tomatoes feature a second score based on audience reviews. The Verified Audience Score is aggregated from reviews from audiences who actually see the film, and this second score is also listed on ticket-buying sites as well as on Rotten Tomatoes itself. Both of these categories, reviewer/critic-based aggregate and the viewer-based aggregate, are simplified into identifiable icon of value that

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in themselves construct a new generation of reviewing categories: Check marks are used to verify audience reviewers have actually seen the film; an over-turned popcorn barrel identifies an audience rating of less than 60%; and a certified fresh logo with the percentage listed by reviewers and audience collective ratings are all used regularly on the website in their calibration of results. All of this elaborate aggregating of reviews generates an algorithmiclike reading of reviewers organized by the team of employees at Rotten Tomatoes as they work to ensure that the final status is validated. Reviewers are grouped into a patterned structure of value, and their qualitative reading of the particular film generates a parallel configuration of their rating. Ultimately, reviewers are redefined into a collective persona. They are converted into a collective emotional configuration of their film critiques aligned to a representative icon of a numerical score. In effect, critics disappear in this aggregation as their reviews become the way that they move into this new online collective world of comparison and ratings. When this “collective mediatization” (Lundby 2013; Marshall et al. 2020, p. 69) of identity is aggregated, we see the conversion of agency into a formation of value. Agency moves from the individual to its cultural and economic value as an aggregate score. The personalization of a review disappears into an aggregate emotive calibration that is used to work out the connection to users of the site. Critic aggregation then is a sophisticated intermediary of emotional connection to even larger groups online. As audience ratings accumulate, their identity in this aggregation parallels the audience itself as it is similarly aggregated. They parallel one half of the contemporary “dividual” (Deleuze 1992; Cheney-Lippold 2017) of online culture: The critical aggregation is a usable formation of identity to be shared across online culture to develop other emotional attachments and connections. These algorithmic identities become the reconfigured public self that allow for the circulation of a newly focused version of the self through identity/mood markers for auction into specific advertising and promotional campaigns in this elaborate and personalized attention economy. Nonetheless, real film and television critics exist in the aggregation structure, and their reviews are locatable on the Rotten Tomatoes website. Their professional personas as critics are thus closely linked to what they have written and the style in which they write or present their reviews. What we can see is then the second persona that is manifested in the new formation of the critical review of film and television in this instance. Digging into this second persona, from aggregate to individual, also

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helps reveal the way that reviewers are constantly working on producing an idiosyncratic, personalized and personal persona where some sort of visible portfolio of their professional identity can be discerned. In 2018, the number of approved reviewers that were aggregated but also visible on Rotten Tomatoes was 4400. Responding to a recent report that their reviewers were skewed “white” and “male”, Rotten Tomatoes added a further 200 “Tomato meter approved” critics (Lang 2018; Barnes 2018). Even though the original pool of 4400 reviewers seems overwhelming for any reader, they were drawn primarily from traditional legacy media. Their adjustment of reviewers was at least to acknowledge the need to diversify and relate to smaller audiences, but also as an adjustment reflecting that valuable critics were actually online and not necessarily attached to media companies, even in their online reconfiguration. Podcasters, bloggers and YouTube reviewers were included; but in order for any of these reviewers to be included in Rotten Tomatoes ’ collection and calibration of reviewers, each accepted reviewer had to meet minimum metrics requirements as well as other key values in the critics criteria. These reviewers’ audience-size metrics thresholds are the new ways that audience value is assessed on the platform and other aggregator platforms. For an individual video reviewer, the base criterion is an active series of reviews over 2 years and over 30,000 subscribers (Rotten Tomatoes 2019). It should be added that reviews are visible on Rotten Tomatoes . However, to actually find a review by a critic requires a series of at least nine steps before you can get to individual reviews. From promotional billboard, to a movie’s trailer and further scrolling through tickets and movie times, related film images and into a specific area called Movie Info, the search for reviewers is buried massively from the visibility of the aggregates scores. The ninth step of this series of scrolls and clicks gets the searcher for the first time to something related to the reviewers in a banner entitled “Critic Reviews” for a specific film such as Ad Astra (released 20 September 2019). This particular section is composed of a series of 12 boxes with one-line quotes from reviews. Each of these identifies the critic by name and publication. In this case of Ad Astra critiques, reviewers are listed from The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other legacy media sources, and the first six are labeled Top Critic. These are followed by six others, three of which are also from legacy media entities and another three from relatively prominent online sites. There is a link to the full review in each of these boxes, and when clicked upon, the review-searcher is taken to the actual website of the news source. At the very bottom of

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this section is a link to something entitled “View all Critic Reviews” where it identifies that this film has generated 233 reviews so far. This opens a new Rotten Tomatoes list of the critics all with their quotable one-lines and their individualized tomato icon of the film: either a ripe tomato or a green splat. From this process, one can see that the aggregated scores are clearly more significant than the reviews generated by the critics for any browser. The individual persona is somewhat buried in this process: They are not invisible, but it does require some effort to discover them as individuals. Top Critics are clearly privileged along with top legacy media. To get an even better sense of how an individual critic negotiates this new pathway to professional critic persona in contemporary online culture, requires one further step of delving into the elaborate structures and efforts that are now performed. Through quite different case studies of film critics, what follows is an attempt to capture the dimensions of the film critic persona that online culture has now regularized and naturalized.

Making the Online Critical Persona---The Case 1: “Individually Approved” Mae Abdulbaki A specific category of critic listed on Rotten Tomatoes is called “individually approved”: This identifies a reviewer approved and included in Rotten Tomatoes who is not necessarily connected to a large media entity such as The New York Times and may have their own direct following or, as their criteria indicates, “critics reaching underrepresented groups will also be considered on a case-by-case basis”, and/or they reach 30,000 subscribers (Rotten Tomatoes 2019). These “individually approved” critics, who are approximately a third of the critics listed on the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ list, identify most clearly the now necessary work a critic must advance to build a portfolio and maintain a career. From a persona studies’ research perspective, the now-expanded individual/independent critic must play more actively and regularly in a world that is magnified in terms of its mediatization (Lundby 2013; Hjarvard 2009) across what is effectively identified as an intercommunication industry—a total blend of interpersonal communication with forms that are highly mediated and stylized (Marshall 2016). This entails a cross-integration of the personal and private registers of persona with the public and the professional in very complicated patterns of negotiation, linking and online visibility. Some of these “individually approved” critics are attached to a number of smaller

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publications that build them to a threshold of people that make them legitimately part of Rotten Tomatoes ’ list and build an appropriate identity to cross effectively via platforms and sites in this online world. One of these individually approved critics is our first case: Mae Abdulbaki. First, there may be all sorts of possible ways that one might “find” Mae Abdulbaki as a film critic; but for this analysis, Mae was “discovered” through being the first alphabetically listed “individually approved” critic on Rotten Tomatoes master list of its more than 4600 critics. Being listed obviously points in a signifying way to other constructions of value, reputation and influence; but, although Rotten Tomatoes lists the reviewer, as analyzed above, it is not a prominent listing and certainly much less prominent than “Top critics” from major media outlets. What needs to be made clear is that although Rotten Tomatoes highlights its reviewers, the pathway to her actual review was circuitous. Her latest film review was for It Chapter Two, released internationally during the second week of September 2019, and she was not one of the highlighted critics with their one-sentence tag visible on the first web-page devoted to the film. With 330 reviews listed, Mae appears on the 3rd page of 17 pages of critics listed with their key sentence about the film beside their name: this location relates to the recency of her review. When you click on her full review link on that page, you are taken to where she publishes: A website called TheYoungFolks with its—as its masthead explains—“main focus is to deliver a young approach to film, books, music, television, video games, etc. to those in need of a fresh and relatable perspective” (TheYoungFolks 2019). Mae Abuldaki is their reviewer of television series and listed prominently because of that role—a further marker of reputation and possible professional prestige that feeds into her online persona. But she also is involved in film reviews including the film review on Rotten Tomatoes — It Chapter 2. There is much further background about Mae on this website. You realize through a few more clicks that Mae has been with TheYoungFolks since 2016 and written 169 reviews. TheYoungFolks (TYF), based on their published material from Google Analytics in 2018, has had on average more than 78,000 unique monthly visits and more than 200,000 plus monthly pageviews (The Young Folks Policy Review 2019; TYF Media Kit 2018). These statistics exceed the thresholds needed for Mae to be “individually approved” by Rotten Tomatoes , and they also isolate on a specific youth market for advertisers and Rotten

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Tomatoes ’ own visible reach of 34% of youth using their site to select their movie and television viewing. Like all publishers, TheYoungFolks cross-link across the key social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and WhatsApp. Mae further individualizes herself and advances her professional persona beyond TYF with her Twitter account (https://twitter.com/MaeAbdu). But what is clear from this site is that she does have a great deal of independence: She tweets extensively and her Tweets are predominantly focused on film and television. In fact, since joining Twitter in 2013, Mae Abdulbaki has tweeted 12,600 times and has 1082 followers. But thematically, she hones in on her persona. She alerts her followers regularly when something new in youth-oriented media is released. She focuses on particular stars in these posts as well, and given the time of this study, her focus on Tweets was on the September 2019 Emmy Awards for television. It is also evident that Mae continues to expand her portfolio. On her Twitter profile, she lists herself as the “founder” of MovieswithMae which has a link to her personal website where it is clear that she has generated many more film reviews than those published by TheYoungFolks and their appearance in other online publishing sites. She also augments her status to film critic societies in Washington DC in particular. A podcast on a further site called Punch Drunk Critics identifies another 154 reviews from 2019 back to 2013 that are attributed to our critic Mae Abdulbaki (Punch Drunk Critics 2019). One can further discern the emotional tenor and tone of Mae’s persona through her tweets, her writing style and her enthusiasm related to film culture more broadly. Through these avenues, it is clear that Mae Abdulbaki is managing a very active and well-constructed professional persona through these various online locations and their links to many other social media pathways. What this case study reveals is that there is incredible personal labor in the contemporary critic that works through the dimensions of persona. There is a blend in style between the professional—the writerly style she has embodied in her reviews—and the hybrid personal/professional of her Twitter feed as well as her bio descriptions on the array of websites that host her work. She engages with a playfulness and interpersonal cheekiness in her Twitter posts that are crafted well to intersect with her professional passion in the study of film, video and television. It is an elaborate curation of a portfolio that surrounds the more formal review posts with greater information and transformative expressive registers of communication. Nonetheless, she needs to maintain an

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algorithmic reconstruction of her online persona so that she can maintain her basic visibility on Rotten Tomatoes and claim a role as a contemporary critic.

Case 2: High Visibility, Video Platforming and the New Personalized Critic Persona: YouTube, Chris Stuckmann and Jeremy Jahns The second case is a study of film and video streaming reviewers who are more focused on video than the textual dimensions of review: The two reviewers are, like Mae Abdulbaki, “individually approved” on Rotten Tomatoes . Although there are short text-reviews related to their work on the Rotten Tomatoes site, these comments are fundamentally just links to their videos, not written text. From this video-directed lens, this case with its two reviewers is predominantly focused on the online video platform YouTube. Its user-generated origins have led to a complicated structure around reviewing that bears some connections to past forms of critique and review, but its originating participatory ethos has constructed some evident naturalized patterns of authenticity that are far from these past traditions. As Chris Stokel-Walker explains: “YouTube has a do-it-yourself ethic; it is punk TV for the twenty-first century… It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry that employs hundreds of thousands of talented people across the world… The supercharged growth of production companies, video editors and agents in this new age of individual video makers makes Hollywood’s early years seem like a cottage industry” (Stokel-Walker 2019, p. 16). Stokel-Walker’s analysis reveals a further duality in this differently mediatized world of persona. The presentation of self on YouTube in a new aesthetic sense is meant to look as if it is simply do-it-yourself (D-I-Y); but the most successful YouTubers, no matter how they look individualized in their presentation, are rarely working without support and assistance. It has grown massively over its first 15 years to a point where 2 billion people are on the service daily (Statista 2019), and with an elaborate advertising structure, it has also become a site for many other forms of video production and distribution to expand their reach and audience numbers. Like many of the large social media-related platforms, YouTube’s size numbers are overwhelming and massively transnational: A continually changing number of channels is listed as people decide to “make” a channel on a daily basis; but in 2019,

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it was identified by SocialBlade, a company that attempts to track, service and build subscribers to channels, that there are 31.5 million YouTube “creators” (SocialBlade 2019). The presenting persona of YouTube and the wider world of social media is filled with techniques of authenticity as a number of researchers have identified building from the original study of YouTube by Burgess and Green (2009/2018) (Craig and Cunningham 2019; García-Rapp 2017; Bishop 2018). Part of this authenticity is YouTube’s massive advice through practice, where vloggers work to present or show how something is made. This form of authenticity is actively played with by Beauty vloggers and the presentational process of making themselves up. But authenticity in a variety of registers is just as visible in those trying to show carpentry, soldering, painting and so on. Reviewers then are part of this universe of authenticity where there are others showing how to actually make a film in contradistinction to those critiquing commercial productions. Our two examples of film reviewers then are trying to build their authenticity through a number of tropes that would be less visible in reviewers on legacy media. In a simple search of “filmmaking” where filmmaking is a hashtag for further connection to the site/video, there were 574 videos listed that spanned productions made over the last 6 years. Thus, the do-it-yourself YouTube aesthetic surrounds the reviewer persona and both informs and transforms the way that a review is generally conducted via YouTube. Chris Stuckmann and Jeremy Jahns are two of the most visible reviewers on YouTube, and it is no doubt their built status on this platform that has made them “approved” and visible reviewers with links on Rotten Tomatoes . Before going further into that visibility, it is useful to identify that video reviewers are mapped in various ways across online culture, much like our text-based reviewer case above. For consistency of investigation, I have continued to use the film It Chapter Two (2019) to guide the search protocols on Rotten Tomatoes . Neither Stuckmann nor Jahns are listed as “top critics” and neither appeared on the lead web-page hosting It Chapter Two: Stuckmann appears on the 8th page, while Jahns on the 11th page of 17 pages listing all 331 reviews and reviewers. Stuckmann augments this with a personal website that directs people to his real home on YouTube where he has 1.58 million subscribers and his review of It Chapter Two—two weeks after its release—has 940,000 views. He links these to his regularly updated Twitter Feed where he has a further

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“following” group of 157,000. Like his Twitter account, his Instagram followers of 45,100 are dwarfed by his YouTube status. Jahns produces a parallel world to Stuckmann on YouTube with a subscriber list of 1.6 million and 853,000 views of his first of two reviews of It Chapter Two (Jahns 2019a). On Instagram, Jahns pulls 85,100 followers and plays with some personal connections but maintains his focus on entertainment in his array of images and short videos. One of the key differences between Mae and this pair of YouTube reviewers is the constructed personal persona. Their reviews are not produced with an ethos of distance as has been promulgated for over a century in newspaper and magazine reviews of film and replicated by reviewers as Mae Abdulbaki has produced even in her personalization of what is interesting and worthy of comment. In contrast, these YouTube reviewers’ formal reviews are filled with humor: Jahns will construct double-takes, facial expressions which show distance, and massive hand movements which further accentuate his positions. It is designed also not to be perceived as Jahns reading and instead is an extemporaneous production of his take on the movie itself. Stuckmann is slightly more serious but uses profanity and a speaking style that is meant to underline his presence in the moment. Jahns is less concerned with mapping the narrative of the film and uses moments, actors and characters to stimulate his movement through the film and his opinion. Stuckmann does pull a basic narrative together with more direction and therefore is slightly closer to traditional television reviews perhaps derived from youth television such as MTV over the last 30 years. Jahn’s use of humor paired with his histrionics and Stuckmann’s humor and profanity are both their way to express their authenticity as an online register of value and closer parasocial connection to their audience. The quality of both Jahns and Stuckmann’s visuals in their reviews is very sophisticated. Jahns has a compression style of editing which is common on YouTube to give the impression of reducing the time of the video to help avoid viewers from moving on. Interestingly, their reviews are both just over 7 minutes. Embedded in their reviews are voiced-over trailer clips from the films. But for both reviewers, their performed identity is critical as it consistently articulates their authentic persona to their audience; in addition, their emotive expression and rating of the film are also critical to how they perceive their relationship to their audience and their constitution of a reviewer persona.

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Engagement with their subscribers through their performative techniques described above can be identified as how these two YouTube reviewers construct their online agency and value and produce their consistent public personas. As described above, Jahns and Stuckmann have a large number of followers. And the participatory structure of their personas is further underlined with getting responses from them. What is interesting with Jahns is that although he is not on Twitter, there is a great deal of “sharing” on the platform of Jahns’ videos and comments. For It Chapter Two, Jahns does produce a form of participation: 2816 comments follow his review with multiple conversations amongst this group of comments. Stuckmann has compiled 4950 comments on his review which in YouTube terms is a high form of engagement. In a menu-driven model for subscribers, Stuckmann received 32,000 likes for his review. Based on a review of their social media accounts and how they connect to their reviewer persona, Jahns and Stuckmann maintain these new personalized professional reviewer personas that maintain their reputation as YouTube influencers with both credibility and authenticity. It is also important to realize that despite the jocular tone of these two reviewers, neither one based on their sophisticated technical production style is an amateur in this field. Stuckmann has been reviewing on YouTube for more than 10 years with Jahns’ YouTube career very close to a decade in length as well. In that time, both have generated thousands of videos that are part of their “channels”: All of these reviews by both men are highly personalized talks about individual movies. In other words, these are major contemporary film influencers. They have expanded their reviews through parallel critiques that are meant to be “funny” and produce a distance from the industry that they need to maintain for the YouTube participatory authenticity. Jahns has a series of “Spoiler Reviews” that follow the original review and take apart how the film produces its meanings (Jahns 2019b). Stuckmann revels in parody in what he has labeled as his “Hilariosity” reviews that make fun of films from a variety of perspectives. These second-order reviews are both designed for their engaged fans, but also once again to prove their independence in their personal presentation of films from the industry itself. Finally, it is important to twin this construction of personalized/authentic/influencer reviewer persona that YouTube has generated via Jahns and Stuckmann with a further constitution of identity and connection. YouTube produces what could be called algorithmic identities as it attempts to link our sentiments to what we watch. Furthermore,

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YouTube then shapes our personal “lists” of what we watch and what we would like to watch based on what we have watched. As Marwick (2018) and Bishop (2018) have developed, algorithms are shaping what and who we see on screens and the very order they are ranked. Part of this listing is dependent on previous practices; other parts are related to what kinds of sentiments our previous searches and watching have generated and then how those emotional connections are calibrated into likely future predispositions. Thus, if an individual watches a reviewer who is funny and satirizes a film, it is likely that the range of reviews that appear following this person’s viewing will have similar algorithmically formed personas or, more accurately, the algorithm recomposition of this persona that Google has developed for YouTube. The effect of this algorithm display is a reinforcing of patterned personas as vloggers on YouTube attempt to produce and reproduce patterns of success. Algorithmic success is also determined by existing connection and channel subscribers which also helps lead to a particular video appearing more prominently in a search more widely online or within YouTube itself. All of this persona work that is done through the platform is connected to forms of advertising and sponsoring. When personas via their identifiable, codifiable and quantifiable dimensions are converted to algorithmic personas, we have a perfect match with the new generation of programmatic advertising: What emerges from the interaction of reviewer persona and the captured information of the user/subscriber is a formation of advertising pushed into the structure of this affective connection in milliseconds (Eriksson et al. 2019; Seaver 2017; Sumpter 2018). The success of Stuckmann and Jahns on YouTube through this knowing persona works with the platforms’ algorithms and their capacity to keep subscribers, connections and sharing makes them as powerful as any traditional legacy media critic: It is their different form of legitimization and value that makes them a guaranteed and “approved” reviewer on the aggregate of critics listed on and used by Rotten Tomatoes .

Extrapolations and Implications of the New Reviewer Persona: Conclusion Each of our cases of reviewers identifies major efforts at personalizing their display. Mae, because her reviews are less visualized and with a focus on text, resembles past models of reviewers much more than the YouTube reviewers of Jahns and Stuckmann. Nonetheless, all three are working in this transformed world of online persona where one’s labor is

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simultaneously dealing with how to pull identity closer through an understanding of any platform’s valorizing of aggregated and algorithmically constructed persona and somehow linking that to the authentic display of online persona that reviewers’ readers and fans observe and thereby become para-socially emotionally connected. It is important to realize that this investigation of online reviewing could be extended into other areas and domains. Critique and review are very difficult to quarantine in online culture. Each platform produces a different reconstruction of the movement of opinion. Reddit, for instance, would have generated another permutation of how critique moves around a group of connected people in a club-like fashion as it often generates information bubbles (Sumpter 2018). Product reviewing with its clear attachment to commodities has generated further variations of reviewing: John Herrman’s study of Amazon’s Vine reviews identifies the odd world of how the most-referred-to reviewers of products including books are in an elaborate game of receiving products for free (Herrman 2019). In some ways, our process of reviewing is overwhelming. As much as this study and chapter have focused on Rotten Tomatoes ’ approved YouTube and film critics, it is just as valuable to at least mention that the comment sections related to reviews and attributed to audiences construct another sense of more “real” and “authentic” reviews. For example, Rotten Tomatoes ’ Audience Reviews actually dwarf the critics in a resounding way for the film, It Chapter Two. Verified audience reviews—ones where Rotten Tomatoes can authenticate that the individual audience member has bought tickets to see this particular film—total 4655, while the total audience reviews total 8524. In this slightly different world of critique, one sees various lengths of commentary with some resembling funny oneliners that come close what one might post to a friend or a Snapchat group, while others come close to the style and flow of those identified above as a “Top Critic”. As discussed above, there is an instability in contemporary online review culture with authenticity; an odd new signifying chain in online reviewer persona culture is to make visible and get closer to those who post or comment—their engaged subscribers. This connection with fans’ commentary and engagement parallels one of the telling partial-truths of the online pandemic of meme-sharing and transformation: Memeaugmenting is relatively anonymous and thereby makes the meme-chain more authentic and more popular. Memes, for instance, are basically transforming a particular commentary on a popular event in online

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culture for further sharing. Memes thus, in essence, are a form of review of some aspect of our culture: Their articulation and sense-making are dependent on our inclusion into a further chain of signification that helps identify its continuing and amplifying collective laugh. This reconstruction of our culture can be interpreted as a “new word of mouth culture” (Marshall 2020, p. 98). Although online culture produces what Jay David Bolter correctly describes as a “digital plenitude” and a transformed structure of cultural value itself (Bolter 2019), this surplus of information creates a related flow and instability of what is retained in a culture. Review and critique now float through this new word of mouth culture and the gaps between just a simple one-sentence expression/commentary, a playful image/video and a longer textual review are blurred in terms of their value. If an individual is attempting to express their identity through their persona as a reviewer and critic, they are producing two related personas as the study of Rotten Tomatoes -listed online reviewers in this chapter have identified. They work very hard at constructing and curating a visible public self that works to move through collectives attached in some way to what they are critiquing and to their potential individualized identity. They also work at generating the data that may help them become more visible and valuable in this reconstruction of their being into a shared data-persona. As highlighted in the introduction to this chapter, CheneyLippold’s application of Deleuze’s term “dividual” (Deleuze 1992, p. 5) captures the way a reviewer inhabits this dual persona space, one that is a divided entity used for different techniques of control. The algorithmic persona and the individually curated reviewer persona are two states of dividual: a division between what is self-curated and what are often emotional connections that are used to redefine the reviewer and any individual online into usable algorithms for further sharing and visibility. This dual persona study of the critic/reviewer online not only identifies the new instability of what we value in our culture; it also identifies through this dueling persona construction how value is recalibrated for sometimes divergent ends and goals that actually reshape and lead to the individual’s active construction of their value to intersect with the algorithmic formation of a successful online persona.

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References Audience reviews. (2019, September 12). Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rotten tomatoes.com/m/it_chapter_two/reviews?type=verified_audience. Barnes, B. (2017, September 7). Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/media/rot ten-tomatoes-box-office.html. Barnes, B. (2018, August 28). Rotten Tomatoes Adds 200 Critics as It Tries to Be More Inclusive. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/ 28/business/media/rotten-tomatoes-critics.html. Bishop, S. (2018). Vlogging Parlance. In C. Abidin & M. L. Brown (Eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. Bolter, J. D. (2019). The Digital Plenitude: The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2009/2018). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Medford, MA: Polity Press. Cheney-Lippold, J. (2017). We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves. New York: New York University Press. Cowan, B. (2008). The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Cowan, B. (2016). News, Biography, and Eighteenth-Century Celebrity. Oxford Handbooks Online: Scholarly Research Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxf ordhb/9780199935338.013.132 Craig, D., & Cunningham, S. (2019). Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York: NYU Press. Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October, 59, 5. Driessens, O. (2013). The Celebritization of Society and Culture: Understanding the Structural Dynamics of Celebrity Culture. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(6), 641–657. Eriksson, M., Johansson, R., Snickars, P., & Vonderau, P. (2019). Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music. Cambridge: MIT Press. Faulk, B. J. (2004). Music Hall and Modernity: The Late-Victorian Discovery of Popular Culture. Athens: Ohio University Press. García-Rapp, F. (2017). ‘Come Join and Let’s BOND’: Authenticity and Legitimacy Building on YouTube’s Beauty Community. Journal of Media Practice, 18, 120–137. Gillespie, T. (2010). The Politics of ‘Platforms’. New Media & Society, 12(3), 347–364. Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Habermas, J. (1991). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Herrman, J. (2019, January 26). The Secret Life of Amazon’s Vine Reviewers. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/ 26/style/amazon-reviews-vine.html. Hjarvard, S. (2009). Soft Individualism: Media and the Changing Social Character. In K. Lundby (Ed.), Mediatization (pp. 159–177). New York: Peter Lang. Hootsuite. (2019, September 20). Global Social Media Research Summary 2019, September 5. https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/soc ial-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/, https://hootsuite. com/pages/digital-in-2019. Hou, M. (2019). Social Media Celebrity and the Institutionalization of YouTube. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 25( 3), 534–553. Hughes, M. (2017). The English Musical Renaissance and the Press 1850–1914: Watchmen of Music. London: Routledge. Jahns, J. (2019a, September 5). Reviewing It: Chapter 2. YouTube. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4E6lhnxG4Q. Accessed 19 Sept 2019. Jahns, J. (2019b). Jeremy Jahns Channel—YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ user/JeremyJahns/channels. Accessed 20 Sept 2019. Lang, B. (2018). Movie Critics Are Mostly White Men, Study Shows. Variety. Online. https://variety.com/2018/film/news/movie-critics-whitemen-study-1202839058/. Accessed 20 Sept 2019. Lilti, A. (2017). The Invention of Celebrity: 1750–1850. Malden, MA: Polity. Lundby, K. (2013). Mediatization of Communication. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Marshall, P. D. (2006). New Media New Self, the Changing Power of the Celebrity. In P. D. Marshall (Ed.), The Celebrity Culture Reader (pp. 634– 644). London: Routledge. Marshall, P. D. (2010). The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media. Celebrity Studies, 1(1), 35–48. https://doi. org/10.1080/19392390903519057. Marshall, P. D. (2014). Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self. Journalism, 15(2), 153–170. https://doi.org/10.1177/146488491348 8720. Marshall, P. D. (2016). Celebrity Persona Pandemic. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marshall, P. D. (2020). Celebrity, Politics, and New Media: An Essay on the Implications of Pandemic Fame and Persona. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 33(1), 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-0189311-0. Marshall, P. D., Moore, C., & Barbour, K. (2020). Persona Studies: An Introduction. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

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Marwick, A. E. (2018). The Algorithmic Celebrity. In A. Crystal & B. Megan Lindsay (Eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. McQuail, D. (1987). Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction. London: Sage. MovieswithMae. (2019, September 10). http://movieswithmae.com/. Munson, W. (1993). All Talk: The Talkshow in Media Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Neely, C. (2018). Japan’s Top Social Media Networks for 2018. Humble Bunny. http://www.humblebunny.com/japans-top-social-media-networks-2018/. Punch Drunk Critics. (2019, September 21). http://www.punchdrunkcritics. com/search/label/Mae?max-results=20. Rotten Tomatoes. (2019, September 12). “TomatoMeter Criteria”: Eligibility Criteria—Individual Critics. Rotten Tomatoes. https://www.rottentomatoes. com/help_desk/critics/. Seaver, N. (2017). Algorithms as Culture: Some Tactics for the Ethnography of Algorithmic Systems. Big Data & Society, 4(2), 2053951717738104. SocialBlade. (2019, September 25). Analytics Made Easy. SocialBlade. https:// www.socialblade.com. Statista. (2019, September 22). YouTube Statistics and Facts. Statista, June 25. Online: https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/. Accessed 22 Sept 2019. Stokel-Walker, C. (2019). YouTubers: How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars. Croydon: Canbury Press. Stuckmann, C. (2019, September 6). It Chapter Two—Movie Review. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHTBEK_uc-M. Sumpter, D. (2018). Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-Bubbles–The Algorithms That Control Our Lives. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. TheYoungFolks. (2019, September 20). https://www.theyoungfolks.com/ about/. The Young Folks Policy Review. (2019). https://www.theyoungfolks.com/rev iew-policy/. Titchener, C. B. (2006). Reviewing the Arts. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Turner, G. (2010). Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn. London: Sage. TYF Media Kit. (2018). https://cdn1.theyoungfolks.com/wp-content/upl oads/2012/05/24094728/TYF-MEDIA-KIT-2018.pdf.

CHAPTER 7

How Has the Role of Newspaper-Based TV Critics Been Redefined in a Digital Media Landscape? Paul Rixon

Introduction At a time when journalism and the newspaper industry are going through dramatic changes (Wahl-Jorgensen et al. 2016), I will, in this chapter, explore how television critics in Britain, working for the legacy or traditional media, are redefining their role for the digital age. It could be argued that the television critic has been an important cultural arbiter, in selecting which television programs to review, which ones to recommend and which programs should become part of the shared public canon (Kristensen et al. 2019, pp. 259–260; Rixon 2011). Indeed, as television critics came to be employed by British newspapers from the 1950s, their output soon became an integral part of the newspapers’ provision, helping to shape both the popular and critical discourses circulating around television (Rixon 2011).

P. Rixon (B) University of Roehampton, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_7

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However, over the last twenty years or so, with huge technological changes occurring in all media, including the newspaper and television industries, many commentators have questioned the continued role of media-based television critics (Jefferies 2014). For this chapter, by analyzing current television coverage found on the websites of the most widely read and influential national British newspapers, I will reflect on how the role taken by critics is changing, where these developments are leading to and whether this signals a decline or, perhaps, a re-emergence of a new form or new stage of criticism. As I undertake this analysis, I will use the five orientations utilized by Jaakkola et al. (2015) for their work exploring change happening in the wider field of journalism and, specifically, in relation to cultural journalism: knowledge orientation, audience orientation, power orientation, time orientation and ethical orientation. The use of these orientations will provide a way of comparing change that is happening between television criticism, journalism and cultural journalism, as well as providing a framework by which to understand the implications of the developments which are occurring and the possible direction of travel.

Approach To undertake this work, I have analyzed, over a 14-day period (10–24 September 2019), the websites of six British national newspapers: three popular papers, those which use a sensationalist and entertainment-led form aimed at the lower end of the mass market, mostly attracting the working and lower-middle classes, the Daily Express , Daily Mail and the Sun; and three quality papers, the Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph, which take a more serious approach to news to attract a more upmarket readership, usually the middle and upper classes (Williams 2010, pp. 203–214). For each of these, I have located their main online television webpage(s), from which there are hyperlinks to articles, blog pages and other material related to different forms of cultural coverage of television (see list at the end for details). These hyperlinked webpages were sorted into different categories, or types, depending on what coverage they provide. The six main categories identified were reviews, previews, episodic guides, contextual articles, business or industry orientated pieces and celebrity stories. Blogs were often used to deliver a range of these, so I have not included them as a separate category but instead have spread them across all the categories. A sample was selected of around 15 from

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each online site, representing the categories noted above, making a total of 90 articles. I included not only traditional types of TV criticism, the review and preview, but also new and emerging forms of coverage, such as episodic guides and blogs (covered across the six categories), which, while they might be viewed as belonging to the wider area of cultural journalism, can be seen as part of a new form of ‘critique […] facilitated by digital media technologies’ (Kristensen and From 2015, p. 762). These new forms are increasingly part of the way television criticism is being redefined for this new digital era, what Lotz has suggested is its fourth phase (2008, pp. 32–34). As they are often written by non-critics, journalists and freelancers, it also starts to raise a question of what is a television critic? Is it someone who has been given that role or is it increasingly any writer who reflects in a critical and informative way, or a mixture of these, on television? To analyze the websites and online pages, I utilized a form of discourse analysis to identify dominant forms of representation and to reflect on what these tell us about how the way television criticism is changing and what view it provides of television. I carried the analysis out in two ways, firstly by looking at the dynamic relationship which exists between contextual changes, such as the development of new ways of downloading and streaming television programs, and those happening in television coverage, such as with the creation of episodic guides and, secondly, by analyzing how textual and intertextual devices used on the television pages in the online world, such as hyperlinks, lead to a new view and experience of television. I also used a form of content analysis to understand how the coverage used in the online world differs from that found in the hardcopy publication, including the way webpages are laid out, the increased use of hyperlinks which create a new textual experience and the amount of material that can now be accessed through extensive online archives. As I undertook this, I identified the underlying cultural values at work, what meanings or views are being produced and how this coverage is positioning television culturally. I have also looked at the more interactive elements of the coverage, such as the public comment sections found under many articles. Helping to inform this and other parts of my work are the ideas on fandom and public participation of Henry Jenkins who, while noting, ‘not all interact within a virtual community,’ believes the ‘[o]nline forums offer an opportunity for participants to share their knowledge and opinions’ (2008, p. 26) and that such interactions can help in the formation of an interpretive community (Jenkins 1992, p. 88).

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Helping to organize the overall analysis, I have used the different orientations, knowledge, audience, power, time and ethics, identified and used by Jaakkola et al. (2015, p. 818). Their work, and others, suggests that journalism and the linked area of cultural journalism are going through a crisis, as the high modern form of journalism, characterized by particular news values, a form of objective reporting and full-time employment, moves toward a more fluid, flexible, subjective, casualized and commercially led form of journalism, what Deuze calls liquid journalism (2007). Indeed, for Janssen et al. (2008), one of the important changes impacting on cultural journalism relates to the increase in international cultural content, especially for medium-sized nations like the UK, partly linked to the emergence of more global media firms. While television criticism is also experiencing change linked to these developments, it must be accepted that it has different underlying values, working practices and focus, and, consequently, the orientations used by Jaakkola et al. (2015) are not a perfect fit. Therefore, I have adapted these to better reflect the tensions and areas of change that seem to be evident in how television criticism is developing. The knowledge orientation has been used to understand the way the underlying nature of news is changing, such as with a move toward more subjective and analytical forms of reporting. However, with its different status, this change is more ambiguous for a field like cultural journalism (Jaakkola et al. 2015, pp. 818–819). For my work, I focus on questions of how critics, through online forms of coverage, are creating a new knowledge or definition of what constitutes television. This might include a move away from the dominant form of reviewing focused on evaluating programs, to one that takes more account of how television now operates as a medium and is experienced by the viewer. In relation to the audience orientation, where for journalism the public has become more active in the creation of news coverage (Kammer 2015, pp. 872– 873), I explore how the public’s online discussions and interactions are feeding into the mediated debates about television and reflect on what the implications of this might be (Rixon 2017a, pp. 232–239). For the power orientation, which has been used to question whether journalists ‘see themselves as passive observers… or active interventionists’ (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 817), I reflect on whether similar struggles or tensions exist for TV critics. Are they, as television changes, becoming more active in what they choose to review? Indeed, are television critics becoming more

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important in setting the agenda as the television environment becomes more complex and chaotic? In terms of time orientation, which for journalists might relate to how they orientate their reporting to events that have, might or will happen (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 817), TV critics are also experiencing similar developments. Where once they would review a program after it was broadcast, with technological developments the public can now choose when they will watch a program or indeed a whole series, and when they might read the reviews. For the last area of change, ethical orientations, one of the main questions often faced by journalists relates to whether they should publish an article regardless of its political, social, economic or cultural impact on society? (Jaakkola et al. 2015). In relation to television criticism, I frame the idea of ethics in terms of the TV critics’ support for a certain kind of television system and related output which they view as being beneficial and important for society. Traditionally, many British critics in the past have viewed television not just aesthetically, but in terms of its essential cultural, social and political role. Therefore, through their work, they have encouraged quality British produced programs, which they saw as having an important influence on the British way of life (Rixon 2006, pp. 140–143; 2011, pp. 77–83). This supportive national view is something that is being challenged as television becomes more global and as more quality forms of programs are being produced (Bielby and Harrington 2008). To provide some context for this analysis, I will now explore, using a similar approach taken by Amanda Lotz (2008) in relation to the American context, the changing relationship that has developed between TV criticism and the television industry in Britain.

Legacy Media (Mass Media) and the TV Critic From the start of radio broadcasting in Britain, in the early 1920s, the press quickly developed a close interest in this new competitor. However, it was not just a question of trying to restrict and shape the development of broadcasting, the press also saw it as a source of popular journalistic coverage (Rixon 2018, pp. 33–63). Increasingly their readers wanted to know more about radio and what was on and when. In response, they soon started to provide radio listings and then later radio reviews and previews. The broadcasters also saw the press as a useful way to promote their material to the public. This intermedial relationship played an important role in how radio and then television came to be positioned within

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popular culture. To analyze how newspapers came to cover television therefore requires not only an understanding of how press coverage developed, but an understanding of the nature of the broadcasting system and how this changed over time. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which was granted an initial monopoly for broadcasting in Britain in the 1920s, launched the first scheduled television service in 1936. This, like radio, had a public service remit and was funded by the license fee (Crisell 1997, pp. 72–73). By the mid-1950s, the BBC’s television monopoly ended with the arrival of a regulated commercial network funded by advertising, Independent Television (ITV). This controlled expansion of television allowed, by the 1960s, the appearance of what has been called the duopoly, where the two broadcasters competed, not over revenue, as the BBC had the license fee and ITV advertising, or even audiences, as they were both happy with 50% of the national audience, but over quality and kudos (Crisell 1997, pp. 111–114). This compares to the more competitive commercial American television system which has always been dominated more by a financial imperative, as it sought funding from a mix of sponsorship, advertising and, now, subscription (Bielby and Harrington 2008, p. 11). The BBC and ITV were obligated by their public service commitments to provide a high-quality universal service, ranging from sitcoms and quiz shows to documentaries and children’s programs, most of which were produced domestically. For this reason, their services often appeared as being similar and interchangeable and, usually, of a high standard (Williams 2010, pp. 159–160). As new terrestrial channels were allowed by the government, as with BBC2 in 1964 and Channel Four in 1982 and later Channel Five in 1997, they were made to fit within this existing, though changing, dual national public service system, where both regulated commercial broadcasters and public service broadcasters operated (Bielby and Harrington 2008, p. 11). As television broadcasting started to become popular in the 1950s, British newspapers responded, as others did around the world (for the US, see Lotz 2008), by appointing dedicated fulltime television critics (Rixon 2011, pp. 67–99), fitting into the existing organizational structure of most papers where each cultural area had its own critic (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 813). For the quality papers in Britain, such coverage was split between cultural coverage, with reviews appearing on existing art review pages, and the more mass media elements, such as listings and program highlights, appearing on other pages (Rixon 2011, pp. 67–99, 83–87).

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The review columns, usually around 300–1000 words, covered between one to four programs in a serious critical way, similar to how these papers covered theater and film (Rixon 2011, pp. 91–94). The popular papers approached television more as a form of popular entertainment, though still providing some critical insight, and located their coverage on their existing entertainment pages (Rixon 2011, p. 95). The length of their review columns was around the same as those in the quality press but covered between five to six programs (Rixon 2011, p. 92). For most papers, the early TV critic had often learned their trade as a theater or film critic and tended to use a similar approach to reviewing television, which they and the reader understood, and the newspapers could fit into existing forms of cultural coverage (Bielby et al. 2005, p. 8; Poole 1984). The reviews, in this early period, mostly focused on programs from the supposedly more important genre, such as dramas, documentaries, current affairs and one-off plays, often produced by the British broadcasters, which the critics wished to highlight and recommend to their readers as they tried to position television as having cultural merit (Rixon 2011, pp. 94–96). In the 1960s, as newspapers sought to keep their circulations up at a time of heightened competition, and as the duopoly started to produce more popular programs of a high quality, the range of programs being reviewed increased (Rixon 2011, pp. 101–130). Alongside this, the popular papers started to increase the amount of celebrity-focused articles appearing, including lifestyle pieces and informal interviews (Rixon 2011, pp. 142–159), while the quality papers started to employ more generalist critics, such as Alan Coren and, later Clive James, who offered a more entertaining and opinionated form of coverage (Rixon 2011, pp. 201– 161). While American programs were popular with the public, many critics at this time were critical of these, holding the view that British television, mostly, produced good television and had escaped the crass commercialism of the American system (Rixon 2006, pp. 140–143). The approach of critics during the broadcast era of television, which Amanda Lotz (2008) in her study divides into three phases (a fourth phase equates to the post network (broadcast) era), was dominated by the review and preview forms. These were accepted by papers as being among the most useful and popular forms of coverage for the reader (Lotz 2008, pp. 25–28). These forms, by the 1970s, were also being supported and encouraged by the BBC and ITV, with previewing screenings and, later in the decade, with VHS preview tapes, as they started to view critics as a useful means of marketing their programs (Rixon 2011, p. 108).

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However, it could be argued that because the television critics utilized traditional forms of critical evaluations, which focused on the program as the site of interest, this form of television criticism was limited in its ability to critically engage fully with television as a form of mass media (Bielby et al. 2005, p. 32; McArthur 1980, pp. 59–60; Poole 1984). Though, it must be noted, that some critics, such as Chris Dunkley in the UK, were providing a more complex contextual and critical approach in their television coverage (Rixon 2011, p. 17).

The Media, Digitalization and the TV Critic Over the last thirty years, with seismic shifts happening in the newspaper industry and with readerships shrinking in size (Williams 2010, pp. 203– 227), partly linked to the impact of digital technologies, all British newspapers, like others around the world, created online websites and a presence on various social media platforms (Rixon 2018, pp. 168–170). For popular and quality papers, their online sites are now increasingly important, with, for some papers like the Daily Mail , Guardian, The Times and Daily Telegraph, over half of their readers now accessing their content this way (Ofcom 2019a, p. 41). This has also led to a shift of where journalists are employed in Britain, namely from print, dropping from 56% in 2012 to 44% by 2015, to online, increasing from 26% in 2012 to 52% by 2015 (Thurman et al. 2016, p. 7). For newspaper websites, which are trying to attract users, cultural journalism, in terms of the amount of online space allocated to it and numbers of cultural journalists being employed, has grown in importance. As Thurman et al. point out, of all journalists employed to work online in Britain, 53% work in specialized areas, such as culture or sport (2016, p. 6). As part of these developments, all newspapers created dedicated television pages, organized around a central navigation page(s), which offer links to increasing amounts of daily television coverage, which is often innovative in form and usually provides space for public interaction. One reason for the expansion of online coverage of television lies with the huge changes occurring within television, including the increase in the number of channels available, made possible by the appearance of satellite and cable forms of distribution, but also with new digital technologies changing the way television is distributed and watched, such as with the appearance of online systems of program catch-up, like the BBC’s iPlayer, and new forms of streaming and download services, such as those offered

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by Netflix (Curran and Seaton 2018, pp. 346–379; Lobato 2019, pp. 7– 11; Lotz 2017, pp. 6–10). For the UK, these developments have led to a shift from a dual model where both public service broadcasters and regulated commercial broadcasters provide a universal service funded by the license fee and advertising, to a system in which commercial television services dominate, often provided by global companies, funded by a mix of pay per view, subscription, sponsorship and advertising. This has led to different tiers and types of services, which have come to fragment the national audience into different viewing publics (Curran and Seaton 2018, pp. 347–360). As both television services and newspaper online coverage have expanded, there has been an increase in the employment in the number of television critics, and others writing about television, who provide guidance about what is out there, what some have called service journalism (Eide and Knight 1999, p. 4), as well as critical evaluative judgment of what is worth watching or not (Bielby and Harrington 2008, p. 14). While the television industry is increasingly using the new technologies, such as social media, to directly market their latest offering to the public, they also use them to supply information, such as with online press packs, to critics who are still viewed as having an important marketing role (Rixon 2017b). The Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG), which represents television critics in the UK, notes that while in the 1970s they only had around 27 members, this number now stands at around 100 plus (BPG 2019) of which half are freelancers and the rest are staff members. This suggests that the shift happening in journalism toward more job insecurity is also occurring in this area (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 814; Teurlings 2018, pp. 209–210). For the popular papers, much of their online coverage is similar to their traditional tabloid form of copy, with a mix of reviews and previews sitting alongside stories about celebrities, sex scandals, interviews and other misdemeanors. Some of this online coverage is produced by journalists already employed to cover areas such as showbiz and more general news, signaling an ongoing shift to journalistification and, even within the coverage produced by named TV critics, the use of devices associated with other forms of journalism suggests a form of hybridization (Sparre and From 2017). For quality papers, which have taken a more serious cultural approach to television, some of their coverage, including interviews, opinion pieces and articles exploring wider questions relating to developments happening in television, are being written by cultural

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journalists, such as Mark Lawson of the Guardian, and freelancers, like Michael Hogan, who writes for the Telegraph and Guardian and other publications. Overall, this means that, for both popular and quality papers, there has been an increase in the range of writers covering television, often from many walks of life and different areas of the journalistic profession, allowing more viewpoints and voices to emerge. Indeed, some of these new critics bring with them an interest, knowledge and expertise often not held by the disinterested generalist critics who dominated in the 1970s and 1980s (Poole 1984). The reverse, perhaps, of the tendency of what is happening in cultural journalism which has seen a move away from expertise to generalists, though freelances often still hold on to their specialized status (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 823). As Amanda Lotz (2008, p. 24) and Bielby et al. (2005) have argued, the way the role of television critics is transforming is linked not just to changes in the practices of journalism but with developments in the television industry itself. Therefore, this changing relationship must be understood if we wish to grasp what is happening to TV criticism. Using the five orientations outlined earlier, I will now move on to reflect on the form television criticism is taking as it is impacted by changes in the newspapers and television industries. Indeed, I will question whether a form of liquid criticism is emerging and what this might mean for the television critic, their output and how this positions television within the mediated public discourse.

Orientations of Change Knowledge Orientation: What Is Television? What Is the Focus of TV Criticism? The flexibility of the online environment, with its hyperlinks, multimedia format and almost infinite space, permits newspapers’ critics and other journalists and writers to provide coverage of television and its developing environment in new innovative ways. Indeed, it is allowing them to create and present a new understanding, experience and knowledge about television. One specific example of this is with the appearance of the episodic guides, where reviews or recaps are offered for each episode of a series. One reason for the appearance and expansion of these episodic guides is the emergence of many long-running series with complicated story lines (Nelson 2007, pp. 46–48), often imported from America, for which

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detailed catch-up information is popular with readers. These guides offer an in-depth review of each episode, sometimes from the perspective of the critic as a fan (Jenkins 1992, pp. 86–88), compared to the traditional oneoff review of a single episode often written by a disinterested critic (Poole 1984). For example, Sarah Hughes’s (2019) episodic guide to Peaky Blinders (2013–) where she writes for one episode, ‘Oh Peaky Blinders, just when I think I might be out you pull me back in. This was a perfectly paced, pulsating episode, not only one of my favourites from this series but one of my favourite hours of the show overall.’ This review is by a critic who loves the program she is writing about and is happy to show it, though this does not mean that she is not also able to be critical. In this way, there is a move, throughout the papers’ coverage, and by particular critics, to exhibit a more fan-like or casual way of writing about television, such as using a more subjective form of address, showing a more emotive attachment to the program and being interested in the romantic relationships of characters (Jenkins 1992, pp. 89–119; Lotz 2008, p. 33). Indeed, since the Guardian’s first online episodic guide appeared in 2008, which focused on The Wire (Rixon 2019, p. 244), over a thousand episodes of various series are now offered by these guides (Guardian 2019b). Such series covered on the Guardian site include The Game of Thrones (2011–19), The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–), Poldark (2015–) and The Bridge (2011–18). Other papers, such as the Daily Express , have, by linking together, with hyperlinks, various previews and reviews, created an episodic type coverage. This is where many pieces about a series can be read and explored, for example, with their coverage of Power (2014–) where links are provided on each of the review and preview pages to all the other reviews and previews on the series (Spencer 2019). In a similar vein, the Sun provides ‘catch up’ material online, where various links are provided between current and past coverage of programs. Much of their coverage is focused on reality programs and soaps which are popular with its readers, e.g., the Sun’s website has a webpage which brings together material on the BBC’s soap Eastenders (1985–) (Sun 2019a). Television is moving away from a form of broadcasting which we watch together, toward ‘Must-Click’ environments found on platforms like Netflix, and advanced forms of time shifting, helped by catch up technologies (Gillan 2011, pp. 76–134). Likewise, the dominant form of the television series has changed to long-arc storytelling, making a more complex, often harder narrative to drop in and out of (Gillan 2011, pp. 139–144). And, while some of these developments started

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in the 1980s with the coming of the video, and later DVD box sets, and the idea of ‘binging’ (Brundson 2010), this form of delivering and experiencing television, as complete series watched when and how one wants, is becoming more prevalent. Reflecting these developments, television criticism, for some programs, now covers all the episodes of a series, by way of the episodic guide, which is often fan like in nature, though still often being critical of the programs in a knowing and intimate way. As television as a medium has transformed, the online newspaper coverage is also changing, creating a new knowledge, a more holistic way of understanding and covering this new form of television (Lotz 2008, pp. 30–34). Audience Orientation: Mediated-Interactive Debates For most of the twentieth century, critics felt their role was to critique television programs with little or no input from the readers, something that was hard to obtain anyway (Poole 1984; Worsley 1970, pp. 11– 12). However, with the appearance of social media and online comment sections, feedback mechanisms now exist. These are not ones that necessarily provide a representative view of public opinion, but they do allow those people using social media and online sites to present their views to each other and to anyone else looking at such interactions (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 820). Such a form of online discussion provides, for those critics who are interested, a way to listen, understand and engage with some of the public debates which happen around television (Rixon 2017b). Indeed, through the interactions of such online communities, an interpretive community is formed that can work together to create a new understanding (Jenkins 2008, pp. 26–27). One way the feedback loop is working relates to the comment section found on many of the papers’ online sites, including the television pages. This is part of the newspapers’ strategy to try to be more interactive and to use the potential of the Internet and Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to create a more engaging form of coverage to keep and attract readers (Rixon 2017a, pp. 231–233), especially younger readers who are moving more toward obtaining their news and providing their comment online (Ofcom 2019a). The comment sections usually appear under the article, review or preview and, if there are lots of comments, they are often spread over linked pages. The public is now able to use these comment sections, and other forms of communication,

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to easily and quickly communicate back to, and engage with, the author of the piece, the critic, and with other members of the public. As Kevin Brookes comments underneath Michael Hogan’s review in the Telegraph on episode 4 of the 2019 Great British Bake Off (2010–), ‘I agree BC. I watched my first 10 min last evening and turned over. Not seen any of the episodes either. It’s tired.’ Such a form allows the potential for a more interactive public sphere to develop, where, through debate, public opinion can be coalesced and communicated (Rixon 2017a, p. 227). For example, an article on the Daily Mail ’s online site (MailOnline) about one of the dancers on the BBC’s program Strictly Come Dancing (2004–) had attracted some 69 comments from members of the public within a day of publication (MailOnline 2019b). Or Lucy Mangan’s article (2019), ‘Inside Cadbury’ for the Guardian, about a documentary on Cadbury, attracted 328 comments within a month. However, these interactions are frequently dominated by a few members of the public, with little or no engagement by the critics (Rixon 2019, p. 249). Indeed, the comments underneath many articles is often limited in number and sometimes quite short. With few people contributing to such debates, it is questionable how representative they are of public opinion (Rixon 2019, p. 248). For example, an article in the Sun about The Great British Bake Off (2010–) (Vonow 2019), a program that has viewing figure of around six million (Spary 2019), only had two comments a week after it was published. And, Jasper Rees’s review of Who do you think you are? (2004–), published in the Daily Telegraph on 11 September 2019, only had seven comments a month later. For the popular papers, which tend to focus more on popular programs found on the main terrestrial channels, most of the discussions are conversational in form and relate to reality programs, soaps and programs touching on some controversy; while for the quality papers, most of the comments, some of which offer insightful critical points, appear under reviews of a range of programs, some of which are found on higher-tier sites requiring a subscription. The comments which do appear are usually reactive to the piece written by the critic, who is in a more dominant position as the writer of the main article or blog post and are therefore able to set the agenda of the debate, and usually appear at the bottom of the page or on linked pages and are therefore not the center of attention (Rixon 2019, pp. 247–250). As Jenkins notes, ‘[t]he media industries will not relinquish their stranglehold on culture without a fight’ (1992, p. 255). Therefore, while, on one level, the public might seem to have taken on

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a more important role with their ability to interact with the mediated debate, this is sometimes somewhat illusionary in practice. Power Orientation: Niche TV, Niche Criticism Television critics, like other critics, were initially appointed to serve the tastes of the majority of their readers (Bourdieu 1984, pp. 234–235), which meant in the broadcast era they would often focus on reviewing the same high-profile or popular programs found on a limited number of channels (Lotz 2008, p. 31). However, with the recent expansion of the amount of television on offer and the need to serve segmenting readerships, critics working online increasingly write about a wider range of programs, some of which often only attract niche audiences (Rixon 2019, pp. 242–244). Indeed, with the huge amount of program material now accessible on various platforms, it is now hard to know what we are all watching and what is popular (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board [BARB] 2019). The critic, faced with these developments, can no longer seek to cater for one, supposedly, known audience group and their tastes. Therefore, in many instances, as Amanda Lotz notes (2008, p. 32), they are increasingly able and allowed to choose programs they want to review, regardless of whether it was popular and watched by a relatively large audience, though they are still aware of the different taste groups that read the paper they work for (for similar developments in France, see: Béliard 2015, pp. 908–909). The critics working for the popular UK papers, like the Daily Express , Sun and Daily Mail , reflecting the tastes of many of their readers and online users, mostly focus on the more popular programs, such as reality programs and soaps which mostly appear on terrestrial channels. For example, the MailOnline, on its ‘TV and Showbiz’ page, has a tab, a link to another page, specifically for the reality TV series Love Island (MailOnline 2019a), while around 70% of the articles linked to the Sun’s ‘TV and Showbiz’ page, relate to soaps, reality programs or celebrity-focused programs (Sun 2019b). However, their critics also cover programs found on outlets other than the national terrestrial channels, such as Stranger Things (2016–) found on Netflix, as covered in an article on the MailOnline (Tempesta and Drohan 2019), or Fear the Walking Dead (2016–) shown on AMC, which was reviewed by Molli Mitchell on the Daily Express’s online site (2019). These are often programs around which there is a public debate and mostly have a fan

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following, such as with Stranger Things. Or they might be programs viewed as being comparable to other popular niche programs and are expected to attract a similar audience over time, such as with The Witcher (2019–), with its comic book styled hero wandering a mythical land. The quality papers, reflecting the different tastes of their readers, whose use of on-demand and streaming services is increasing (Ofcom 2019b), offer coverage of a more diverse range of programs, including some that are not accessible to all. For example, for a time, The Wire (2002–8) was highly regarded by critics but was watched by relatively small audiences, partly because it initially appeared on a channel, FX, requiring subscription (Daily Telegraph 2009). The online environment has allowed such papers to not only continue to cover more popular programs, such as The Great British Bake Off (2010–) (Samadder 2019) broadcast on Channel Four, but also to review more niche programs, such as Saturday Night Live (1975–) (Pengelly 2019) which, at the time of writing, was not even available in the UK, other than via clips uploaded to YouTube. The online space provides room for critics to write more about programs they and their niche readership like, rather than trying to cater for some imagined readership (Rixon 2019). In this way, as TV coverage moves online and as television enters a new age of abundance with more programs produced to attract particular niche viewers (Curtin 2003; Kristensen et al. 2019; Lotz 2008, p. 31; Strover and Moner 2014, pp. 234–236), so there has also been a shift in the power orientation. The critic, especially those working for the quality press, in some ways, unlike the news journalist, has found more freedom and power in these developments. They are now more able to critique programs they are interested in, than to review programs just because they are attracting public and critical interest (Lotz 2008, p. 32). Their role as tastemakers has become more important as quality programs have proliferated and the term almost accepted as a genre (Kristensen et al. 2019). The critics, especially those working for quality papers, have been able to break away from serving a homogenously defined readership, imagined as being situated in the cultural middle ground, to serve different taste groups. Therefore, those writing about television are becoming more active in seeking what they wish to write about and making it known to their readers, in a similar way to how arts journalists are operating (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 821).

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Time Orientation: (Non)Synchronous TV, (Non)Synchronous TV Criticism When critics first started writing about television, it was watched as a broadcast form, often filmed live, and delivered by only a few channels. The critic soon took on a similar role to other critics writing for film or theater, offering previews of a selection of programs about to be broadcast, and then, after they were broadcast, providing reviews. At this time, the preview played an important role in helping readers decide if they might want to watch a program or even, when VHS technologies proliferated, whether they might want to record the program. The review, however, played a different role. It was where the critic evaluated the program a day or two after it had been shown, engaging with its wider reception and helping to place it within the critical and popular canon, often comparing it to other programs. It was where the reader could go to read and reflect on how the critic was positioning the program in the wider mediated public debate. However, in the new world of on-demand, catch-up and streaming services, the way a program is watched and when, has changed. We no longer tend to watch a program together at the same time (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board 2019). The preview’s role of framing and positioning a program before we watch it, is now less important; we can read the review and then watch the program if we want. Likewise, we might read the preview after we have watched the program. The preview and review are therefore starting to collapse into one, into a (p)review, which both evaluates and tells us about the program and, if we want to watch it, if we have not already, we then can. The problem for the reader is knowing what programs are out there and then how to locate one of these so it can be watched, especially if it is on some obscure service or channel. Many papers, in their (p)reviews, give this sort of information, for example, the Sun, in its (p)review of Deep Water (2019–), mentions in the title that it will be broadcast on ITV, ‘Crisis mode: Deep Water is on ITV tonight at 9 pm’ (Cassidy 2019). They might also note if another broadcast screening is coming up, how it can be downloaded from a catch-up facility or who is streaming the program, e.g., in the (p)review of Top Boy (2011–) on the Daily Express ’s online site, they mention that it is available for streaming from Netflix (Watson 2019). Indeed, the titles of the episodic reviews all clearly spell out which episode they are reviewing, to make sure the reader is reading the right review for where

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they are currently at in the series, e.g., such as with Sarah Hughes review of Peaky Blinders which has the title, ‘Peaky Blinders recap: series five, episode five – back to its best at last’! (2019). The temporal flows of television and television criticism have changed. Once they were synchronous in nature, with the preview coming before a program is broadcast, then followed by the review after it was broadcast, like coverage of other cultural forms like theater (Jaakkola et al. 2015, p. 822). Now they are nonsynchronous in nature with no connection to a broadcast flow, with the (p)review and program, potentially being accessible at the same time. Indeed, each paper offers large numbers of past review and previews that can be assessed when and if the reader wants, e.g., the Guardian’s online ‘Television’ section has over forty-nine thousand linked pages (Guardian 2019a) and The Times ’ online television page has links to just under eight thousand total articles (The Times 2019). It would seem that, as television has changed, so the critical and service components of television coverage are collapsing into one in the (p)review form. Ethical Orientations: Critics and Television Values For many British television critics much of their discourse, in the past, focused on supporting the public broadcasting system and its ability to produce a diverse range of quality programs, partly because of its perceived important role in national culture. Their approach to criticism, therefore, was not just about aesthetics, whether the quality of a program was to be judged in terms of its internal elements, but was also ethical, of whether the program could be viewed as being good for British culture, national life and the citizen. However, as television changes, a symbolic struggle is occurring between critics around questions of cultural distinction (Bourdieu 1984, pp. 244–256), of what forms of television are considered good and should be supported (Rixon 2006, pp. 135– 161). For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, it was generally accepted by critics that British television, producing the best television in the world, played an important role in the nation’s life, and therefore needed support and promotion (Rixon 2011, pp. 56–57). However, as television became more global, with more services operating across borders, often offering quality forms of programs (Bielby and Harrington 2008, pp. 101–143), these views have become more contested.

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While the newspapers’ coverage in the past often focused on critiquing and praising British television, their online sites now include more international programs, like Game of Thrones, Big Little Lies (2017–) and Stranger Things, which are sometimes offered via global channels or through streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. For example, on 13 September 2019 the Guardian’s main television page offered links to 20 articles, of these only 10 were directly focused on British television or British programs, most of the others referred to American television in some way (Guardian 2019a). For the Daily Express’s website, their main television page had links to 51 articles related to television, of which 16 were focused on non-British programs (Daily Express 2019). The differences between the paper’s coverage can be explained by their different target audiences, with the popular papers still tending to focus on popular national programs, such as soaps and reality programs, watched by their readers, while quality papers sought to provide a more diverse form of coverage, including of international programs often found on various subscription platforms, for their upmarket and often young educated readerships. As the coverage of television expands, helped by the employment of online critics writing more about programs they like, the supportive discourse around British television and its programs has weakened. In many ways, it is being replaced by a more inclusive one focused on a greater range of programs emanating from many national systems and providers, such as Italian programs like Gomorrah (2014–), Danish programs such as The Killing (2007–12), Australia with Underbelly (2008–13) and Netflix with the Polish-inspired series The Witcher (2019–), reflecting better what their readers are watching or what is available to be viewed. For example, many of the papers write about American programs which were first shown some time ago, but are held in high esteem and are still popular, such as The Times with an article on the American comedy series Friends (1994–2004) (Vernon 2019); while all cover new American and European programs around which there is a media buzz, such as the Telegraph’s review of the Netflix series, Marianne (2019–) (Brown 2019). With long-term changes happening in American and European television production and distribution, with a shift toward attracting upmarket niche audiences, many of these programs are being positioned by critics as quality productions and are often viewed as being better than British ones (Kristensen et al. 2019; Rixon 2019, pp. 239–255).

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Conclusion: The Move to Liquid Criticism? The discussion and analysis above indicates that television criticism is going through a period of change. However, while for journalism it might be viewed as a crisis, with a decline in the values and practices that once underpinned the profession, for British television criticism it might be viewed more positively, with a realignment of the approaches, practices and values of critics forged within a literary dominant culture in relation to broadcast television, toward new ones that are better aligned to the emerging forms of television. With more television services and programs being provided and experienced in innovative ways, a new form of television coverage is emerging, one that better reflects television and the way it is experienced. This has included the appearance of episodic guides, more fan-like forms of coverage, a move toward (p)reviews and with increased potential for public interactions. Also, over time, more critics and writers have become employed in the British context, including some with detailed understanding and knowledge of television, providing new voices and approaches to writing about television at this important juncture in its development. While the traditional critic, producing one-off reviews on a daily basis in a secure full-time contract, might find their days numbered, for the adaptable critic, the liquid critic of the future with an interest in writing about and covering television in new innovative ways, often for different publications and audiences, new opportunities have appeared. For television criticism, there seems to be a shift toward a form of liquid criticism, a more dynamic and engaging form than existed before. As television criticism goes through a period of change, questions can also be asked about what developments are happening in other areas of criticism? Are they going through a similar form of change? Are they moving toward their own form of liquid criticism? For television criticism, part of the change has been related to developments happening in the television industry and television form. However, for other areas like film, theater, art and opera, the changes happening to their industries have not been quite as dramatic. Therefore, it might be that there has been less urgency or need for the development of new forms of coverage. Also, it could be argued that for TV critics the move toward a form of liquid criticism has not been that large a jump from what they have already been doing. TV critics have always been aware that many readers would have seen the program being reviewed and would already have

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their own opinions about it. Indeed, television criticism has been, overtime, steadily moving toward providing more popular forms of coverage, such as with picks of the week and daily highlights, reflecting television’s popular role in culture. For critics of other areas, whose readers might not have seen the performance or show, and might never do, the critic continues to have a pivotal role in offering their subjective evaluation and insight for the reader. These critics are often accepted as being experts in their area with a high degree of knowledge about the cultural form in question, while TV critics were often accepted and even positioned as viewers elevated to the role of critic by the newspaper. However, this is not to say that change has or will not come to these other areas of criticism. As newspapers move online, the pressures to reshape traditional forms of coverage have increased along with a need for all critics to attract and keep readers. Likewise, even cultural industries like opera and art are changing, as they seek new revenue streams and audiences, such as by providing virtual tours of galleries or by offering on-demand television performances. All forms of criticism are changing over time, the question that needs to be asked, in what way? While this chapter has focused on television criticism and its shift toward a new form of liquid criticism, more work is needed to explore how other criticisms are changing and what form of liquid criticism they might take.

Main Television Pages Analyzed https://www.theguardian.com/culture/television (49,150 total articles. 20 articles linked to top page). Initial access 13 Sept 2019. https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio (201 articles linked to main TVRadio page). Initial access 10 Sept 2019. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/ (78 articles linked to page). Initial access 13 Sept 2019. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz (141 articles linked to page). Initial access 11 Sept 2019. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz (111 articles linked to page). Initial access 11 Sept 2019. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/television?page=1 (7935 total articles. 20 linked to top page). Initial access 13 Sept 2019.

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Lotz, A. D. (2017). Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Michigan: Michigan Publishing. MailOnline. (2019a). Love Island. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ love-island/index.html. Accessed 12 Sept 2019. MailOnline. (2019b, September 18). Strictly’s Kevin Clifton Reveals It Took Him THREE Times to Get on Show as He Looked Like a ‘Gothic Scarecrow’ in New Documentary… While Fans Get a Glimpse of How Dancers Used to Look. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7453909/ Strictly-unknown-One-TV-reveal-past-lives-Strictlys-dance-professionals.html. Accessed 12 Sept 2019. Mangan, L. (2019, September 15). Inside Cadbury: Chocolate Secrets Unwrapped Review—Sickeningly Dull. Guardian. https://www.theguardian. com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/15/inside-cadbury-chocolate-secrets-unwrap ped-review-sickeningly-dull. Accessed 20 Sept. McArthur, C. (1980). Point of Review: Television Criticism in the Press. Screen Education, 35, 59–61. Mitchell, M. (2019, September 15). Fear The Walking Dead Season 6: Will There be Another Series? Daily Express. https://www.express.co.uk/sho wbiz/tv-radio/1178337/Fear-The-Walking-Dead-season-6-Will-there-beanother-series-renewed-cancelled-AMC. Accessed 20 Sept 2019. Nelson, R. (2007). Quality TV Drama: Estimations and Influences Through Time and Space. In J. McCabe & K. Akass (Eds.), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (pp. 38–51). London: I.B. Tauris. Ofcom. (2019a). News Consumption in the UK. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__ data/assets/pdf_file/0027/157914/uk-news-consumption-2019-report.pdf. Accessed 10 Sept 2019. Ofcom. (2019b). Adults: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2019. https://www. ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/149124/adults-media-use-andattitudes-report.pdf. Accessed 5 Sept 2019. Pengelly, M. (2019, September 16). SNL Drops Shane Gillis from Cast Over Racist Comments. Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/ 2019/sep/16/shane-gillis-snl-cast-racist-comments. Accessed 21 Oct 2019. Poole, M. (1984). The Cult of the Generalist: British Television Criticism 1936– 83. Screen, 25, 41–61. Rees, J. (2019, September 11). Who Do You Think You Are, Review: Mark Wright Did Not Expect the Spanish Inquisition. Daily Telegraph. https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2019/09/11/do-think-review-mark-wright-didnot-expect-spanish-inquisition/. Accessed 15 Sept 2019. Rixon, P. (2006). American Television on British Screens: A Story of Cultural Interaction. London: Palgrave. Rixon, P. (2011). TV Critics and Popular Culture: A History of British Television Criticism. London: I.B. Tauris.

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Skincare Products While Modelling a Full Face of Makeup. MailOnline. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7450273/Fans-call-MillieBobby-Browns-video-demo-new-skincare-line.html. Accessed 17 Sept 2019. Teurlings, J. (2018). Social Media and the New Commons of TV Criticism. Television & New Media, 19(3), 208–224. The Times. (2019). Television. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/television? page=1. Accessed 15 Sept 2019. Thurman, N., Cornia, A., & Kunert, J. (2016). Journalists in the UK. Reuters Institute, Oxford University Press. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/ sites/default/files/research/files/Journalists%2520in%2520the%2520UK.pdf. Accessed 18 Oct 2019. Vernon, P. (2019, September 12). Why Are We Still Laughing at Friends? The Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2019-09-12/times2/whyare-we-still-laughing-at-friends-sqdrzvvjf. Accessed 13 Sept 2019. Vonow, B. (2019, September 12). TRUE PRUE What Is Prue Leith’s Net Worth, What Is She Paid for Bake Off and Who’s Her Husband Rayne Kruger? Sun. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2858726/ prue-leith-bake-off-age-net-worth-husband/. Accessed 13 Sept 2019. Wahl-Jorgensen, K., Williams, A., Sambrook, R., Harris, J., Garcia-Blanco, I., Dencik, L., et al. (Eds.). (2016). The Future of Journalism. Digital Journalism, 4(7), 809–815. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2016.119 9469. Watson, F. (2019, September 13). Top Boy Season 3 Netflix Release Time: What Time Is Top Boy on Netflix? Daily Express. https://www.express. co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1176983/Top-Boy-season-3-Netflix-release-timewhen-what-time-series-Drake-Ashley-Walters-Channel-4. Accessed 14 Sept 2019. Williams, K. (2010). Read All About It! A History of the British Newspaper. London: Routledge. Worsley, T. C. (1970). Television: The Ephemeral Art. London: Alan Ross.

CHAPTER 8

Digital Media in the Visual Art World: A Renewed Relationship with the Market Guillaume Sirois

Introduction The development of the Internet has significantly transformed the writing and publishing environment in which art criticism takes place. This issue has often been addressed in relation to the growing influence of amateurs in various art disciplines (Béliard and Naulin 2016), a phenomenon that tends to blur the frontier between professional and amateur critics (Pasquier and Beaudouin 2014) as the latter increasingly develop specialized knowledge (Kammer 2015). However, the digital environment has also deeply affected the work of writers who dedicate their professional lives to covering the art world. More than a simple change in the support for their texts, the new environment signifies several adaptations both in style and substance. In the visual art world, media coverage is almost exclusively provided by written media, and professional writers have played a pivotal role in the structuration of the sector for at least two centuries. Thus, the digital metamorphosis of the publishing environment has meant not so much

G. Sirois (B) Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_8

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an increase in the influence of amateurs, which remains marginal, but rather the transformation of the position and influence of professional art writers. Among these changes, there is the growing influence of informational Web sites that entered the media sphere when they began to publish on a regular basis articles about the global art world. Moreover, these Web sites deploy a great deal of outreach efforts as they produce easy-sharable content that is disseminated through social media. As a result, these platforms are now prominent players in the visual art world, as is confirmed by the traffic statistics1 of these platforms.2 For example, Artsy generally has from three to four million individual visits to its Web site every month, whereas Artnet maintains an average that is above three million visits a month. These platforms seriously alter the way information circulates in the visual art world as they take advantage of the speed and the scale made possible by digital technology to create a new model of written media dedicated to visual art. This chapter focuses on this new type of media coverage and more specifically on two platforms: Artsy.net and Artnet.com. The term platform is now widely used in the literature in reference to Web sites or other programmable infrastructures with a complex architecture through which they are connected to other elements of the cyberspace (Gillespie 2010). Several authors now speak about the “platformization” of the Web as the cyberspace is increasingly organized around digital platforms, in which content circulate fluidly and rapidly between various components of this ecosystem. New business models were developed out of this configuration, notably in the media sector where digital platforms were built in relation to social media (Nieborg and Poell 2018) thanks to content designed specifically for these channels. The platforms studied here offer various services to their users, including a repertoire of galleries, a calendar of exhibitions and art fairs, an images databank and a fully developed art magazine made up mostly of easy-to-read and easy-to-share small pieces about the art world. Moreover, the two platforms also comprise

1 The statistics presented hereafter are from SimilarWeb. https://www.similarweb.com. (Retrieved August 15, 2019) and cover the period from February to July 2019. 2 The importance that these platforms have taken on in the visual art world became obvious to me during an exploratory ethnographic work that I did in Montreal in summer 2017 for another project (Bellavance et al. 2018). During this series of interviews, all my respondents mentioned Artsy as one of their main sources of information about contemporary art on the Internet.

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a transactional component that allows users to buy works of art online. Therefore, these two cases combine in one platform two activities that have always been separated in the art world: selling works of art and writing about works of art. Thus, the emergence of this new model raises many questions about the independence of this media production vis-à-vis the market and the professional status of the writers who work for these platforms, as they often find themselves at odds with ethical principles guiding cultural journalism and cultural critique (Kristensen and From 2015). By opposing these two examples to the classical conceptions of art criticism in the visual art world, I argue that these platforms have developed a new model of publication specializing in the visual arts that differs significantly from that of traditional publications. Indeed, if the classical art magazine was mostly interested in aesthetic discussions, the new webbased publications rather favor the topicality of an artistic production as the main criteria for its coverage. Such a change echoes the shift from an “aesthetic paradigm” to a “journalistic paradigm” that has been studied in another context (Hellman and Jaakkola 2011). In fact, I argue that the emergence of this new model can be construed as the introduction of branded content in the visual art world, as this media content is developed by an entity that also has commercial interests in the sector. If these new publications do not necessarily replace the old art magazines, they nevertheless institute a new model of media coverage of the visual arts, a field that was once defined by critical discourse (Roose et al. 2018). The chapter has three main sections. In the first section, I explain how art criticism has been envisioned historically and sociologically as the source of independent comments on works of art. This is with this ideal-typical model of the art critic that the sociology of art has built a theoretical framework that makes the art critic a key agent in the relation between artists and the market. The second section turns to the cases at hand, Artsy and Artnet, to spell out the model on which they operate. This model relies on a new way of covering the art world, which is exposed through the detailed analysis of both platforms’ media productions. Finally, the last section discusses this new model in relation to the literature on branded content. It argues that if this media production can be considered a form of branded content, then it takes a specific signification in the art world context.

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The Pivotal Role of Art Criticism in the Visual Art World Historically, the emergence of the art critic as a singular figure in the modern art world is intrinsically linked to the development, mostly in the nineteenth century, of an autonomous art scene. With the birth of the Salons in France, a new space for artistic expression was opened, a space in which the artist gained a form of independence vis-à-vis aristocratic and ecclesiastical commissions to create unsolicited works and present them to the public. It is in this new social configuration that the work of the critic became essential since the circulation of works was based on a “triangular relation” between the artist, the collector, and the critic (Lemaire 2018). Indeed, the nascent art market brought about a new dynamic in which the collector must make a choice from a highly heterogeneous offering. The challenge for the collector is to pick the best work from a technical and aesthetic point of view, perhaps a work that will gain in artistic and economic value over time. In such a context, the art critic serves as an agent that “reduces uncertainty” (Moulin 2003) as he points out the works that deserve collectors’ attention. As a consequence, the art critic has become a central character of the modern art world and several sociological theories have been built around this figure. From a Beckerian perspective (Becker 2008, p. 34), the art world is not constituted solely of artists, but of all actors who are essential to “the production of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, defines as art.” Becker insists that the cohesion of an art world is based on the emergence of a common conception of art and its value that bonds together members of this art world. In this context, the role of art critics as legitimate members of an art world is paramount as they contribute to the establishment and evolution of what this community considers as art, and as good art. In a similar perspective, Nathalie Heinich (1998) developed a theory on the evolution of art forms that gives a central position to critics. According to Heinich, the definition of contemporary art is constantly challenged by the practice of artists who transgress the generally accepted boundaries of art production. In this context, the role of the critic is to provide the legitimizing argument that will facilitate the integration of the new practice into art institutions. She writes: “Any ‘coup’ by an avant-garde artist is a challenge to the critic, legitimacy maker, which must in turn take it up: so that the

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most-advanced of the specialist by authorizing the last transgression forces artists to risk the next one”3 (Heinich 1998, p. 52). Yet, after centuries of this practice, art criticism remains notoriously difficult to define (Elkins 1996). What is it exactly that the critic does? Traditionally, three tasks are said to be at the heart of the critical activity: description, interpretation, and evaluation. If description is often a prerequisite, a more significant task of the art critic is to interpret the works considered. In doing so, the critic gives a theoretical foundation to the choices made by galleries, museums, and collectors, often using the “intellectual trends of the moment” (Moulin 1992, p. 206). The critic also evaluates the artistic significance of the piece with regard to its importance in the artist’s trajectory, the context of its presentation, and its formal, thematic, and aesthetic developments in relation to other artistic practices. In this regard, the critic is a key agent in the recognition process of an artist’s work. The recognition path has been described as being constituted of four concentric circles: the peers, the specialists (critics and curators), the market (dealers and collectors), and finally the general public (Bowness 1990). That is to say that the art critic can be conceived as the mediator who allows the artistic production to leave the close circle of like-minded artists to reach the market and eventually the general public. Therefore, the line between evaluation and promotion is often thin as many critics become advocates for a certain production or aesthetic and the group of artists who practice it. As the main promoter of this new artistic trend, the critic gives legitimacy to the practice and contributes to establishing both its artistic and market value. Exhibition Reviews and Art Magazines Art critics write various types of texts: essays for exhibition catalog, books, articles, etc. However, the genre that has come to be viewed as the main vehicle for critical discourse is the exhibition review published in a widely circulating art magazine. Indeed, the exhibition review can be understood as a first rough draft of art history 4 as it incarnates the first attempt to contextualize newly created works of art and to evaluate their relevance 3 My translation from the original in French. 4 This phrase is inspired by the famous statement of the American publisher Philip

Graham, who said in a speech in 1963 that journalism provides a first rough draft of history.

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vis-à-vis various parameters. Thus, Fanchon Deflaux (2010) argues that the exhibition review is the articulation of two discourses: the discourse of the exhibition put forward by the curator and artists assembled in a show, to which the critic responds with his own critical discourse. Since the exhibition review takes place within a long literary tradition, it is still seen as an independent commentary that should be guided by no other preoccupations than the quality of the work presented. If the figure of the prestigious, and often terrifying, art critic is often romanticized (Desrochers 2007), my previous research (Sirois 2016) on art magazines shows that these publications strive to maintain their editorial independence. Indeed, among the fifteen most widely circulating art magazines that I have observed, a vast majority are run independently, either as notfor-profit organizations or as small businesses publishing one or a few titles. These publications are typically administered by a small team of employees who coordinate the publishing activity. Each issue of the magazine is composed of no more than ten elaborated texts written by regular contributors to the publication. My examination of a sample of exhibition reviews published in these magazines revealed that these texts are written by authors that are split, almost evenly, between four professional categories: university professors, individuals who occupy senior positions in museums and galleries, art magazine editors, and freelance art critics. Collaboration with these prestigious authors is part of a strategy deployed by art magazines to enhance their credibility as opinions expressed in their pages come from recognized figures in the art world. Accordingly, there is an economy of prestige that characterizes the relationship between the critic, the magazine for which he or she writes, and the artists and curators covered. If a critic is invited to write for a magazine in part due to the prestige of his or her position, he or she in turn benefits from writing for a prestigious magazine. As James English notes in another context, “the stature of the judges guarantees the stature of the prize […], and the stature of the prizes guarantees the honor associated with judging it” (English 2005, p. 123). In sum, sociological theories about the art critic make him a key player in the art world. As one of the first agents by which legitimacy is granted to an artistic production, he plays the central role in the integration of this production into the art world. Yet, this is only the first step as the cultural capital that is built through this process may be transformable into economic capital in the art market when art dealers step in. These sociological theories affirm the centrality of aesthetic discourse as the main way by which value is produced in the art world.

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New Players: Artsy Magazine and Artnet News as Case Studies The digital environment has triggered several innovations in the visual art sector among which are many platforms created to provide information about the art world. Conceived as immense databases assembling information available on the web, some platforms provide, for example, artists’ rankings based on the price paid for their works (e.g., artprice. com) or their reputations as artists (e.g., artfacts.net). Also made possible by digital technology are the large image databanks that gather artworks and other cultural content. Part of the Google Arts & Culture initiative (artsandculture.google.com) is dedicated specifically to this task, whereas other projects (e.g., artstor.org) pursue similar goals from a not-for-profit perspective. Added to this landscape are platforms that function as classical media providing news and analysis about what is going on in the art world; some of them (e.g., artnews.com) are a digital adaptation of a media that was once published on paper, whereas others (e.g., blouinartinfo.com) are new players that have emerged with the web. The two cases analyzed in this chapter combine in one platform all functions described above (informational database, image databank, and media) and are among the most visited informational Web sites on visual art5 and direct competitors to one another.6 Presentation of the Cases The first example, Artsy, is the brainchild of Carter Cleveland, a computer science student from Princeton University, raised by a father who was an art writer and a collector. The site was started in 2009 as a database of artworks, and it encompasses today more than one million pieces. This feature is part of what Cleveland describes as the educational branch of Artsy, a collection of tools and content that allow users to educate 5 In terms of individual visits to their site, the two chosen cases are well above the other Web sites mentioned in this paragraph. For example, artprice.com (930,000), artfacts.net (117,000), and artnews.com (673,000). Statistics are from SimilarWeb (https://www.sim ilarweb.com. Retrieved August 15, 2019) and cover the period from February to July 2019. 6 Alexa indicates that more than 40% of the audience of the two Web sites are a shared audience that visit both sites. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/artsy.net. Retrieved August 14, 2019.

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themselves about art, thanks to texts written by their team of art historians. However, the company also has a commercial branch that Cleveland describes as an online “one-stop shop” for art collectors. In fact, Artsy really became a big player in the art world when major galleries, like Gagosian and PACE, saw in the platform the potential to expand their market through e-commerce. Today, Artsy offers users the possibility to buy works of art online, bid at online auctions, and discover what is on sale in galleries around the world. Situated at the confluent of both branches, Artsy Magazine is both an educational tool, as it feeds the database with information and texts, and a strong marketing tool for the platform and its business partners, as it constantly attracts new visitors to the platform. By contrast, the second example, Artnet, is a much older endeavor. It was launched at the beginning of the 1990s, and Hans Neuendorf, a German gallerist and the founder of the art fair Art Cologne, quickly became its chairman. In its beginning, Artnet was conceived as an instrument to extract and compile results from art auction sales with the goal of “bringing transparency to the art world.”7 Today, Artnet claims to have the most comprehensive archive of auction results in the world, with more than 10 million transactions spanning over 30 years. In addition to this database, the platform comprises a vast informational infrastructure that encompasses data about artists, galleries, auction houses, and events. Migration to the web offered the company new possibilities, including an online auction service that allows users to bid on works of arts up for sale. In 2012, Jacob Pabst succeeded his father as head of the company and launched of Artnet News. The new feature is described as follows: “Serving as a one-stop platform for the events, trends, and people that shape the art market and global industry, Artnet News provides up-tothe-minute analysis and expert commentary.” Just like Artsy Magazine, Artnet News is placed at the junction of the various activities: It keeps the platform continually in view in the art world and it fuels its information infrastructure. Despite differences in their origin, Artsy and Artnet now operate on a very similar model. Both of them are platforms developed around a database to which a commercial activity has been added in partnership with art market institutions, transforming them into a new type

7 http://www.artnet.com/about/aboutindex.asp?F=1. Retrieved November 7, 2018.

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of intermediary between collectors and sellers. From this perspective, media activity occupies a key role in both companies. The media model under which these publications operate can be summarized in four main points. The first element to note is the pace of their publishing activity. Artsy Magazine publishes from three to five texts every weekday, whereas Artnet News maintains an average of 10 texts each weekday. This means that over a month, Artsy Magazine publishes around 90 different texts and Artnet News twice as much. Second, the two platforms publish short texts that are easy to read, mostly descriptive and not engaging with complicated aesthetic or theoretical notions. Based on the sample studied here, the average length is around 1500 words at Artsy Magazine, which is a little longer than the average wordcount at Artnet News, situated at around 1000 words. However, the length of texts tends to vary considerably from one publication to another. Third, this content is prepared by a small team of skilled writers and editors who are responsible for most of the content published by these platforms. Artnet News states in the “about” section of the site that its “team of trusted, experienced reporters and editors in Europe, Asia and North America […] track who is making the news and what’s driving the market around the clock.”8 This team produced 91% of the content in our sample. The rest comes from experts or occasional collaborators who are invited to publish one or a few texts. A similar team runs Artsy Magazine 9 ; they are responsible for writing the majority of the content published on the platform (68% in our sample), even though Artsy tends to invite more occasional contributors. Finally, all this content is available free-of-charge online, which is a key element for their outreach activity. Indeed, both platforms deliver at least twice daily digests of their most recent stories while being considerably active on social media, mainly Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The format of the texts is designed explicitly for quick reading and easy sharing, whether it is directly on the platforms or through social media. With this intense outreach activity, Artsy and Artnet make sure to stay in constant visibility in the art world and to maintain a high level of traffic on their platform, which is essential to their business model.

8 https://news.artnet.com/about. Retrieved November 18, 2018. 9 https://www.artsy.net/contact. Retrieved November 18, 2018.

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Studying Artsy Magazine and Artnet News To research these two cases, I first conducted a series of observations in the perspective of a netnography (Kozinets 2015), an approach inspired by ethnography to carry out observations and collect data in the digital environment. The observations on both platforms were performed for more than one year (June 2018 to August 2019) and have been useful for gaining an in-depth understanding of the context in which these platforms operate. More specifically, data were collected on the structure of the platforms, their patterns and rhythm of publication, their team of collaborators and their use of social media. To go deeper in the editorial program put forward by each platform, a detailed analysis of a sample of texts was performed. Both Artsy and Artnet publish with regularity texts that are all dedicated to the art world. Therefore, it was adequate opting for a consecutive day sample (Riffe et al. 1993) to get a representative sample of their media production. All articles published by both platforms between September 15, 2018, and October 15, 2018, were collected. Media productions in the visual art world tend to be modulated by the cultural calendar. Thus, the chosen period was favorable to the observation of regular operations of these platforms as they are in full production mode, back to normal after the excitement of the fall season takeoff, but not affected by the slowdown of the summer or the end of the year. During this period, Artsy Magazine published 91 different articles, while Artnet News issued 184 texts. This sample of texts was analyzed following a qualitative content analysis method (Lejeune 2014). When I started to analyze the corpus, it became rapidly clear that the texts published by these platforms are completely different from the classical exhibition review. Indeed, these texts were not based on the three main tasks traditionally performed by art critics (description, interpretation, evaluation) and did not include a long aesthetic argument that would serve as a legitimizing background for the artistic production considered. The corpus was rather heterogenous with texts focusing on different aspects of the art world, in various forms and length. Therefore, an analysis concentrating on genres seemed appropriate to demonstrate how reviewing and criticism on these platforms are significantly different from what one finds in classical art magazines. The content analysis was focused on the structure of the text, the main topics covered and the tone and expression used by the author. A first phase of analysis performed on

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the first week of coverage resulted in a first set of categories. These categories were subsequently tested on the rest of the sample, which led to adjustments and refinements. The following section discusses the results of this content analysis and brings to light the type of coverage offered by these platforms. Analysis of Media Content My analysis of the sample led to the identification of six main types of texts, published on a regular basis by Artsy and Artnet. If the two platforms use the same types of texts, their respective editorial programs, nevertheless, differ slightly as shown in the diagram below. Artnet News concentrates on reporting, while Artsy has a stronger focus on art history topics Fig. 8.1. A closer look at each of these types of texts provides a deeper understanding of the coverage proposed by the two platforms. The analysis also reveals how they construct their own legitimacy and how they see the role of their writers and their contribution to the art world. The first three categories of texts seem to be intended to situate these publications as art world insiders as they provide practical information

1 Guide/List 2 Who's Who 3 Special Content 4 Feature 5 Art History 6 Report 0%

10%

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Fig. 8.1 Analysis of media content

50% Artsy

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to those who want to penetrate this exclusive world. The first category consists of guides or lists of notable elements that “must be seen” by art aficionados during an event or in a specific city. For example, once a week, Artnet News publishes what they call the Editor’s Picks, comprising 11 or 12 “things not to miss in New York’s art world.” During the same period, Artsy Magazine published lists of booths that one “must absolutely see” at the art fair Frieze in London. Second, Artsy and Artnet both publish who’s who texts that present the most influential people in the art world that any well-informed follower should know. These texts are also frequently constructed as lists, for example, the “25 rising power players who will run the art market” (Artsy Magazine) or the “10 art influencers you need to follow on Instagram to stay in the loop this Fall” (Artnet News ). Third, the two platforms regularly run articles that present special content, meaning content that is intended to bring the reader behind the scenes of the art world and reveal little-known facts about artists. Artsy often has pieces that present exclusive content in which an artist talks about, for example, works that inspired him or tips for becoming successful as an artist. During this time, Artnet ran a series of three pieces in which superstar artist Maurizio Cattelan reveals stories he learned in the course of preparing his upcoming exhibition. Along the same line, the editorial programs of both platforms also include pieces that tell the story of how people pull strings in the art world, such as one article that follows a family who put its collection up for sale at a major auction house, while another piece brings the reader “inside” a major museum expansion. In all these texts, both platforms are particularly eager to demonstrate their proximity with the art world. Indeed, when they publish guides of “must-see” elements or lists of the “most influential” people, they report on perceived consensus based on trends of the moment. These texts are based on widespread opinions about what is currently influential in the art world, and the choices they present remain at the state of affirmation without developing an argument to demonstrate through aesthetic considerations the rationales behind such choices, as traditional art criticism would generally do. The display of proximity with the art world is even more apparent in the special content pieces, which confirm the ability of reporters to gain exclusive access to influential people in the art world. Demonstrating connections in and knowledge of the art world is essential for platforms that are relatively new to the media landscape specialized in visual arts because it is through such a strategy that they establish their credibility and legitimacy with readers. These platforms

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cannot count on a collection of prestigious signatures as was the case for traditional art magazines; therefore, they must show their connections to the art world through other means. A similar proximity between those who write about art and a field of cultural production has previously been noted in the research on cultural journalism, situating this type of activity in an “intermediate position between serving the market and the public interest” (Kristensen 2019, p. 5). Such a position questions the usual professional journalism standards that require a journalist to keep a distance vis-à-vis his or her subject in the name of integrity and objectivity. However, cultural journalists have for a long time considered themselves part of a different category based on the claim of “art exceptionalism” (Harries and Wahl-Jorgensen 2007). In this ambiguous position, cultural journalists often set for themselves the mission of educating people about art and those who make it, which places them in a situation in which it becomes difficult to criticize the cultural elite. This position recalls the slippery position of the traditional art critic outlined in the first section, which theoretically commands art critics to produce independent comments on an artistic production but, de facto, often changes many of them into promotional agents of a certain aesthetic or practice. Thus, in the case at hand, the writers, indeed, find themselves in the intermediary position between the market and the public, educating people about contemporary art. Yet, unlike traditional art critics, they are generally deprived of their own personal voice, by which the prestigious art critic expresses his or her own views. The writers who work for Artsy and Artnet are asked instead to report on the general consensus with regard to tastes and preferences. As they work for platforms that are also involved in the business of selling works of art, their function is not so much to make taste but rather to monitor changes in trends as they compile these lists of “must see” elements in the global art world. The two following categories of texts published by these platforms, features and art history, are closer to the traditional accounts of art criticism as these texts report on the work of individual artists or movements. Indeed, the editorial programs of both platforms include features dedicated specifically to one artist. These articles typically invite the reader to “meet” the artist, present their work, and explore their artistic processes. In this type of piece, the effort to demonstrate proximity takes a more journalistic approach, as reporters often emphasize exclusive interviews they have had with the artist. The sample also includes a significant

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number of pieces on art history. However, this category concerns Artsy almost exclusively, for which this kind of piece comprises 35% of its media production, while the practice remains only anecdotal in Artnet’s editorial program. Artsy produces a wide variety of texts in this category, including articles that explore bodies of works by influential artists, the significance of various artistic movements, themes explored by several artists over time, and even a few texts dedicated to a single work of art. These texts may, in a certain way, resemble the work of traditional art criticism as they discuss the place of an artist in art history. Nevertheless, most of the time, they serve as confirmation of well-known artists and movements, which aims at educating a mainstream audience about them. These texts are not intended to unfold new elements about art history or to provide a first proposition on how to incorporate new practices in art history, as the traditional exhibition review would do, but merely to report on what is already well-known or well-established for art specialists. These texts are not written as an element of dialogue with this public of specialists as it is the case for traditional art criticism; rather, they take place in the large educational infrastructure of these platforms and are designed as a reference base for collectors and the general public. As we see in these first five categories, the role of art writers is here fundamentally different from the traditional role attributed to art criticism. Indeed, in cultural sociology, the visual art critic is not only someone who reports on the art world or just an intermediary between a work of art and the public. Rather, the art critic has a pivotal role to play in the articulation of a common vision of art (Becker 2008) and in the evolution of such a vision (Heinich 1998). His writing is intended to start a dialogue with artists and curators in order to give an artistic production its significance and legitimacy. This critical function is absent here as the texts published by Artsy and Artnet are limited to a reaffirmation of the importance of certain works, people, and artistic trends, which have been discussed, evaluated, and legitimized elsewhere. These texts do not attempt to make a contribution to the advancement of art theory, but simply report on what is currently celebrated in the art world. Therefore, the writers who work for these platforms have lost the specific role of art critics to become mere observers who report on the evolution of the art world, but their capacity to influence its development is limited. This position is, furthermore, reflected in the last category, report, which makes up a significant portion of both editorial programs. This category is the most important for Artnet News as it comprises up to

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71% of the sample studied. Artnet News reports on seven different types of news: exhibitions and art events (23%); artistic coups and stunts (9%); various phenomena (8%) such as the rise of a segment of the market; major sales (12%), mainly in auction houses and art fairs; new releases (5%) of books and reports as well as technological innovations; upcoming projects (11%), for example, a new art space set to open soon; and finally, general reporting (32%), which includes news about people in the art world (nominations, resignations, deaths, etc.), judiciary and political affairs, and discoveries and controversies about works of art and monuments. Some of these pieces are very brief and can be considered a form of “churnalism,” a neologism by which the literature designates a type of reporting that is based simply on “recycling press releases and agency copy and which involves little or no independent reporting or attempt at verification” (Harcup 2014). Even if the technique raises questions with regard to norms of sourcing, it has long been associated with cultural journalism, as noted by Kristensen (2018). In the case of Artsy and Artnet, the fast pace of publication that is part of the business model requires reporters to produce texts with such rapidity that contacting sources and making verification seem almost impossible. For example, one of the writers working for Artnet News produced 51 different texts in a month. In this case, the value seems to be more on the speed of information dissemination, as her employer promises to provide “up-to-the-minute” news about the art world. More generally, what this category of texts confirm is a movement toward a “newsification” of the visual art world in which “the professional logics of journalism may be overriding the aesthetic logics of the arts” (Kristensen 2019). In the model studied here, this is not only— sometimes not even predominantly—art matters that are reported on but a vast array of topics including sociopolitical or economic issues, news regarding people and celebrities, and the most mundane elements about life in the art world. Thus, the media production of Artsy and Artnet over a month-long period shows an important shift in the function of written media in the art world. Instead of being an integral part in a complex process by which works of art are discussed, interpreted, and evaluated, these platforms have created a new type of media that simply report on trends, instead of contributing to creating them. Rather than affirming their own legitimacy by enrolling prestigious authors who would engage in the aesthetic discussion, these platforms display proximity with important people, events, and venues and build an editorial program that confirms

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their position as a reliable and up-to-date source of information on the art world. Their goal is not to participate in the elaboration of an intellectual, and largely elitist, discourse about contemporary art but rather to provide their readers with the latest information about what is going on in the art world in terms of sales results, trends, and buying patterns. From this perspective, these platforms play a new role in educating an audience characterized by its economic capital about the trends that are developing in the art world so that they gain a forward-looking perspective to take advantage of opportunities to see, and perhaps, to buy art.

New Dynamics: The Emergence of Branded Content in the Art World The activity of the critic has always been closely related to economic dynamics in the visual art world, as the sociology of art has demonstrated several times, but the new model put forward by Artsy Magazine and Artnet News carries this relationship in another direction. Indeed, if merging two activities that have always been separated in the art world (selling works of art and commenting about the art world) may seem highly problematic from a critical point of view, a deeper analysis is necessary to fully understand the nature of the new relationship with the market that these platforms institute. Branded Content The literature on marketing and advertising places under the general label of “branded content” a wide variety of practices in which media content is produced in a creative way by brands in order to be fully in control of the message. There are various genres and techniques that are used, from a simple product placement to the development of specific media content related to the brand. Simply put, branded content occurs when “media and marketing are merging” (Hardy 2018, p. 102). If the practice is not completely new, it has accelerated with the change in media consumption that has accompanied the rise of digital technologies. Indeed, in this new environment, the avoidance of publicity by the consumer is much easier, and consequently brands needed to look for alternative ways to convey their message to potential consumers. In its most developed form, companies go as far as creating their own media channel through which they can distribute their content.

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From this perspective, the media model created by Artsy and Artnet can be understood as a form of branded content as they produce and distribute content that is related to their main commercial activity. The constant media flow generated by these platforms undeniably contributes to building the value of the brand and keeping the company highly visible in the global art world. However, the texts produced by the media branch of these platforms do not refer specifically to the services offered by the company, as is often the case with branded content, but rather replicate the modus operandi of an art media outlet as they cover various aspects of the art world. In a similar way, the articles they produce do not specifically report on works of art that are for sale on the platform. Here, Artsy and Artnet take a much broader approach toward media content as the goal is not only to promote their specific products, but also more broadly to inform and educate the public. Indeed, the content they produce through their media branch is integrated to their databases so that it enriches their repertoire of resources on the art world. So, eventually, when they set up an auction, they can link the works up for sale to a series of texts to which they are related. The “informative and pedagogical dimension” (Guellec 2013) is often part of branded content strategies, especially in markets that require a high level of education to appreciate the products. Guellec gives the example of the wine market in which some merchants have started to produce videos including tasting advice and information about the wine culture (e.g., choice of glasses, pairing with food, etc.). The same dynamic is undoubtedly at play in the art market, which relies heavily on the knowledge of its clientele to appreciate the artistic and economic value of a piece. From this perspective, when Artsy’s founder talks about the need to educate people about art or when the corporate discourse put forward by Artnet insists on the need for more information about the art world, it is not necessarily based on the old humanistic values of a liberal education in the arts (Jensen 2002), but rather on a more pragmatic approach to a market that can be expanded only by educating new clients. Ethics and Judgments in this New Environment If branded content has become a dirty word in journalistic circles, it is because it blurs the line between editorial and advertising, a separation that has been viewed for a long time as a sacred principle of ethical journalism. However, if the initial reaction to this type of content has been

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largely negative, many scholars in the field stress the need to reconsider the question (Carlson 2015), especially in the context of a prolonged crisis in the industry (Jaakkola 2015), which forces media to develop new types of content that appeal to their readers and new ways of providing access to it. The main question driving this reconsideration of branded content is whether or not the reader is misled about the nature of the content presented. Put in another way, is it a “brand message disguised as the work of a journalist” (Hardy 2018, p. 111)? In the cases at hand, the platforms do not hide their commercial activity nor do they use another established media name to push through their content about the art market. In fact, the media model that these platforms have created unquestionably suits their needs, but it is also adapted to the “attention economy” (Citton 2014) that increasingly defines the media sphere. Indeed, according to the literature on the “attention economy,” we now live in a world where attention should be considered a scarce resource as people are constantly being solicited by various stimuli. Thus, more than ever before, media must compete with one another to get the attention of the audience and keep it. In such a context, the media model put forward by Artsy and Artnet can be conceived as a commercial response to this changing environment. Instead of presenting long and complicated texts that engage with a sophisticated aesthetic discussion like traditional art magazines used to do, these media create texts that are more adapted to today’s reality of media consumption. With the creation of this new model of media specializing in visual arts, these platforms develop an alternative regime of visibility (Mubi Brighenti 2010) in the global art world in which the social factors that condition the level of visibility of an artist have changed. In the model instituted by these platforms, it is no longer the predominance of aesthetic discourse that represents the main source of legitimacy and visibility, as it was envisioned by classical sociological theory; it has been replaced by mere exposure. Indeed, the new model rather favors the velocity of an artistic production through the media channels as the main source of visibility. Several elements in this model contribute to this fast circulation: the catchy titles, the relative simplicity of texts, and the abundance of images accompanying the text, so that viewers can quickly get a sense of an artistic production. All these elements make these media products easy to consume and easy to share, and contribute to link the visibility of an artistic production to the viral propagation mode that is so typical of social media.

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This does not mean that these platforms completely refrain from any judgments about what is going on in the art world. In fact, many of the pieces involve a form of judgment. This is the case, of course, in the guides and lists that suggest exhibitions one should not miss or even with the “who’s who” pieces that indirectly signal preferences for styles and aesthetics. They also implicitly make judgments when they feature artists or when they report on trends and phenomena in the art market. This way of shedding light on artistic productions goes back to the observation of art critic and media theorist Boris Groys (Elkins and Newman 2008, p. 157) who argues that coverage in itself is more important today than the opinion expressed. In this perspective, Artsy and Artnet can be viewed as accelerators and amplifiers of coverage about visual art as they report on choices made by other intermediaries and build repositories of the most popular choices in the art world.

Conclusion The modern art critic has always been, in a certain way, an agent of the art market even if the profession has always been considered as an intellectual, perhaps even a literary, activity. This romantic vision of the art critic might be the vision of another age in which aesthetes were at the center of the art world. The crisis, or even the death, of contemporary criticism, heralded so many times (Michaud 1997), has seriously damaged this vision, and the crisis in the media industry contributes to annihilate the possibility of exercising this profession as it was traditionally conceived. The writers who frenetically produce texts for Artsy and Artnet do a different job. They write for the web, several texts a week, always catching up with the latest, tracking influencers and trends that define the art world. They write pieces that reveal unknown facts about the art market and those who make it, articles about the latest coups of daring artists, texts about fortunes spent overnight at auction houses and fairs, and reports on future projects that everybody will talk about in a few months. In a sense, these writers are still the agents of the market, maybe more than ever before, but are using different means, processes, and channels to perform the task. If these writers do not have to the space and the time to produce long and elaborated pieces as the traditional art critic would do, this is probably, in part, because the public do not demand it anymore. After

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all, one of the keys to success of Artsy and Artnet has been to build their platforms on the popularity of a certain type of media content.

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CHAPTER 9

Young Voices, New Qualities? Children Reviewers as Vernacular Reviewers of Cultural Products Maarit Jaakkola

Introduction In recent decades, cultural communication, including reviews of new cultural products on the market, has become decentralized and democratized since the emergence of self-mass communication introduced alternatives to the professional gatekeeper model of the mass media (Jenkins 2006b). Public cultural critique is now carried out by an increasingly heterogeneous group of content producers on different platforms (Burgess 2012; Kristensen and From 2015). The opening up of production has also implied the emergence of a new group of producers that had been previously strongly controlled and gatekept by adults: children. In this chapter, I explore reviews produced by or via children on popular social networking sites. The object of inquiry is children, from toddlers to 12-year-olds, in the role of public reviewers. By selecting cases that include children as media producers from the previous datasets

M. Jaakkola (B) University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_9

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featuring review content from YouTube and Instagram, and localizing them in a typology of user reviewers, I intend to shed more light on children’s online involvement in the production of so-called user-generated or vernacular reviews (Jaakkola 2018). The major objective of the chapter is to outline how children are present in vernacular reviewing or in the user-generated content (UCG) production of reviews, in contrast to institutionalized or professional-generated content (PGC) in the same area, in which the tradition has largely excluded children even when reviewing children’s culture. In what ways are children typically included in the production of reviews, and how is the construction of their voice and agency as “reviewers” facilitated and put into practice? In conjunction with this, I want to capture some implications of children’s inclusion for reviews and reviewing: Can the construction of a child’s voice contribute to a child-authentic authority in a way that makes the child perspective be taken seriously in cultural evaluation? Several dimensions are related to children’s appearance in media presentations, which are very important to discuss, and tend to become the central topic when children’s agency is addressed. Children form a sociocultural group that has, in general, been regarded as especially vulnerable, and for this reason, been strongly protected in the public sphere. According to the United Nations’ (UN) Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), a child “shall enjoy special protection” but also “be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity”, and “the responsibility lies in the first place with his parents”. However, my main concern is not primarily ethical; instead, I address the aspects of rights and regulation of communication. Ethical issues related to this framework, such as online child labour (Abidin 2017), digital parenting, sharenting (sharing representations of one’s parenting or children online), and the risks of the mediated childhood (Blum-Ross and Livingstone 2017; Chalklen and Anderson 2017; Leaver 2017), as well as internet safety and children’s media use (Livingstone 2013; Livingstone et al. 2018), have been richly discussed in the previous research. My approach does not involve either the pedagogical aspects of involving children in media production or issues of children’s literacies directly (see e.g. Dowdall 2009; Sim and Berthelsen 2014). Instead, I relate my findings to the broader phenomenon of study, vernacular reviewing as an overarching term of cultural criticism produced by ordinary people, and I am

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interested in how the de-institutionalized sphere of reviewing is evolving through the inclusion of new reviewing voices. In the first section of this chapter, I embed children’s involvement in online media production in the context of some of the fundamental developments that have enabled and accelerated the normalization of children as public (co)producers in online media culture, namely the vernacular turn in online communication and family-friendliness as a characteristic feature of user-generated content targeting younger audiences. Having outlined this context, and after providing some methodological notes, I examine further the definitions of reviewing as an audience genre and present illuminating examples of child reviewers within a typology that emphasizes different grades of institutionalization among content producers.

Vernacular Turn in Cultural Communication The techno-social evolution of the internet has resulted in a participatory culture that has led to a “participatory turn” in communication and social research (Jenkins 2006a, b). The possibility of public user-generated content has led to the increased exposure of ordinary, commonplace, mundane, banal, or everyday practices. In particular, newer popular social networking platforms, such as Instagram (launched in 2010) and Snapchat (launched in 2011), invite people to publish audiovisual material, coupled with written text, from places and situations that were previously defined as private (Burgess and Green 2018). These locations include, for example, homes and their intimate spots, such as beds and bathrooms, and funerals and other places of mourning (Barbour and Heise 2019; Gibbs et al. 2015; Ibrahim 2015; Manovich 2017). There is a vernacular turn in communication that increasingly places the private sphere in the foreground. This turn includes traditions of displaying family, in which parents—in particular, mothers—more actively attempt to manage the social identity of their children (Chalklen and Anderson 2017; Le Moignan et al. 2017; Zappavigna 2016). This vernacular turn that has de-privatized previously unrevealed dimensions of human everyday life may also have affected attitudes concerning children’s appearances on social media, normalizing children as public figures. Vernacularity has, in cultural theory, come to refer to noninstitutional cultural forms and practices (Edensor et al. 2009; Howard 2008). Rather than as part of intermediary activities that would be based on creating

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critical distance from the cultural industry, vernacular activities have been conceptualized as part of or closely related to digital labour or industries, emphasizing the emancipation and empowerment of individual agents, instead of creating common emancipatory or empowering knowledge. Burgess (2006, p. 206) defined vernacular creativity as “the process by which available cultural resources — are recombined in novel ways, so that they are both recognizable because of their familiar elements, and create affective impact through the innovative process of this recombination”. Vernacular creativity, thus, is “a productive articulation of consumer practices and knowledges — with older popular traditions and communicative practices” (Burgess 2006, p. 207). Gibbs and colleagues (2015) extended this notion of cultural participation and self-representation by introducing the concept of the platform vernacular to include the platform affordances that affect the articulation of consumer practices and knowledges, namely the style, grammar, and logical specificities that delimit modes of expression or action on the communication platform. Platform vernaculars are, according to Gibbs et al. (2015), “shared (but not static) conventions and grammars of communication, which emerge from the ongoing interactions between platforms and users” (p. 257). Vernacular reviewing features a subtype of user-generated content that can be referred to as “cultural produsage” (Bruns 2008, 2016) or “prosumption” (Toffler 1980). Both neologisms refer to the hybridity of reception and production—production and usage, or production and consumption—implying that audiences are also active producers and mediators of content. In particular, YouTube, Instagram, and blogs have become central platforms for intermingled content production and participation by consumers, including children.

Children as Online Media Producers Children’s culture has become increasingly mediatized, and along with mediatization, commercialized (Hjarvard 2004; Johansen 2018; Schor 2004). In addition, media use is beginning at an earlier age than ever before (Livingstone 2013). For example, in Sweden, four out of five 2-year-olds use the internet, mostly to watch videos and mostly on a tablet, and their internet use has been consistently increasing (Davidsson and Thoresson 2017). Not only have professional forms of communication and marketing targeting children become increasingly refined (Schor 2004), but also the native forms of marketing that ordinary people

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perform have reached child audiences. Furthermore, children’s influence on consumption and purchasing choices, or “kidsfluence”, has increased (Schor 2004). Analogous with these developments, family has become one of the most popular content categories on YouTube (Lange 2014; Strangelove 2010). The combination of mothering and blogging has contributed to children’s visibility online, normalizing the mediation of infants and toddlers online (Leaver 2017). With low-cost and increasingly userfriendly media equipment, making home videos (and sharing them with others) has become a family activity, creating “family influencers” (Abidin 2017). During the second decade of the twenty-first century, there was also a gradual discovery of children as an audience. This can, above all, be seen in the steady increase in toy and play videos, which range from vlogging to unboxing videos, or from play-throughs to tutorials, drawing on the prosumers’ fan position (Jaakkola 2020; Jenkins 2006b; Marsh 2016). Young children’s media production is—and should be, according to consensus of researchers and policymakers—commonly regulated by adults. This means that the young children’s produsage should occur in protected and private, instead of open public, spaces. The age limit of 13 has been established as the requirement for the most of the popular social media services, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube. Watching videos on YouTube is not subject to age restrictions, but users must be 13 or older to create and manage their own account that enables them to subscribe to other channels, like videos, post comments, share their own content, and flag inappropriate content. The age limit means that users producing content can be expected to be in their preteens at the youngest; however, enhancing one’s knowledge and presentation to attract audiences usually takes time. For example, most of the world-renowned young gamers are older than 20 years old. Nevertheless, K-12 apps are available that allow parental control and age-appropriate content, such as YouTube for Kids (Burroughs 2017) and Tankee (https://www.tankee.com), a kids-safe platform for gaming videos for children aged from 6 to 12 years. Historically, viewing children as producers of content made publicly available is new. As soon as the very notion of childhood took shape in the eighteenth century, for a long time, children were not regarded as arbiters of taste. Instead, tastes and preferences were considered to be mediated by adults, especially family, that is, parents who controlled children’s

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development as “guardians, custodians, protectors, nurturers, punishers, and arbiters of taste and rectitude” (Postman 1982, p. 44). Only in late modernity, when children are more educated than before and have access to information in a way that was not previously possible, have they become driving forces in political campaigning, such as climate strikes and public protests against gun violence. As shown in the public profiles of the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (born in 2003) and the Pakistani Nobel Prize laureate and female education activist Malala Yousafzai (born in 1997), children have become opinion and value leaders, societal influencers, and pundits—changemakers openly challenging adult authorities. The path for this development was paved by the weakening boundary between childhood and adulthood, the discovery of the child as a citizenconsumer, and calls for children’s rights and increased public participation (Cook 2009; James and Prout 2015; Postman 1982), as well as transformations in the public sphere that have de-hierarchized and diversified the voices of (adult) knowledge and expertise (Kristensen and From 2015; Nichols 2017). Nevertheless, small children still typically enter the production of content accompanied and supervised by adults, either their parents or teachers (Johansen 2018). Adults are still in a strong position of defining content and quality in children’s culture and media use (see Drotner 2009). Sites and services advancing reviews of children’s products written by adults are common, such as Toppsta, LoveReading4Kids, and The Children’s Book Review (TCBR) for books; Common Sense Media for TV programs, films, and YouTube videos; and the Amazon affiliate marketing program The Toy Insider (https://www.thetoyinsider.com) for toys. These sites intend to help parents, grandparents, and professionals find appropriate products and content. Similar to professional adult reviewers of children’s literature, numerous adult bloggers regularly review children’s literature.1 These from-adult-to-adult media develop discourses and tastes for the children’s world but children are left beyond these discourses. When young children become producers, the producer roles are technically always twofold, including children as “sources of voice” and adults as supporters, facilitators, or even constructors of that

1 For example, Kid Lit Reviews by Suzanne Morris (http://kid-lit-reviews.com) or Dino Dad Reviews by Andrew, “the Dino Dad,” reviewing dinosaur-themed books (http://din odadreviews.com).

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voice. Thus, the forms of production differ from each other in the extent to which adults act as gatekeepers, or guardians of production.

Methodological Setup Collecting data on specific users such as children cannot be conducted by the following structural properties in content, such as making use of hashtags or user metadata, as age is not a compulsory technical feature in user metadata, and there is no homogenous group of (review) producers who identify and label themselves as #childreviewers or alike. Thus, the methodological foundation for this chapter rests on the use of existing data of vernacular reviews from the previous studies and focusing on children’s appearance in the data subsets. Datasets from the previous studies featured global (published mainly in English) review content retrieved from two major platforms, YouTube (Jaakkola 2018) and Instagram (Jaakkola 2019). These platforms are not specific youth platforms, such as TikTok, but feature content produced by people of all ages, although there is a bias towards younger producer segments, as the vast majority of users is younger than 25 years old (Smith and Anderson 2018). It can be presupposed that many popular content producers (in terms of the size of their audience) could, at the point of time of the data collection, be found on either of these major wide-reaching platforms, with which even the blogosphere is largely interwoven, as numerous bloggers use Instagram to reach wider audiences and YouTube to publish and distribute original video content. The dataset from YouTube included the 5000 most subscribed channels in April 2017.2 Within the subdataset of review channels (n = 200), child producer channels were manually picked up by going through the list of channels and using search terms (“family”, “kids”, “children”) in channel descriptions. Child reviewers were mostly found in the specific group of toy review channels (n = 35, 18%; Jaakkola 2018). For the remaining channels, which were grouped into cultural product, consumer product, games, technology, and parody reviews, child producers could be traced in four more channels by searching the channel descriptions with such frequently occurring words as “family”(-friendly), “kid”, and “children”. Complementary exploratory searches were conducted by using

2 The script is available at https://github.com/BeTeK/YoutubeStats.

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YouTube’s advanced search and the same key terms. Many of the hits found this way dealt with children’s topics, but the producers were adults or teens, or producers already included in the dataset of toy reviews. The dataset from Instagram was focused on book reviews in the Bookstagram book community, which emphasizes producers dealing with children’s literature more than other forms of culture. However, many of the reviews involving children deal with children’s book culture, and along with music (e.g. nursery rhymes) and play (e.g. the toy culture represented on YouTube), books play a prominent role in the mediation of children’s culture. The data retrieval occurred at the beginning of 2019 by using the hashtag #bookreview and resulted, after the initial exclusion of users with fewer than 10 posts and no user interaction, in 598,804 posts by 65,534 unique users.3 The data were structured according to the posting frequency searched through with the keywords “kids” and #kidsbookstagram in all fields (usernames, bio, review post content, and hashtags). The results from the dataset were complemented with individual cases, often with more limited audiences, identified with the help of online searches by following ad hoc or more situation-specific hashtags. These complementary results indicated the sample was relatively saturated. The children reviewers were identified from two platforms, YouTube and Instagram, but both platforms are often connected to other online platforms such as blogs. While there are a number of video reviewers on YouTube (see Jaakkola 2018), for many reviewers, Instagram worked as a second-choice platform for pursuing larger visibility and they were, in fact, publishing their review content on another platform (see Jaakkola 2019); this is why the Instagram dataset offered a rather instrumental way of identifying reviewers across platforms. Reviewers with an Instagram profile could, in other words, run a blog or be part of a larger blog community. Only accounts that could be identified as child-centred in their production of content were included; excluded were, for example, accounts or channels with adults as the channel owners and the main protagonists (e.g. parents, teachers, librarians, and journalists reviewing children’s literature). The two datasets, with complementary exploratory searches, totalled 91 child-centred accounts (53 from YouTube and 38

3 The script is available at https://github.com/BeTeK/InstagramUserScraper.

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from Instagram), with a focus on two prevalent areas of cultural engagement (toys and literature), and in which reviewing occupied a long-term rationalized practice in the strategy of the communicators instead of just a curiosity applied for a change.

Framework of User-Generated Reviewing These producers are more closely examined by placing them in a typology of reviewers, a framework that allows us to develop a connection between the genre (of review) and the sociological structures of production. The framework works as a heuristic tool for distinguishing reviewing domains. The review genre is a form of presentation in which an author creates and delivers to the public an informed opinion about a cultural object (Blank 2007). Reviews are “public summaries and evaluations that assist readers to be more knowledgeable in their choice, understanding, or appreciation of products or performances” (Blank 2007, p. 7) and try to answer two questions: What is it? Is it any good? Criticism, for its part, is considered a more advanced and elaborated form of reaction than a review (Titchener 1998). While criticism describes an expert’s evaluation of an event, a review is “a report with opinion”, characterized by a mundane approach to the work, and typically, written for a wider audience by a generalist who qualifies as “an entertainment writer” (Titchener 1998, p. 3). The modern institution of criticism identified the academic review, essayistic and the journalistic review (Titchener 1998; Chong 2020); however, more nuances are needed today when evaluation has become part of vernacular cultural communication. For user reviews, two interconnected dimensions basically play a central role: the institutional landscape in which reviewers operate and the agency which is created for positioning the communicating person as a reviewing authority. As for the institutions that enable the reviewing activity by providing the public channel for communication, we can distinguish between top-down and bottom-up institutional structures: The first leans on centralized communication regulated by an organization, as typical in the media industry, and the latter is organized by the initiative of persons and networks, as in the platform economy. Regarding agency, there are varying degrees of professional and amateur agency, which can be as summarized as the professional (as in PGC) and amateur (as in UGC) categories. In institutional and agency structures, there are different kinds of professionals and amateurs: professionals and amateurs

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in the institutionally driven environment, and professionals and amateurs in the network-driven environment. In Fig. 9.1, the institution structure is presented as the y-axis, ranging from institutionalized to noninstitutionalized structures, and agency as the x-axis, with professional and amateur agency as extreme points. Thus, Fig. 9.1 presents four ideal types of reviewers: (1) institutionalized professional reviewer (professional reviewers), (2) institutionalized amateur reviewer (amateur reviewers), (3) vernacular amateur reviewer (consumer reviewers), and (4) vernacular professional reviewer (pro-am, or professional-amateur reviewers, see below). Professional reviewers are industry reviewers located within the legacymedia institutional framework, recruited and guided by organizations that are typically referred to as mass media (Blank 2007; Titchener 1998). Amateur reviewers are persons involved in a prefixed framework in which communicators are positioned as amateurs by organizations, such as amateur review platform providers, media organizations, and product sellers (see e.g. Kammer 2015; Verboord 2010). Consumer reviewers are, in this context, ordinary persons who set up an account or a channel to Institutionalized

Professional

Amateur

reviewers

reviewers

Professional

Amateur Pro-am

Consumer

reviewers

reviewers

Noninstitutionalized

Fig. 9.1 A typology of reviewers

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communicate their reviews in a mundane or everyday context (Barbour and Heise 2019). As amateurs, these reviewers do not stand out as intermediary experts in the field they present but are more strongly located at the reception and consumption pole in the cultural production chain (Jaakkola 2018). In contrast, pro-am or “professional-amateur” reviewers (Leadbeater and Miller 2004) do make claims for distinguishing themselves from ordinary consumers and intend to construct authority, yet operate outside professional reviewing organizations, being more entrepreneurial and independent (Burgess and Green 2009). There is no space for a detailed theoretical discussion of these types in this chapter, but I use this framework to showcase child reviewers in all of these categories (for a more detailed discussion of these reviewer types, see Jaakkola 2018). It is not always easy to place a single case in one of these categories. As professionalism and amateurism are multifaceted aspects of cultural production and located on sliding scales, it may be impossible to draw a line where being a professional begins and being an amateur ceases (see e.g. Mehta and Kaye 2019; Kim 2012).4 For example, professional and amateur forms of content production can be crowdfunded, and both categories may require a significant amount of media or substance knowledge from the content producers. The categories have become even less tangible in the complex online environments where amateurs tend to mimic professionalism (Nicoll and Nansen 2018), professionalism unfolds beyond the classic institutional contexts (Deuze and Witschge 2020), and content producers often attempt to arrive at “calibrated amateurism” to produce authenticity for their output (Abidin 2017). In addition, academic literature employs diverse vocabulary to refer to different roles and positionings in the vernacular sphere, and there is no consensus on using the terminology; for example, some use the word reviewer for amateurs (Kammer 2015), while others apply the term critics (Verboord 2010). In Fig. 9.1, the most institutionalized form, professional reviewing, has not embraced the practice of involving children as legitimized producers of reviews, which dovetails with ambitions to maintain autonomy for genuine experts by rejecting nonexpertise or bias caused by dilettantism (Blank 2007; Titchener 1998). Accordingly, the average chronological 4 I use the words institutionalized and noninstitutionalized instead of (non)institutional to signal these gradual and constantly fluctuating shifts.

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age of reviewers is high. For example, in literature criticism, reviewing of children’s literature, including infants’ literature, is typically conducted by an adult reviewer writing for an adult audience with the goal of establishing standards for quality children’s books. Children’s television and radio programs, theatre plays, and music are evaluated within the framework of discussing children’s (media) culture, but perhaps not typically in the form of the review genre. In some journalistic experiments, children may occasionally be positioned as lay experts (representing institutionalized amateurism instead of professional reviewing), but they are not a permanent part of the occupational hierarchy. Child and teenager producers occupy a central place in formal and nonformal education: Schools encourage children to write reviews as part of the textual genre palette, and national competitions and campaigns attempt to draw the attention of young review writers (e.g. the Guardian’s annual Young Critics Competition), but young producers typically remain beyond the professional media industry frame. In the following, I focus on the usergenerated forms of reviewing, and discuss children’s roles in amateur (Fig. 9.1), consumer, and pro-am reviewing, drawing on examples from my data. The typology of reviewers was not created by the author with regard to child reviewers but, instead, as an ongoing work with vernacular reviewers in general. In this chapter, the framework serves as an analytical framework for distinguishing between different vernacular reviewer roles, thus embedding children in a wider context of vernacular reviewing.

Children as Amateur Reviewers Supported by the emergence of participatory communication and audience development, established newspapers, public service media, libraries, schools, and other public institutions have recently created ways for amateurs to be involved in reviewing cultural products. For example, the Guardian has a site for children user reviewers (https://www.thegua rdian.com/tone/childrens-user-reviews). In this context, child authors are positioned as amateurs or experts by experience, in a similar way as adult review authors on Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, or Goodreads. Institutionalized amateurism is based on the principle that reviewing activities are open to a large number of users, or in this case, children, and activities are enabled, structured, and even coordinated by an intermediary organization. Participation is voluntary and does not require any preknowledge.

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Institutionalized amateurism among children is most typically manifested in the form of review services that encourage children to review children’s books for children. For example, the American Spaghetti Book Club (http://www.spaghettibookclub.org) publishes reviews written by children. The German A Pocketful of Books (http://apocketfulofbooks. com) is based on the book club form: A monthly book box can be subscribed for a predefined period and costs about e15 per month. Child review writers are typically anonymized, or pieces are written with a first name only, and the age of the author is given. Children are presented as a collective, in which an individual’s voice is not as important as the collective enterprise to support children’s literacy and reading engagement. Books are circulated and mediated by adults.

Children as Consumer Reviewers Vernacular amateur reviews are produced without the interventions of an intermediary organization; instead, these reviews lean the most powerfully on ordinary people’s own initiatives. Vernacular amateurs highlight their passion to sharing their insights, or as often emphasized in the communities of book worms, film enthusiasts, and music lovers, passion— which goes hand in hand with the amateur spirit very well (the French word amateur means “lover”). Vernacular amateurs operate in the private sphere made public, so it seems: Often at home or in otherwise private settings, reviewers perform reception or consumption acts, still not pretending to be anything else than ordinary cultural consumers or citizens. Some children in this group have published reviews, it seems, on their own. There are examples on YouTube of boys, not much older than 13 years old, experimenting with the review format and dedicating their channels to the genre, publishing Lego toy reviews, game reviews, and food reviews.5 However, it is far more common that children appear next to adults, and the communication is driven by adults. The technique is similar to the giving-a-voice method, but the adult is strongly involved in the reading and interpretation process, which, thus, is a shared experience between the parent and the child.

5 I choose not to disclose the authors’ identities here because these producers still have very few views and subscribers, and thus, cannot be considered public figures to the fullest even if their videos have been publicly shared.

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One case of such a giving-a-voice practice is the social media project Father Reading Every Day that presents a child’s reactions to the father’s goodnight stories and children’s literature. This project consists of a blog (https://fatherreading.wordpress.com) and an Instagram account (@fatherreading). It features posts of a father and his 3-year-old child reading a bedtime story. Started in 2018, the blog includes longer written posts with videos. On the blog page, the father writes that he is a primary school teacher who recognizes the importance of reading and wants to inspire other fathers to read with their children. Thus, the father appears in the role of an ordinary dad and produces the videos in a noninstitutionalized context in his free time, in private settings in his home, even if he is a literacy professional. There are many similar projects, and the co-reading practice may have been established as a form of reviewing for different reasons; to name but a few examples, The Baby Bookworm (http://thebabybookwormblog.wordpress.com), a cross-media reading project by a mother (Mama) and her 2-year-old daughter (J.J.), leans on a similar concept as Father Reading, New Yorker “home school mom” Christine Suarez created an Instagram-driven project Blooming Brilliant (http://www.bloomingbrilliant.net) with child-involved reviewing of kidlit, and the blog The Book Report (http://thebookreportblog.com) intersects children’s reading and reviewing, featuring, for example, IGTV (Instagram’s video feature) reviews by children. Most often, the involvement of children is motivated by digital sharenting, literacy education, and inspiration of other people in a similar situation. Vernacular reviews follow the principles of the platform vernacular by placing reviewing activities in the private sphere of the home, displaying the everyday and mundane settings where the reading concretely happens (e.g. children’s room or bed), and foregrounding the reading experience instead of the literary substance. Some reviews in this category are very dialogical. Pedagogically, doing a review offers an intimate moment to advance the parent–child relationship. Adults’ and children’s approaches to cultural products constitute a symbiosis, in which the adults’ reflection is coupled with observations on the uses of these products and the children’s authentic reactions and utterances. In Father Reading, however, more often the father takes the lead in the written text, which is always followed by a product link to Amazon. Sometimes, there is an additional video (e.g. https://fatherreading.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/ day-288-review-prince-george-and-the-royal-potty/) in which the son browses and comments on the book, guided by the father’s questions, but

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the adult’s interpretation remains dominant. To take another example, in a review written by Sophie, age 4, and her father for A Pocketful of Books (2019), the child’s views are embedded in the adult’s discourse that dominates the text: We loved Even Superheroes Make Mistakes. An action-packed and brilliantly illustrated hardback, this offers a unique take on teaching tolerance and responsibility. With it’s fast paced rhyme and cool pictures it really captures kids’ imaginations. The story delivers an important message for little ones: that not everyone is perfect, and that’s ok. — Our daughter wants to read both books almost every night, and she says she loves them because they are funny and because the superheroes are super-duper good! The illustrations feature lots of detail which she spends time poring over, so overall we think that both books offer a great combination of visual detail, engaging rhyme and moral messaging. Perfect for all children aged between 3 and 7, we would highly recommend these.

Users who have become influential professional vernacular reviewers have set the standard for many vernacular amateur reviewers. For example, gamers ranging from PewDiePie to Markiplier encourage young users to review and comment on games, and in the wake of Ryan’s success (see the next section), many family vloggers have ventured into the review sphere to become toy reviewers, or at least occasionally do some toy reviews. Vernacular amateurs differ from institutionalized amateurs in the openness of the category. The communicators are not locked in the position of being an amateur, but starting from the allegedly naïve expectation of an ordinary person, they may, through the accumulation of audiences (subscribers) and audience interaction (views and likes), competences, production affiliates, and commercial partnerships, adopt professional dimensions that will make them into vernacular professionals, to be discussed next.

Children as Pro-Am Reviewers In the professionalist, semiprofessionalist, or professional-amateur (proam) part of the vernacular review sphere, reviewing has become a regular and long-term enterprise, with more or less conscious strategies for earning money. Institutionalization is no guarantee of quality or criticality, but an indicator of a full-time activity and the expectation of the systematic continuity of the content production, an underlying structure

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for media production. In this category, children are typically featured as independent actors, or artists on their own, turning them into microcelebrities with distinct fandoms. For example, on YouTube, where most of these forms of reviewing are found because of the oral expression in videos, channels are named after the child reviewers’ personal names, which makes it easy to forget to what extent family members play a role in the media production. The YouTube channel Iain Loves Theatre presents video reviews on adults’ theatre, covering a range of shows from Broadway to regional theatres. The face of the channel is American-born Iain Armitage (born in 2008), a son of theatre professionals. The channel, started in 2014,6 when Iain was 6 years old, had almost 12,000 subscribers in May 2019. Iain’s character is largely based on how he behaves, expresses himself, and is dressed like an adult—(“like a middle-aged off-duty billionaire, only very small”, as Rothkopf 2019, stated)—delivering in his videos “eloquent and insightful” speeches showing “maturity, analytical skills and [a] grasp of the English language well beyond his years” (Schonberg 2016). Explaining the plots, describing his reactions, and evaluating the shows’ sets, he might say, for example, that [The Prom on Broadway] “puts you through all the emotions, which is actually pretty hard for a show to do – you’re happy, sad, angry, scared… It’s really awesome. Now, the story is about” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtWFqSk2cUQ). To many adults, Iain’s channel has appeared as a “promoting kids in the arts” approach, providing entry for younger audiences to the adult world and at the same time, fascinating adults with the boy’s precocious charm (Rothkopf 2019; Schonberg 2016). However, Iain also uses his age to produce child-authentic knowledge: For example, he stated, while reviewing The Fiddler on the Roof : I’ve seen a lot of different productions of it, and I’m always at different ages when see it, every time I see I bring something new to it, and it brings something new to me. — You never really, really understand a show until you have seen it a few times, in different productions. (https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=qZSe1sImFGc)

6 According to YouTube statistics, the account was opened in 2006. The first review video, published in 2014, was, according to the metadata, recorded in 2011 when Iain was 3 years old (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOISd_wxKSg).

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In this passage, for example, time becomes an element of the child’s spectatorship, in another way that is important to a grown-up reviewer. His target group, nevertheless, remains slightly ambiguous: Are his reviews for adults, to contribute to new insights into the production of shows, or for children, to educate them about grown-up cultures? Which is, after all, more important: the person’s charm or the knowledge produced and its impact on the world of theatre? Is the evaluation of the theatre plays overshadowed by the entertainment put forward by the excitement of the rhetorical performance? In Iain’s YouTube presence, that is, the review show accomplishments that are delivered in the review genre, the roles of theatre commentator and child actor are efficiently combined. Recently, he has become established as a child actor, taking starring roles in television series such as the HBO production Big Little Lies and the CBS production Young Sheldon. Along with the increase in subscriptions to his YouTube channel, he has been able to attract well-known celebrities, with whom he has been shown in public. This background attaches the reviewing to the promotional culture of theatre life and the entertainment industry. However, despite his exceptionally young age, it seems that he was trained in the world of theatre at a very early age. For example, in the very first video uploaded to the channel when Iain was 6 years old (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rw7CL2s7N8w), he was able to sing “Stars” from Les Misérables in the bathtub. In this respect, drawing on a certain base of expertise, strongly supported by his family, his reviews include connoisseurly characteristics (Blank 2007). Some of the most visible children in the contemporary online media culture, however, should even more strongly be categorized as promotional intermediaries than the arts-oriented cultural intermediary Iain. In 2018, the YouTuber with the highest income was a toy reviewer on the YouTube channel Ryan ToysReview (Robehmet and Berg 2018). His— and his family’s—approach to reviewing is based on spontaneous but entertaining reactions to encountering well-known toy brands and can be more aptly be described as sharing moments of consumption rather than taking a critical distance from the commodities. Toy reviewing is typically connected to opening packages, playing with brand-new toys, testing them, or otherwise creating a “play stage” where family vlogging can take place (for an analysis, see Jaakkola 2020). Ryan ToysReview’s first video, which was posted on March 16, 2015, featured 3-year-old Ryan picking up a box in a store, opening it at home,

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and building a “choo choo train” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= jVwSJ9q3kOc). As is typical in many of the review videos, Ryan’s mother, serving as the dramaturge, asked him questions about the colours and numbers. Now that Ryan is 7 years old, the videos have developed to include a more carefully designed setup with brand awareness and sponsorship. In addition, the early grey-toned thumbnails have become more colourful and carefully designed, reflecting a general trend in toy videos. Iain and Ryan, or their families, have become online media professionals, gaining financial profit from the children’s reviewing activities and creating connections to the institutionalized creative industries. As public figures, the boys are, instead of being ordinary, extraordinary, having gained a position where their actions are followed by large audiences and acknowledged by legitimate voices in their fields. As vernacular professionalism is not based on an organizational infrastructure supporting the reviewing activity, vernacular professionals have to make their own decisions to make the activity profitable, and their professionalism leans on combining their expertise (what they have to say) with financial solutions that bring them money (which helps them keep going and be professional). However, the economic anchoring may push vernacular professionals towards becoming promotional agents, which may undermine their integrity and capacity to build critical autonomy—a dimension that is especially important in reviewing. Neither Iain nor Ryan (nor their families) has been very clear in explaining the set of ethical rules on which their reviewing is based.

Discussion 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. Children’s reviews, if they are constructed in a way that makes right-to-the-child authenticity and what children say taken seriously, may make children’s opinions, priorities, and tastes more visible, or at least point to differences between the adult and child worlds. It is of symbolic importance that the actual audience of children and their responses are made visible. Childhood scholars have frequently addressed that children may have radically different preferences and tastes from adults (see e.g. Buckingham 1995; Schor 2004). The public development of a child-like modality adds a new, yet less intellectual, dimension to addressing cultural

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products. This dimension is more action-based and embodied (showing how objects work or how they can be used), as well as affective and immediate (showing spontaneous reactions, for example, of enthusiasm or disappointment). Both dimensions contradict the classical modality of (adult) reviewing, in which the reviewer’s physical body is more typically overlaid by intellectual engagement and spontaneous reactions faded out in cautious reflection. In public reviews, children’s appearances are typically embedded in an educational context, for example, reading promotion, which has democratic and interest-free purposes. This aspect is especially present in amateur forms, more particularly in institutionalized amateurism and amateur vernacularism, but it even applies to the most promotional forms of reviews that are made to expose new merchandise or brands. Education of people has certainly been a central dimension in reviewing, even if the pedagogical dimensions are typically downplayed by the reviewers themselves, and partly, the pedagogical emphasis in reviews that involve children can be regarded as a continuation of that intellectual project. However, we must not ignore how the educational potential may also be exploited as a convincing alibi for hijacking the very meaning of review that is expected to refer to a recommendation based on judgment, instead of promotion camouflaged as such. As seen in the vernacular domain, reviewing involves risks, such as the exploitation of children’s binge-watching habits (kidbait ), justifying child labour, and exposing very young children to unnecessary commercialism and consumerism (see Jaakkola 2020). Young consumers—in the democratic or artistic and the commercial or everyday areas of consumption—may, however, also become more reflexive of their consumption practices, as well as collaboratively develop and share knowledge that contributes to a more constructive, critical, and transformative relationship to aesthetic objects and consumer goods. However, as many media scholars, including Jenkins (2007), have pointed out, this does often not happen automatically and without educational adult-driven interventions. Developing genre pedagogy that would function as the signature pedagogy for reviews, adapted to different age groups, is a challenge that the emergence of child reviewers underscores. The expertise that child reviewers contribute is consumption knowledge, rather than expertise related to the production paradigm in the cultural production chain maintained by professional intermediaries (Blank 2007; Titchener 1998). Theoretically, consumption intermediaries

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are a less studied area and remain a question to be explored in further research.

Conclusion In this chapter, I intended to show the scale of children’s roles attributed in the context of reviewing by presenting prominent and representative cases beyond the institutional arts- or culture-promoting infrastructures of journalism, schools, and libraries. Compared to the institutional counterpart professional reviewing that has been controlled top down by cultural organizations and has cherished a parental tradition of recommending products of children’s culture from adults to adults, the vernacular categories of pro-am and consumer reviewers, organized bottom up, show new ways of incorporating children in the public reception of cultural products and goods. However, platform vernaculars constantly need to adapt to changes in platform policies and overall regulation, which may quickly make overviews as undertaken in this chapter obsolete. Furthermore, criticism by children concerning their cultures and relationships to cultural objects is produced in multiple ways beyond the genre of reviewing that was the artificial delimitation of this chapter.

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CHAPTER 10

The Survival of the Critic: Audiences’ Use of Cultural Information and Cultural Reviews in Legacy Media Nete Nørgaard Kristensen and Unni From

Introduction Audience research has long studied people’s use of information and news, but few studies have considered their use of subtypes of news content, such as culture and art, and sub-genres, such as cultural reviews. To contribute to filling this void, this chapter examines how a sample of the Danish population engages across media platforms 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. In this way, we aim to add to contemporary cultural journalism research and research about cultural criticism, which have so far mainly focused on the production, form and content of various types of cultural information,

N. N. Kristensen (B) University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] U. From Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_10

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journalism and criticism but to a lesser extent engaged with the audience perspective. Such a study seems particularly relevant at a time when digitalisation and a changing media ecology have challenged the role of institutionalised news media as cultural gatekeepers, legitimisers and information providers and questioned their position as a shared forum for the public to engage with cultural issues. National news media are losing ground to global media companies, algorithms increasingly take part in cultural gatekeeping and taste-making, and participatory practices circumvent traditional distributions of labour between professional cultural journalists, critics and audiences. We still know relatively little, however, about the audience perspective on this changed circulation of information across cultural subject matters, nor about how legacy media critics and the traditional review genre are perceived by audiences in the digital age. In one of the few studies in the field, focusing on Dutch book readers’ view on amateur critics, Verboord (2010) shows that by 2010, digital platforms had only marginally challenged the authority of literary critics. He also points out that the hierarchical status of critics in legacy media had remained stable from an audience perspective. Beaudouin and Pasquier (2016) confirmed this conclusion in the domain of film criticism in the French context. This chapter expands the perspective by focusing on information about culture more broadly, including cultural journalism and cultural criticism. The chapter consists of four sections. The first section provides the basis for our research questions by outlining two key research strands that have informed our study. The second section presents Denmark as an interesting case in point because of the public subsidies that support the production and circulation of art and culture but also of cultural information, journalism and criticism. The third section outlines the methodology and design of our survey. The fourth section presents our analytical findings and the overall conclusion that although some have declared the cultural critic dead (McDonald 2007), this study in fact points to the survival of the critic in legacy media, at least as far as cultural audiences are concerned.

Research Contexts The chapter draws on two broad research strands within current media and journalism research, which have so far been only sporadically

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combined: (1) audience studies, which have shown no particular interest in people’s use of cultural information; and (2) cultural journalism studies (with special focus on the cultural review as a distinctive genre of cultural journalism), which have shown no particular interest in the audience perspective. Audience Research in a Changed Media Ecology Scholars have studied people’s use of various forms of media content and news for decades. Especially since the 1980s audience studies have been an established part of media studies. Ytre-Arne and Das (2018, p. 276) argue that the past decade has been “transformative” in audience research, however, in view of the disruptions brought about by digitalisation. Digital technologies have reconfigured the media ecology and the news landscape, including how people engage with information and news. In regard to digital journalism, more specifically, Costera Meijer and Kormelink (2017) point to an “audience turn”, which is linked to a lack of knowledge about people’s actual use of digital news and about their perceptions of their digital news use. More, specifically, they argue that “(…) research dealing explicitly with digital audiences tends to rely on information provided by news professionals rather than the audiences themselves” (Costera Meijer and Kormelink 2017, p. 345). A main reason for this changed research focus is that digital media have afforded audiences new ways of participation—or, as phrased by Livingstone, “audiences are becoming more participatory, and participation is ever more mediated” (2013, p. 24). For the same reason, Livingstone speaks of the “participation paradigm”, which concerns how people engage in society and culture via networked digital media (ibid., p. 25). In this study, we, as a first step, examine how people search and engage with different information sources on cultural topics, but future research should take the next step by studying people’s participatory practices with and co-creation of such cultural information. Our particular attention to “softer” types of news and information differs from most research in the field, which has focused either on the elastic news category or on hard news in citizens’ consumption of various types of information across platforms. This previous research focus makes sense considering the role of news for an informed and active citizenry and for people’s public connection, since “(…) so much that is ‘political’ or ‘public’ is presented

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through media” (Couldry et al. 2010, p. 42). Conclusions about audiences’ preferences for hard news or soft news point in different directions, however: some have pointed to a news gap “between what users seemingly want from journalism (the ‘nice to know’ or so-called ‘soft’ news) and what they actually need to know in order to function properly as citizens (“hard” or public interest news)”, as summarised by Costera Meijer (2020, p. 392). Others have pointed to audiences being more interested in hard news than in soft news. A comparative study of news audiences in 26 countries concluded that “In every country we see that interest levels are higher for hard news topics” (Newman et al. 2017, p. 96) than for soft news topics.1 Similarly, Jensen et al. (2019, p. 22) show that when asked “If thinking of an average week, which topics do you typically follow?” 55.9% of a representative sample of the Danish population indicates “national politics in general”, 44.5% “international politics and other countries”, while 24.6% indicates “arts and culture”. Newman et al. (2017, p. 96) take the precaution, however, that such distributions may be influenced by respondents’ normative ideas about journalism, i.e. that journalism should ideally engage with hard news topics of public importance, and by social desirability, i.e. that hard news is the type of news that people would like to signal taking an interest in. The debates about preference for hard or soft news have been revitalised with the digital turn. Based on various forms of metrics, research has taken an interest in studying most read and most shared stories, often pointing to critical conclusions about sensation-driven clickbait challenging a well-versed public. Schrøder (2019) argues that audience research should be cautious about drawing such conclusions as people often combine several media to access various types of news or content, for various reasons and in various contexts of everyday life: “After all, humans often indulge in activities just to pass idle time. This does not mean that they don’t care about matters of public interest” (Schrøder 2019, p. 23). He also indicates that scholars and audiences interpret the floating classifications of hard and soft news differently: “For many,

1 In Newman et al.’s study (2017) soft news included entertainment and celebrity, lifestyle, news, arts and culture news, and sports news, while hard news included international news, political news, business and economic news, health or education news. Among the Danish respondents in study, 77% indicated that they were more interested in hard news, 14% expressed a preference for soft news.

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‘news’ appears to include both hard news (‘the news’) and softer varieties (‘newsy things’)” (Schrøder 2019, p. 12). This is confirmed by Jensen et al.’s (2019, p. 7) recent study of Danes news use, showing that Danes do not distinguish between news and entertainment (their use of terminology). Schrøder (2019) points to four overall news repertoires of which two link to softer types of news: one consists of people with a cultural interest in news and another of people with a social-humanitarian interest in news. This suggests that news users are in fact interested in softer approaches and topics related to culture and human interest. Scholars have also argued that more research attention to people’s emotional and sensory experiences with journalism and news could add to the often more instrumental approaches to people’s news use in the field (Costera Meijer 2020). This chapter aims to add to this research about people’s use, participation and engagement with various softer types of content, such as cultural information, news and reviews, across media platforms. It will thus contribute to not only existing audience research but also to research about cultural journalism from which the audience perspective has long been absent. Cultural Journalism and Cultural Reviews in a Changed Media Ecology Cultural journalism has become a common scholarly designation for journalism about a broad spectrum of cultural issues, including art, popular culture, entertainment, lifestyle and everyday life (e.g. Kristensen and From 2018; Riegert and Widholm 2019). This is in line with current interpretations of the concept of culture in many Danish cultural newsrooms, which is why cultural journalism is the term that we apply in this chapter. Cultural journalism research has so far been characterised by three overlapping research foci: the study of (1) the topics and genres of cultural journalism, (2) the role conceptions and performances of cultural journalists and critics, and (3) how digital media technology and a changed media ecology have transformed cultural journalism and various forms of criticisms. The first line of research shows that stories about arts and culture have come to play an increasingly important role in many Western countries since the mid-twentieth century. Janssen et al. (2008) and Purhonen et al.

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(2019) attribute this to broader sociocultural transformations, including dissolving hierarchies between high art/popular culture, cultural globalisation and the emergence of cultural omnivores with broad cultural tastes. Also media-related transformations have played a part, including commercialisation and a changed news market in which catering to audiences, for example by means of a broad range of cultural topics, has become key (e.g. Kristensen and From 2011). This research has also emphasised that the cultural review is a distinct genre of cultural journalism, which not only feeds into broader cultural legitimation processes but also guides people in their cultural consumption (e.g. From 2019). Empirical research has also suggested, however, that the position of the review genre in cultural journalism has been challenged, as news genres known from other types of journalism have become more prominent during the past decades (e.g. Jaakkola 2015; Szántó et al. 2004; Widholm et al. 2019). The second line of research has shown that cultural journalists as a professional subgroup are distinctively different from other types of journalists in terms of role perceptions, performances and epistemic grounding (e.g. Hellman and Jaakkola 2012; Hovden and Kristensen 2018). Theoretically, cultural journalists and critics have long been viewed as cultural intermediaries (Bourdieu 1984), because they act as gatekeepers, marketers and tastemakers of culture, who give public attention and ascribe cultural legitimacy and value to selected cultural phenomena, for example in their cultural reviews (e.g. Janssen and Verboord 2015). These are some of the reasons why scholars have maintained that professional cultural journalists hold a strong and authoritative position in the provision of information and cultural taste to audiences. Such arguments have barely been probed from an audience perspective, however. In recent years, the status and authority of especially national news media and their professional journalists have come under pressure, both more broadly and in the cultural context more specifically. This is the focus of the third line of research. Print newspapers are losing ground because more people access news online, also from social media such as Facebook (Newman et al. 2017). Algorithmic culture has resulted in key tasks for cultural journalists and critics as intermediaries, such as cultural gatekeeping, curation, choice-making and taste-making, are increasingly being “delegated to computational processes” (Striphas 2015, p. 408). Finally, the participatory turn has entailed that cultural consumers increasingly contribute to the circulation of cultural information and tastemaking when blogging and posting about their cultural consumption.

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The rise of user-generated content (UGC), such as vernacular forms of reviewing (Jaakkola 2018) and online consumer reviews (OCR) (Beuscart and Mellet 2016), challenges the authority of professionally produced cultural reviews and thus the authoritative position of professional cultural journalists and critics (Kristensen and From 2015). The cultural field thus constitutes a central case in point in the broader scholarly debates about how the agenda-setting, gatekeeping and authority, formerly associated with institutionalised and national news media and their professional journalists, are currently being reconfigured. We know relatively little about this from an empirical audience perspective, however. Based on this existing research, our research questions are: • How interested are Danes in information about culture? • How active are they in seeking out such information? • Which media and sources do they use when accessing information about arts and culture? • Which media and sources do they find trustworthy, including what is the role of professional cultural journalists, critics and reviews in this information circuit?

The Danish Context In the following, we highlight three aspects about the Danish context of importance to the design of this study: cultural policy, media regulation and the public’s patterns of cultural consumption. Like in the other Nordic countries, culture has been a central pillar of the Danish welfare model for decades. The Ministry of Culture is the main body responsible, providing substantial public support for the arts and cultural sector. A key aim is to secure independence and freedom of expression for artists, in accordance with the arm’s-length principle in cultural policy making (Duelund and Valtysson 2012). Accordingly, the Danish media sector is located within the Nordic Media Welfare Model and media are part of cultural policies (e.g. Syvertsen et al. 2014), meaning that news media are partly publicly funded to ensure a varied press with high circulation and a diverse media landscape, grounded in the idea of public service. This public service approach and subsidy system prioritises information and news about, among other things, arts and

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culture, and journalists from both public and commercial media share a strong professionalism and commitment to art and culture (see also Ahva et al. 2016; Hovden and Kristensen 2018). Finally, even though cultural consumption is, to some degree, socially stratified, Danes’ cultural participation and consumption have, overall, increased during the past decades. According to the Danish Ministry of Culture (2012, pp. 13, 17), this is not least due to digital media technologies and especially within the fields of music, literature, museums/exhibitions and computer. This is confirmed by Katz-Gerro and Jæger’s (2013) four clusters of cultural participation in Denmark and their changes from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s: the number of “couch potatoes” with limited cultural participation has decreased; the “popular” cluster, engaging in popular culture activities, and the cultural “omnivores”, engaging in cultural participation across the highbrow/lowbrow distinction, have seen a slight increase, and the “middlebrow” cluster, engaging in middlebrow activities, has remained stable. The cultural policy and media subsidy regulations and the professional journalistic culture in Denmark thus support the important role of institutionalised news media as cultural (inter)mediaries between cultural producers and cultural audiences. This is further emphasised by Danes’ cultural participation and consumption. These contextual elements confirm the importance of analysing the type of media that Danes consult when accessing information about arts and culture, including the role of institutionalised and publicly supported news media and their cultural reviews.

Methodology The following analysis is based on unweighted data from a national survey about Danes’ use of media to access information about culture. The data was collected by TNS Gallup’s online panel (GallupForum web interviews) from Monday 27 August 2018 to Sunday 9 September 2018 and included a representative sample of 1036 Danes above the age of 18.2 The survey included questions about how and where people search for information about culture, and their views about the trustworthiness 2 The data collection was funded by Dagpressens Fond, while the data analysis, conducted by a research assistant in the Spring of 2019, was funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark.

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of different information and news sources. Other questions probed into people’s attention to and use of the cultural review genre. The informants were also asked which culture critical voices they consider most culturally authoritative. The questionnaire included multiple-choice questions, Likert-scale questions, demographic questions and a few open-ended questions. Culture was defined in relatively broad terms in the survey to encompass arts, popular culture and more consumer-oriented cultural fields, from literature, opera and theatre to TV series, music festivals and fashion. The survey also used an inclusive conceptualisation of information about culture, which comprised information provided not only by news media and professional cultural journalists but also by cultural institutions, such as promotional communication, and by people’s own personal (nonmediated) network, i.e. other types of collectives (Livingstone 2013). Although the explanatory text that framed the questions strove to provide as much context and mutual grounding as possible, it should be noted that the terms culture, information and news are all polysemantic, so the respondents may have interpreted them differently when answering the questions.

Analysis The following presents selected findings from the survey. We emphasise the role of certain demographics, especially gender but also educational background, as previous research has shown cultural consumption to be socially stratified (Ministry of Culture 2012). We also include age, as audience research has shown age to heavily influence media use (Schrøder et al. 2019). Our aim is, first, to present more general findings about people’s interest in cultural topics and the frequency with which they search for information about such topics; second, we highlight the sources, media platforms and networks people use to access such information and their trust in these sources; and, third, we point to the role of cultural information produced by institutionalised news media and by professional journalists and critics in Danes’ use of cultural information.

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Danes’ Broader Interests in Cultural Information To determine people’s attention to cultural information, the survey looked into the public’s interest in information about culture vis-avis other main topics, such as politics, economics, sports and everyday life. The data partly confirms existing research (e.g. Jensen et al. 2019; Newman et al. 2017) because politics is the topic that most Danes indicate to be (very) interested in (Table 10.1). However, the data also shows that almost as many are interested or very interested in information about culture, which parallels topics such as economics and everyday life. This suggests that people do not perceive culture as significantly less interesting than other topics. As was also concluded by Newman et al. (2017), gender has a strong effect on preference as more women are (very) interested in cultural and everyday life issues compared to men, and more men are (very) interested in politics, economics and sport. Education positively influences the public’s interest in information about culture, as more people with a higher education level are interested in such information compared to people with less education (Table 10.2). The same pattern applies to politics and economics, while education seems to play a lesser role for topics such as sports and everyday life. Thus, the role of education for people’s interest is not unique to culture as a topic but for interest in various news topics more generally. The survey also inquired about how often Danes actively seek out information about culture. Almost one in two does this daily or weekly, while one in ten never does (see Table 10.3). This mirrors data from Table 10.1 Percentage of male and female respondents indicating that they are interested or very interested in the given topics

Men Culture Politics Economics Sport Everyday life

57% 80% 72% 55% 52%

(278) (383) (346) (265) (253)

Women

Average across gender

66% 64% 54% 30% 72%

62% 71% 62% 41% 63%

(362) (349) (298) (163) (394)

(640) (732) (644) (428) (647)

N = 1036. Men = 483. Women = 553. Survey question: “How interested are you in the following topics – culture, politics, economics, sport, everyday life?” (on a scale: Very interested, Interested, Neither-or, Not very interested, Not interested). The table shows distributions for the total of Very interested and Interested

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Table 10.2 Percentage of respondents across educational levels indicating that they are interested or very interested in the given topic

Culture Politics Economics Sport Everyday life

Primary school

Regular/Vocationally oriented upper secondary education

Vocational education

Further education

Average

46% (111) 58% (138) 49% (117) 40% (95) 56% (132)

63% 60% 47% 33% 62%

61% 70% 69% 44% 69%

71% 81% 69% 42% 62%

62% 71% 62% 41% 63%

(58) (55) (44) (31) (58)

(190) (217) (211) (135) (212)

(281) (322) (272) (167) (245)

(640) (732) (644) (428) (647)

N = 1036. Primary school = 240, Regular/Vocationally oriented upper secondary education = 93, Vocational education = 309, Further education = 394. Survey question: “How interested are you in the following topics – culture, politics, economics, sport, every day life?” on a scale: Very interested, Interested, Neither-or, Not very interested, Not interested. The table shows distributions for the total of Very interested and Interested

Table 10.3 Percentage of how often the male and female respondents seek out information about culture

Daily Weekly Monthly Semi-annually Yearly or more rare Never Total

Men

Women

Average

15% (71) 29% (140) 20% (98) 7% (34) 18% (88)

16% (91) 32% (178) 19% (104) 9% (51) 16% (84)

16% (162) 31% (318) 19% (202) 8% (85) 16% (172)

11% (52) 100% (483)

8% (45) 100% (553)

9% (97) 100% (1036)

N = 1036. Survey question: “How often do you seek out information about culture?”

Sweden, where “46 per cent of Swedes follow cultural journalism in the press, on radio or on television at least once a week” (Riegert and Widholm 2019, p. 4). In contrast to the gender differences in terms of interest, there are no significant differences between men and women when it comes to seeking out information about culture. Cultural information generally seems to play a relatively central role in the respondents’ everyday life. This may be ascribable to the broad definition of culture applied in the survey. In that sense, the findings about interest in cultural information and seeking out such information reflect

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that Danes are very active users of culture across the highbrow/lowbrow distinction. It is thus perhaps more surprising that one in ten indicates that they never seek out information about culture. In a broader perspective, this reflects patterns of news avoidance in Denmark, however (Newman et al. 2019, p. 25). Media Platforms and Their Trustworthiness Like in most other Western countries, digital news services have changed the Danish news ecology and economy. Recent data shows that 46% of the Danish population, counting 5.8 million people, access news from digital newspapers and 45% from social media (Schrøder et al. 2019, p. 18). At the same time, national television continues to be the most important news sources for most Danes (65%, ibid.), and quality news brands across public service broadcasters and private newspapers enjoy the trust of the population (ibid., p. 41). A key interest of the present study is the role and legitimacy of cultural information produced by institutionalised news media and professional cultural journalists or critics vis-à-vis other sources in Danes’ use of cultural information. One way of probing into this is to study which media, platforms and sources of information people consult to access information about culture and how trustworthy they find these sources. The data shows that Danes access information about culture by means of a variety of media and through personal relations. The topfive sources include more traditional media, such as flow television (32%) and printed elite newspapers/broadsheets (22%), but people’s personal network (48%), social media (36%) and strategic information by cultural institutions (28%) are also important sources of cultural information (Table 10.4). This confirms Schrøder’s (2019) argument that people combine a range of media to access various types of information, for various reasons and in various contexts of everyday life. Not surprisingly, people in most cases tend to find the sources they use to access information about culture trustworthy (see Table 10.5). While these figures confirm that the internet and social media serve as central entry points to information about culture, they also mirror rather traditional patterns of media use and attribution of trust, as legacy media and personal relations are key and associated with the highest level of trustworthiness. We detail each of the five most important information sources in the following.

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Table 10.4 Percentage of male and female respondents indicating that they use these sources to access information about culture

Printed national newspapers (e.g. Berlingske, Information) Printed tabloid newspapers (e.g. BT, Ekstra Bladet) Printed local/regional newspapers (e.g. Fyens Stiftstidende, Aarhus Stiftstidende) Digital national newspapers (e.g. berlingske.dk, information.dk) Digital tabloid newspapers (e.g. bt.dk, eb.dk) Digital local/regional newspapers (e.g. fyens.dk, stiften.dk) Magazines, industry papers, weekly magazines print/online (e.g. Costume/Costume.dk, Billedbladet/billedbladet.dk) Radio/podcasts (e.g. Radio24Syv, P4) Flow television (e.g. DR1, TV 2) TV streaming (e.g. TV2 Play, DR) Social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat) Other digital platforms (e.g. YouTube, blogs) International media, print/digital (e.g. The Guardian, NY Times, Al Jazeera) Cultural institutions (e.g. websites, newsletter, adds) My network (friends, family)

Men

Women

Average

24% (102)

20% (103)

22% (205)

4% (17)

3% (14)

3% (31)

16% (71)

16% (80)

16% (151)

21% (89)

15% (75)

17% (164)

18% (76) 13% (57)

11% (58) 11% (57)

14% (134) 12% (114)

11% (47)

17% (88)

14% (135)

18% 35% 12% 28%

12% 30% 11% 43%

15% 32% 12% 36%

(76) (152) (53) (124)

(63) (153) (56) (216)

(139) (305) (110) (340)

18% (76) 6% (25)

14% (70) 4% (22)

16% (146) 5% (47)

23% (99)

32% (161)

28% (260)

43% (187)

53% (267)

48% (454)

N = 939. Men = 431, women = 508. N is lower compared to the previous tables, because respondents answering that they never seek information about culture (97 respondents) were not presented with this question. Survey question: “Which of these media do you use when you need information about culture?”

Personal Relations as a Central and Trusted Entrance to Information about Culture People’ own network or personal relations are an important source of information about culture to the largest share of the sample (48%, see Table 10.4). This is the case across age and educational background, although this source of information is more important to women than men (not shown in tables). The importance of word of mouth from people’s network is supported by the fact that one in two (55%, or 520 of 939 respondents) agrees (very much) with the statement presented later

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Table 10.5 Percentage of users/non-users of a particular source of information to access cultural information, who indicate that they find the given source of information trustworthy or very trustworthy How trustworthy do you find the following information source when accessing information on about culture

Total across users/non-users of the given source to access information about culture (939)

Users of the given source to access information about culture

Printed national newspapers (e.g. Berlingske, Information) Digital national newspapers (e.g. berlingske.dk, information.dk) Printed tabloid newspapers (e.g. BT, Ekstra Bladet) Digital tabloid newspapers (e.g. bt.dk, eb.dk) Print local/regional newspapers (e.g. Fyens Stiftstidende, Aarhus Stiftstidende) Digital local/regional newspapers (e.g. fyens.dk,stiften.dk) Magazines, industry papers, weekly magazines print/online (e.g. Costume/Costume.dk, Billedbladet/billedbladet.dk) Radio/podcasts (e.g. Radio24Syv, P4) TV broadcast (e.g. DR1, TV 2) Social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat) Other digital platforms (Youtube, blogs) International media print/digital (e.g. The Guardian, NY Times, Al Jazeera) Cultural institutions (e.g. websites, newsletter, adds) My network (friends, family)

65% (612)

92% (189 of 205)

57% (536)

89% (146 of 164)

21% (201)

48% (15 of 31)

23% (211)

49% (66 of 134)

54% (505)

77% (116 of 151)

44% (418)

79% (90 of 114)

27% (258)

53% (72 of 135)

49% (459)

79% (110 of 139)

70% (655)

81% (248 of 305)

16% (154)

30% (105 of 345)

13% (120)

27% (39 of 146)

25% (237)

85% (40 of 47)

48% (450)

77% (201 of 260)

78% (731)

79% (357 of 454)

N = 939. Survey question: “How trustworthy do you find this source of information, when you need information about culture?” on a scale: Very trustworthy, Trustworthy, Neither-or, Not very trustworthy, Not trustworthy, Do not know. The table shows distributions for the total of Very trustworthy and Trustworthy

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in the survey that “My network (family, friends) is one of the best sources of information about culture”. This confirms classical theories about the importance of people’s networks and their various social ties for information flows and thus of looking beyond media when studying people’s information and news supply, also in regard to culture. Hjarvard (2016, p. 158), for example, has shown that people prefer personal relations when seeking inspiration or advice about which books to read.3 In our study, personal relations are also considered a (very) trustworthy source of information, indicated as such by 78% (see Table 10.5). The central position of personal relations in people’s cultural information navigation may, as suggested by Hjarvard (2016), relate to the social dimensions of cultural consumption. While cultural consumption has often been associated with cultural identity, cultural capital, taste-making and distinction (cf. Bourdieu 1984), it also serves the basic purpose of being something people share with colleagues and friends. This may be one broader sociological explanation for why people’s personal network represents such a key and trustworthy cultural information source, as suggested by the current study. Social Media Frequently Used but Rarely Trusted Social media are also, unsurprisingly, important sources of information about culture. This reflects people’s general patterns of media use as social media are key information sources to Danes, although this use has stagnated slightly in recent years (Schrøder et al. 2019). This also suggests that consumption of general as well as culture-specific news is interwoven with general online activity (Fletcher and Park 2017, p. 1282). However, according to our study, the use of social media for cultural information is significantly more common among women, younger audiences and people with a regular or vocationally oriented upper secondary education as their highest level of education than among men, older age groups and people with a higher level of education (not shown in tables). As the current study is unable to discern which social media people use, social media could potentially cover both commercial and

3 In Hjarvard’s study (2016), 49% indicated that their personal relations serve as a main source of inspiration, seconded by libraries (31%), reviews in legacy media (30%), and information from book shops (29%).

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non-commercial or/and professionally produced editorial content circulated on social media. Although social media are the most used way to access information about culture, such platforms are paradoxically associated with a low level of credibility, because only 16% mark them as trustworthy (see Table 10.5). This may be due to people’s increasing awareness of the algorithmic nature of social media (Bucher 2017), i.e. the role of computational processes in steering their newsfeed. The result may also mirror more general patterns of trust in different types of media, as research has demonstrated that social media are generally associated with mis/disinformation (Newman et al. 2019). Professionalised and Trusted Communication by Cultural Institutions Strategic communication from cultural institutions, e.g. the website of an art gallery or the commented screening programme of a cinema, is also an important source of cultural information for many Danes (28%, see Table 10.4), although significantly more so for women and people with a higher level of education (not shown in tables). This could be related to people’s cultural visiting habits as women are generally more active cultural consumers than men, while people with a shorter education are generally underrepresented, e.g. among visitors at Danish museums (Agency for Culture and Palaces 2017). In terms of trustworthiness, the communication provided by cultural institutions is considered trustworthy by 48% of the informants across users and non-users of such information (see Table 10.5). This may be linked to the abovementioned strong historical tradition of public subsidies to support the production and circulation of art and culture in Denmark. Cultural institutions are generally perceived as independent actors who prioritise the public good over commercial interests. However, many cultural institutions have developed strong market ties and are increasingly measured by commercial performance indicators. Their legitimacy as cultural information providers may therefore be affected by their efforts to adopt stylistic formats and genres known from professional journalism. Research has generally pointed to the cultural industries’ professionalisation of their interplay with the news industry as part of intensified public relations efforts. This professionalisation involves adaptation to the modes of communication of professional cultural journalism (e.g. Kristensen 2018). One explanation for this professionalisation is that institutionalised

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news media continue to occupy an authoritative position in the cultural information circuit. Legacy Media Challenged but Highly Trusted Traditional news media continue to be important sources of cultural information as television and printed newspapers are among the sources consulted by most Danes. One in three uses flow television to access information about culture, while one in five uses printed national newspapers (see Table 10.4). The last figure is similar to the share of people who, more broadly, use printed newspapers for news in Denmark (Schrøder et al. 2019).4 Although printed national newspapers have lost ground and their position as a common cultural forum and cultural gatekeeper has been challenged, it is clear that they still play a significant role in Danes’ consumption of news about culture. Previous international research has demonstrated that among book readers, traditional media and critics are still considered legitimate, while the internet is seen more as a “complementary than a substitutive information retrieval device” (Verboord 2010, p. 632). Our results confirm that traditional media are perceived trustworthy both among users and non-users of such media. Flow television, for example, is marked as trustworthy by 70%, while 65% have marked printed national newspapers as trustworthy (see Table 10.5). This confirms that Danish media users generally associate quality media brands with high credibility (Newman et al. 2019). The Perception of Cultural Reviews in Legacy Media In the following, we focus closely on the culture critical debates provided by printed and digital newspapers by examining the public’s views on the review genre, and what motivates people to read professionally produced reviews. Background stories and interviews are valued genres in print newspapers, while short news stories, background stories, interviews as well as

4 According to Schrøder et al. (2019), two in three Danes (65%) access news via television. In our study, only one in three indicates flow television as a source of cultural information. These data are not directly comparable, however, since Schrøder et al. do not distinguish between flow television and streaming, as this study does. However, television does seem to play a minor role for cultural news compared to news more broadly.

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guides and tests are valued genres in digital newspapers. This suggests that cultural journalism across media has the dual function of being both “fast guidance” and entry point to more in-depth analytical perspectives on culture and society. However, most people express a preference for the review in both printed and digital newspapers, thus confirming existing research about the continued key status of this genre in cultural journalism (e.g. Hjarvard 2016; Verboord 2010) (see Table 10.6). Reviews may be a preferred genre because they offer cultural guidance. Four in ten (38%, see Table 10.7) at least indicate that they perceive cultural reviews as mainly providing such guidance. This suggests that cultural reviews belong to the broader paradigm of service journalism, a type of journalism offering expertise, advice and life help on everyday life issues (e.g. From 2018). In the present context, the review can be regarded both as a genre that offers concrete advice on cultural consumer goods based on availability, price and taste, and as a genre that may provide more in-depth analyses of the cultural value of the cultural product. This suggests that the review is still a distinctive and valued genre of professional cultural journalism, and this is the case across platforms. The result may also be indicative of a methodological limitation, however, Table 10.6 Preferred genres when reading about culture in print/digital newspapers

Short news stories Reviews Previews Reportage Interviews Commentaries Portraits Trends stories Background stories Columns Tests/guides None of the above Do not know

Printed newspapers

Digital newspapers

22% (211) 35% (328) 10% (96) 20% (188) 24% (225) 8% (71) 20% (192) 19% (174) 32% (298) 7% (64) 13% (121) 8% (77) 13% (121)

28% (267) 31% (288) 11% (104) 14% (128) 18% (167) 9% (89) 14% (131) 7% (66) 19% (183) 4% (40) 16% (147) 11% (106) 22% (210)

N = 939. Survey question: “Which types of cultural content do you prefer to read in printed newspapers (chose up to three types)?”/“Which types of cultural content do you prefer to read in digital newspapers (chose up to three types)?”. Respondents should mark minimum 1 genre and maximum 3

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Table 10.7 People’s responses to various statements about cultural journalism Agree (very much) I read about culture 41% (381) in newspapers (print/online) because cultural journalists have great knowledge about the cultural topics they write about I read about culture 32% (300) in newspapers (print/online) because cultural journalists write well 10% (94) I read specific cultural journalists’ cultural reviews because I often agree with their evaluations (e.g. Torben Sangild, Christian Monggaard, Anne Sophia Hermansen) Cultural reviews are 38% (353) first and foremost a guide to cultural consumption

Neither/or

Disagree (very much)

Don’t know

29% (274)

15% (141)

15% (143)

37% (351)

15% (139)

16% (149)

29% (273)

35% (326)

26% (246)

27% (252)

11% (101)

25% (233)

N = 939. Survey question: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statements about various information sources and media’s information about culture?”

as people may instinctively associate cultural journalism with reviews and for that reason mark it as a genre of preference. The Role of Professional Critics and Cultural Journalists in a Changed News Ecology People’s appreciation for the review genre in both printed and digital newspapers may also be ascribable to the authority and legitimacy they associate with the professional journalists and critics producing such reviews for these legacy media. To determine if this was the case, the survey listed a number of claims about these professionals, based on some

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of the key perceptions that circulate in cultural newsrooms and among scholars about cultural journalism (see Table 10.7). A relatively large proportion of Danes do not have an opinion about these issues, as indicated by the many “Don’t know” or “Neither/or” responses. Among those who do have an opinion about the cultural capital of cultural journalists and the quality of their work, more are supportive than the opposite. This suggests that even though Danes are not necessarily loyal readers of printed newspapers, they do associate their cultural journalists and critics with authority and legitimacy. More specifically, four in ten indicate that they read about culture in print/digital newspapers, because cultural journalists have great knowledge about the cultural topics they write about. This is a sign of positive public recognition of Danish cultural journalists’ and critics’ expertise in music, literature, theatre, etc., i.e. of their cultural capital. It also implicitly reflects people’s preferences for journalistic pieces written within what has been labelled the aesthetic paradigm of cultural journalism (e.g. Hellman and Jaakkola 2012), steered by in-depth knowledge about and appreciation of particular cultural subfields. Another reason for wanting to read the work of professional cultural journalists and critics relates to their writing skills. One in three says that they read about culture in print/digital newspapers because cultural journalists write well. This indicates that consuming professionally produced cultural information or journalism may also be associated with enjoyment, relaxation or entertainment. Previous research has shown that well written and aesthetically pleasing cultural stories or reviews have the potential to substitute actual cultural consumption, such as a trip to the art museum or the cinema (Kristensen and From 2011, p. 112). This suggests that cultural journalism does not only serve an intermediary role but is also itself a cultural good. This resonates well with Costera Meijer’s (2020) call for increasing scholarly attention to people’s emotional and sensory experiences with journalism. Agreeing with the cultural evaluations of professional critics, and thus sharing their normative standards and cultural tastes, does not seem to be a decisive factor for reading reviews, at least not according to this study. Only one in ten indicates that they read cultural reviews because they typically agree with a particular cultural journalist or critic. Thus, most audiences do not look for cultural confirmation of their cultural tastes in reviews or from particular reviewers. In an open-ended, followup question people provided examples of cultural journalists and critics

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they found particularly interesting to read. Recurring examples included both controversial and more prominent critics from tabloid and elite news media, well-known in the Danish public. This indicates that some people do in fact sympathise with particular cultural journalists or critics. It is not a dominant finding, but the responses do suggest that (some) cultural journalists and critics may perform as personal brands who then also brand the particular news media they work for (Kristensen and From 2018). This in turn highlights the personal voice of the critic as a potential mark of distinction in the culture critical circuit.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have brought together two broad strands of media research not previously combined: audience studies and cultural journalism studies, including research about cultural reviews in the news media. Based on a national survey with a representative sample of the Danish population, a main aim has been to add an audience perspective to cultural journalism research, which has so far focused mainly on the professionals, genres and the outlook of cultural journalism and cultural criticism, historically and in the digital age. The few existing studies of people’s preferences for various types of news content have suggested that when people have to choose between hard and soft news topics, the former are most appreciated. However, this study has shown that art and culture are in fact also topics which many people, Danes in this case, take an interest in and actively seek information about. This finding supports that people often combine different types of media to access various types of news or content, for various reasons and in various contexts of everyday life (e.g. Schrøder 2019). Culture is thus a relevant topic for further research, both in audience research and in journalism studies. The study also shows that people use very different sources to access information about culture, spanning non-mediated communication, institutionalised news media and communication produced and distributed outside institutionalised news frameworks, such as strategic communication from cultural institutions, or from social media. This indicates that they appreciate cultural information made available by a variety of information providers, not just by cultural news media and professional critics. More broadly, this confirms the importance of a cross-media approach in contemporary audience research. People’s personal network is a highly

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valued and trusted source of cultural information, suggesting that culture generally serves the basic purpose of being a social kit, i.e. something that people share with colleagues, friends and family. Besides people’s network, the most trusted sources of cultural information are flow television and the printed press, so traditional news media do after all maintain an authoritative and valued position in the cultural information circuit. This is a key finding as much research has pointed to a weakening or even death of professional criticism (McDonald 2007), produced in institutional settings such as the news media. Even though the roles of national legacy media as gatekeepers and valorisors of culture have come under pressure in the digital age, challenged top-down by the algorithms of global media actors and bottom-up by new voices in the cultural information circuit, our findings indicate that professional criticism has maintained some of its status in public opinion. In a broader perspective, people’s use of media and various sources of information to access information about culture mirrors wider patterns of media use and media trust beyond the cultural domain. This, of course, begs the methodological question of whether people are in fact able to distinguish between media use for specific topical purposes when asked about their media use for information about culture. Such a question emphasises some of the methodological limitations of the survey method, which is less suited for fleshing out such nuances. However, the question also indicates that this study is the very first needed step in furthering our understanding of audiences’ engagement with particular types of platforms, information sources, content and genres, including which media, information sources and genres the public consult and recognise as trustworthy and legitimate in debates about art and culture today. Funding The study was funded by Dagpressens Fond (data collection) and Independent Research Fund Denmark, DFF-grant 4180-00082.

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Purhonen, S., Heikkilä, R., Hazir, I. K., Lauronen, T., Rodríguez, C. J. F., & Gronow, J. (2019). Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Section, 1960–2010. London: Routledge. Riegert, K., & Widholm, A. (2019). The Difference Culture Makes: Comparing Swedish News and Cultural Journalism on the 2015 Terrorist Attacks in Paris. Nordicom Review, 40(2), 3–18. Schrøder, K. C. (2019). What Do News Readers Really Want to Read About? How Relevance Works for News Audiences. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/ 2019-03/Schroder_How_relevance_works_for_news_audiences_FINAL.pdf.% 20Accessed%2010%20September%202019. Accessed 10 Sept 2019. Schrøder, K. C., Blach-Ørsten, M., and Eberholst, M. (2019). Danskernes brug af nyhedsmedier 2019 [Danes’ Use of News Media 2019]. RUC: Center for Nyhedsforskning. Striphas, T. (2015). Algorithmic Culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(4–5), 395–412. Syvertsen, T., Enli, G., Mjøs, O. J., & Moe, H. (2014). The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Area. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Szántó, A., Levy, D. S., & Tyndall, A. (2004). Reporting the Arts II. Columbia University: National Arts Journalism Program. Verboord, M. (2010). The Legitimacy of Book Critics in the Age of the Internet and Omnivorousness: Expert Critics, Internet Critics and Peer Critics in Flanders and the Netherlands. European Sociological Review, 26(6), 623–637. Widholm, A., Riegert, K., & Roosvall, A. (2019). Abundance or Crisis? Transformations in the Media Ecology of Swedish Cultural Journalism Over Four Decades. Journalism. Published online August 6, 2019. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1464884919866077. Ytre-Arne, B., & Das, R. (2018). In the Interest of Audiences: An Agenda. In R. Das & B. Ytre-Arne (Eds.), Future of Audiences (pp. 275–292). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 11

Where to Look Next for a Shot of Culture? Repertoires of Cultural Information Production and Consumption on the Internet Marc Verboord, Rian Koreman, and Susanne Janssen

Introduction For a long time, standards for cultural value have been set by experts whose legitimacy largely lay in their institutional credentials (Bourdieu 1980; DiMaggio 1987; Janssen and Verboord 2015). For instance, being employed by the New York Times gave a critic almost by default cultural authority. However, in today’s pluralistic and digitalized societies (Meyer 2000; McDonald 2007), the homolog relationship between the status of

M. Verboord (B) · R. Koreman · S. Janssen Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] R. Koreman e-mail: [email protected] S. Janssen e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0_11

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the medium—itself reflecting the social composition of its readership— and the symbolic value of the cultural coverage, has weakened (Janssen et al. 2011). This draws our attention to historical contingencies of how cultural expressions are featured and evaluated (DiMaggio 1987), but also to an understudied element in symbolic production: how audiences partake in using and valuing cultural information in the media. In the past decades, many studies have addressed the way newspapers and other media report on arts and culture (e.g., Janssen 1999; Janssen et al. 2011; Jaakkola 2015; Kristensen and Riegert 2017; Purhonen et al. 2019). Scholars have also studied how cultural journalists see themselves and their specific beat (Hovden and Kristensen 2018), and how they make decisions (Kristensen and From 2018). In contrast, research on how audiences use media for retrieving and producing information on cultural products is still scarce. One reason could be that cultural journalism is a specific subfield within the broader category of journalism: “journalism with a difference” (Forde 2003; Kristensen 2019). Whereas regular journalism is often analyzed from the audience perspective because of its alleged link to political outcomes (e.g., Vos et al. 2019), this is less common for the subfield of cultural journalism where the “effects” are often considered less relevant. Consequently, large surveys are generally more readily available for “hard news” topics than for culture. However, studying audiences and how they inform themselves on cultural affairs via the media is key to getting a better understanding of how cultural value is created in society. Arguably, the most impactful recent development in how media produce and disseminate information on culture is the rise of online media. Cultural journalists have lost their monopoly on symbolic production as web 2.0 technologies have enabled lay users to also generate and distribute content. Most internet-based media nowadays contain some form of user-generated content (UGC). Ten years ago, only a limited number of users of sites containing UGC could be labeled as “active creators” (adding content themselves), or as “critics” (providing rating or evaluations); most users were “reactive” (downloading content, reading and rating evaluations of others) (Van Dijck 2009, p. 44). However, the range of internet-based media has become increasingly diversified and interactive, which more than ever raises the question how audiences interested in cultural affairs make use of information sources in the current media ecology.

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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 UGC. Scholars have pointed to the increasing relevance of studying media use in terms of these repertoires, assessing how audiences select and combine the media channels and content available to them into their own distinct repertoire (Hasebrink and Popp 2006). Given the increasingly diverse media landscape, in which digital media and the internet are complementing traditional media, this arguably provides a more comprehensive way to study audiences’ media use than other, more traditional methods (e.g., frequency, amount of use of a single medium) (Hasebrink and Popp 2006; Swart et al. 2017). We add to this approach by not only paying attention to how audiences consume media, but also considering audiences production patterns. We thus aim to establish how they complement their media repertoire with “prosumer” activities as well as contribute to the explanation of creating and consuming cultural UGC. We use data of an online survey in the Netherlands to answer our questions.

Setting the Stage: Developments in Cultural Journalism and Cultural Criticism For many decades, information provision on arts and culture was a dual-track process: Audiences could compare the viewpoints of experts in the media with the commercial messages of cultural producers (Heilbrun 1997). Cultural criticism, employed by these experts, was relatively clearly demarcated from advertisements and other forms of marketing. Within the media field, particularly newspapers were a central platform for developing cultural criticism—due to their authoritative voice in the public sphere, and their format of bundling short and long texts in juxtaposition. The long history of cultural journalism shows how the experts operating in newspapers slowly transformed from freelance academics (e.g., literature professors) contributing rather specialized articles to more audience-oriented professionals who increasingly had journalistic credentials (e.g., Janssen 1999; Kristensen 2010; Verboord and Janssen 2015). The rise of separate culture sections in newspapers between the 1950s (in the United States) and 1970s (most European countries)

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(Verboord and Janssen 2015) underlined not only the increasing importance that societies attributed to culture in the postwar years, but also the growing legitimacy of the newspaper as an institution engaging in cultural valorization (Baumann 2007). Another major development was the gradual transformation in later years toward what has been labeled “service journalism” (Eide and Knight 1999; Kristensen and From 2012), which could be seen as a strategy to counter the decline in newspaper circulation (Kristensen and From 2012). This type of journalism focuses on “soft news” (e.g., culture, lifestyle) and consumerism, providing advice, guidance, and “human interest” approaches rather than critical analyses that may antagonize certain audience members. In doing so, it arguably infused cultural journalism with more audience-oriented or even commercial flavors, but also subverted the position of newspapers and cultural journalists as key agents of symbolic production, as the distinctions with other media platforms (e.g., general interest magazines and television talk shows) started to blur (Kristensen and From 2015). Since the early 2000s, the most significant trend without doubt is the digitalization of the media field and the rise of what Kristensen and From (2015) have labeled the “everyday amateur expert.” In just a short time span, the increased use of the internet has significantly altered the way information is being created, disseminated, searched, and valued. Peer-to-peer communication technologies permit audiences to create, share, and rate user-generated content (UGC), and to actively contribute to opinion formation (Van Dijck 2009; McKenzie et al. 2012). These bottom-up processes of selecting and evaluating culture challenge the traditional, well-documented top-down model of artistic legitimation through highly institutionalized settings (Verboord 2010, 2014; Kammer 2015). Newspapers and other institutionalized media organizations thus have to compete with thousands of alternative information sources which—while not necessarily “reliable” in the traditional sense— trump the notion of authority via “credibility” (Metzger et al. 2010). In line with pre-internet theories of two-step flow of communication and word-of-mouth, online sources often emphasize the importance of the “peer”: the communicating person who is very similar in background to the recipient, which increases trust that the message is “credible” and not confounded by ulterior motives such as commercial or status interests. Admittedly, the variety of online sources is huge and not all media outlets are equally important for the domain of arts and culture. In the

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cultural domain, we can discern at least six specific types of contributors to cultural journalism and criticism that imply some form of UGC: review platforms , meta-review websites , cultural websites, blogs, vlogs , and social media or content platforms.1 The first two types arguably focus more on cultural criticism, in the sense that they are dedicated to the evaluation of individual cultural artifacts. Cultural criticism in the form of more general critical pieces is rarely found on these websites. Review platforms (e.g., Yahoo! Movies) are more typical for the early days of online cultural evaluation. Similar to other types of consumer platforms, they give audiences the opportunity to anonymously express their experience of a product. Currently, these interactivity functions are often integrated in many other types of websites and platforms. Meta-review websites , such as Metacritic, RottenTomatoes, or Anydecentmusic, collect evaluations from various media and present average scores. Often, they include reviews from both professionals and amateurs. Cultural websites are the equivalent of traditional magazines in which a flock of contributors, often headed by an editorial team, present a mix of reviews, interviews, news texts, opinion pieces, and background stories. They present new forms of cultural journalism. While most originally-print magazines have online versions nowadays, a number of exclusively online outlets have become highly influential (e.g., Pitchfork in music, Popmatters in popular culture). Blogs distinguish themselves from cultural websites through more individualistic and often diary-style textual approaches to culture (Rettberg 2013). Due to the rising popularity of video content platforms—in particular YouTube—such diary-style reports have increasingly taken the shape of vlogs (video-blogs) (Jaakkola 2018). But we should note, first, that lifestyle products such as fashion and beauty items appear to be more prominent here than arts and culture in a more narrow sense (e.g., literature, visual arts, theater), and, second, that the rise of new online business models prompted a strong “service” if not overly commercial aspect to this type of information dissemination (e.g., Choi and Lee 2019). Finally, we distinguish social media or content platforms, though such sites often incorporate various elements of the previously mentioned outlets, and they sometimes originated from a different form. For instance, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) started out as a database, but developed into a multifunctional platform that also brings

1 As far as we know, no previous classification of types exists.

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news features and allows audience members to post reviews and give ratings. While GoodReads.com is often seen as a social media platform, one of its main functions is the opportunity for audiences to share their views on specific books similar to a review website. Most of the mentioned types of online cultural information outlets employ UGC elements in their design. They offer their audiences the opportunity to comment, rate, or even contribute full-blown reviews or stories to the outlet or platform. In that sense, they enable lay persons to engage in various forms of cultural criticism and/or journalism.

Explaining User-Generated Content in the Cultural Domain The internet has thus particularly multiplied and diversified the available information on culture through enabling a much broader range of persons—among whom many lay persons—to publicly share their ideas and opinions. Notwithstanding the affordances of internet technologies for the professional sector, user-generated content and UGC-based activities such as crowdsourcing, meta aggregation, and wiki formation appear to have transformed the cultural information flow most. Yet, despite the enormous literature on the rise of UGC in the past decades (e.g., McKenzie et al. 2012), relatively little research focuses on how UGC is used in the cultural field. We briefly discuss what has been done and identify knowledge gaps. Perhaps the most voluminous strand of research on UGC regarding culture can be found in the field of marketing and business. Framing cultural products as hedonic consumption goods, scholars have analyzed the impact of user reviews on popularity indexes, such as box office success of films, in comparison with other types of media attention. Here, UGC is conceptualized as “electronic Word-of-Mouth”: peers informing other peers about their experiences with a particular cultural product. Various studies have indeed shown positive impact of eWOm on success rates (e.g., Chakravarty et al. 2010; Kim et al. 2013). Whereas this literature stresses the increasing importance of UGC in contemporary cultural fields particularly from an economic perspective, it generally does not address who is using UGC for what reasons. Motivations for using and producing UGC have mainly been studied outside the cultural domain. Already in 2004, Hennig-Thurau and Walsh found five factors that influence why people consult consumer websites:

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obtaining buyer-related information (e.g., risk reduction, reducing search time), social orientation through information (e.g., comparing own opinion with that of others), community membership (e.g., knowing what products are “in”), remuneration (e.g., getting a reward), and to learn to consume a product (e.g., advice) (see also Parikh et al. 2014). The creation of UGC is also motivated by an array of considerations, as highlighted in the overview study by McKenzie et al. (2012). Some contributors are mainly led by intrinsic factors, but also financial awards, reputation development, social motivations, and boosting one’s self-image are common. Most of such motivations, however, signal more deeply embedded perceptions, attitudes, and expectations that users have of internet technologies and how these can help them (or not) to reach certain goals (Morse et al. 2011). These underlying attitudinal perceptions have been called “affordances” (e.g., Wellman et al. 2003; Nagy and Neff 2015). These mostly psychologically oriented outcomes do not mean that social background does not matter. Particularly the work by Ester Hargittai has documented the strong social-economic differences between individuals in using and producing ICT, social media, and UGC (e.g., Hargittai and Walejko 2008). Digital inequalities often hark back to differences in socioeconomic status (SES), and social and cultural capital, and they also reinforce existing differences (Hargittai and Hsieh 2013). In a similar vein, studies of specific types of information disseminators— opinion leaders and cultural mavens—suggest that having relatively high SES and large social capital (or at least a high degree of connectivity) matter in explaining who contributes (Boster et al. 2011; Ruvio and Shoham 2007; Verboord 2019). As for consuming and producing cultural UGC, not only does socioeconomic status—indicated by higher levels of education and more prestigious occupations—operate through digital skills. Higher socioeconomic status is often also considered to indicate both larger proficiency in dealing with symbolic expressions, such as arts and culture (Kraaykamp and Eijck 2010), and larger engagement with cultural forms due to the social status this produces (Bourdieu 1984; Chan 2010). The rapid development of new technologies and their applications in everyday media consumption and production implies that the media field is in a constant flux, and that research findings are quickly outdated. One limitation of many studies of the past decade concerns the focus on single media outlets instead of the ways these outlets are combined into larger

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media repertoires (Webster 2014). In our empirical study, we thus aim to also contribute to this aspect: We are interested in discovering which types of information usage and production are mixed together by individuals. The patterns that we find are then examined in an explanatory analysis that takes into account socioeconomic status and individuals’ perceived internet affordances.

Method To answer our research question, we use survey data, collected in May and June 2015 in the Netherlands. The respondents were part of the LISS panel of the research agency, CenterData. This panel consists of a representative sample of the Dutch population. Although the panel members were approached with an online survey, also individuals without internet access participated in the panel using a specific electronic device. The response rate was 78.4%: Of the 1095 panel members who were invited to participate, 858 responded positively. Ten respondents did not fill out the complete survey. The survey questionnaire comprised various questions on cultural taste and media use, with a specific focus on listening to music, reading books, and watching films. The focus on the Netherlands implies that our results should be viewed as an example of a context in which involvement with (digital) media and culture is widespread. Compared to other European countries, the Netherlands has relatively high levels of both online and offline media usage: In 2016, they rank third, first, and third among EU countries in reading the written press, using the internet, and using online social networks, respectively (European Commission 2016, pp. 12ff.). In terms of cultural participation, Dutch citizens also tend to have higher participation rates than the EU average: For instance, 86% of Dutch citizens read a book at least once a year, and 51% visit a concert at least once a year (European Commission 2013, p. 12). Still, research into the media use and cultural participation of the Dutch population shows enduring differences and inequalities between the higher and lower educated as well as between younger and older generations (Schaper et al. 2019). Our main variable of interest is how respondents look for information and produce information regarding culture. First, we examined what individuals do, focusing on six activities: (a) writing a review of a product or a show, (b) giving an evaluation of a production (e.g., via attributing stars), (c) writing stories or articles on a blog or a website, (d) reading

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reviews of other consumers, (e) chatting or discussing on a forum, and (f) following an artist, writer, or cultural celebrity on Twitter or Facebook.2 We distinguish between “never” doing this (0) and doing this (1) “at least every now and then.” Second, we asked whether people sometimes use the internet to find information on culture. As examples we mentioned reading reviews, buying products, retrieving background information on artists or writers, knowing what other people think of a new film or show. To those who answered positively, we continued asking for seven types of media: (a) Internet Movie Database (IMDb), (b) Goodreads.com, (c) Websites that collect reviews from the media (e.g., Metacritic), (d) Websites or blogs on music, (e) Websites or blogs on books, (f) Websites or blogs on various cultural genres, and (g) Web stores with reviews. Again, we distinguish between (0) “never” and (1) “at least every now and then.” Note that our choice of information channels is not exhaustive. Space limitations in the questionnaire prevented us from including a more elaborate range. Furthermore, we selected the items considering the general population from which the respondents are sampled. That is, inquiring for “niche” activities would yield very low frequencies. Hence, we did not ask for many specific online outlets, but rather for types of outlets. Also, we combined websites and blogs. Internet Affordances In the survey, the respondents were asked about what they see as advantages and disadvantages of the internet compared to other media (inspired by among others, Morse et al. 2011). They were presented in the form of 22 statements (Likert scale) with answer categories that ranged from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Beforehand we expected to find dimensions relating to the speed of finding information, the ease of finding information and buying products, the reliability of information, the (low) cost of finding products, and the diversity of information and products. A factor analysis (with direct oblimin rotation) showed

2 The full question read: Nowadays, people can engage with culture on the internet in all kind of ways. Can you indicate for the activities listed below whether you sometimes do these on the internet? Note: we understand culture in terms of films, books, music, theater, etc.

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five interpretable dimensions. Together these dimensions represent a cumulative 56% explained variance. Table 11.1 shows the factor loadings for the factors found. The first factor that emerged is labeled convenience of internet use (Eigenvalue = 4.61; explained variance = 20.95%). Five items loaded higher than .50 on this dimension. These items all indicate appreciation of the internet as news source, particularly due to the speed at which one can stay up to date. Reliability analysis showed that reliability was good (Cronbach’s alpha = .78). The second factor (Eigenvalue = 2.06; explained variance = 9.38%) represents a more negative view toward the internet, albeit a specific part of the internet, as here we find high factor loadings from statements that newspaper staff have more authority than bloggers and that quality of information is lower on blogs and social media. This factor is labeled internet offers lower quality of information. It should be signaled that the reliability is poor (Cronbach’s alpha = .58), implying that there is limited internal consistency. The third factor (Eigenvalue = 1.91; explained variance = 8.70%) is based upon items that signal the advantages of internet in terms of low financial costs. Consequently, this factor is labeled internet is cheap. The reliability is close to good (Cronbach’s alpha = .69). The fourth factor concerns the reliability of information (Eigenvalue = 1.54; explained variance = 7.01%). Two items had a high factor loading on this dimension (“Have complete trust in consumer reviews on the internet” and “Find information on the internet very reliable”), but two others unexpectedly did not generate high loadings (“Take opinions on the internet with a grain of salt” and “Many reviews on the internet are fake”), possibly because they were reversed. Conducting reliability analysis indeed showed a poor internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .56), but removing items from the scale did not increase the test result. The fifth factor that emerged concerned the issue of diversity of information. Here, three variables had factor loadings higher than .50: “The big advantage of the internet is that you can compare many opinions on products”; “The internet is important because there is a diversity of opinions available”; and “I like reading the reviews of other consumers on the internet.” All factor loadings are negative, indicating that the factor in principle designates a negative stance. For the sake of interpretation, we stick to the positive coding of the items and thus reverse the interpretation of the factor into: the importance of diversity (Eigenvalue = 1.24,

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Table 11.1 Factor analysis of internet affordances (N = 848) F1 Not prepared to wait for news and information in print media Take news from internet because it is faster Information dissemination via internet has made traditional media superfluous Always find what I need on the internet Better up to date via social and blogs Difficult to find things I need on the internet Easier to buy products on the internet than in normal shops Newspaper staff have more authority than bloggers Social media and blogs will never equal info quality of paper newspapers and television Prefer to get information from expert above bloggers or people on social media Always try to get things for free on the internet One of best things of the internet is that you can download stuff for free Since the internet, I am no longer prepared to pay for music or films There is so much choice on the internet that I have trouble choosing Have complete trust in consumer reviews on the internet Find information on the internet very reliable Take opinions on the internet with a grain of salt (reversed) Many reviews on the internet are fake (reversed) Big advantage of the internet is that you can compare many views on products Internet is important because of large variety of opinions Eager to read review of other consumers on the internet Traditional media such as tv and newspapers have more one-sided information than the internet Cronbach’s alpha Eigenvalue

F2

F3

F4

F5

.77 .77 .69

.29 −.36

.61 .51 −.41 .35

.22

.38 −.29

.83 .78 −.22

−.25

.50 .80 .73

−.27

.67 .57 .75 .66 .30 .17 −.81 .20

−.77 −.65

.30 .79 4.61

.58 2.06

.69 1.91

.56 1.54

.74 1.24

Note Direct oblimin rotation, pattern matrix (factor loadings < .20). Factor loadings in bold are used to calculate variables

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explained variance = 5.62%). The reliability of this dimension is good (Cronbach’s alpha = .74). Background Variables Besides the internet affordances, we also consider a number of background characteristics of respondents in the explanatory analyses in line with the previous studies that showed the impact of SES and cultural and social capital. First, cultural capital was measured by calculating how often individuals participate in cultural activities with a high degree of cultural legitimacy (Kraaykamp and Eijck 2010). For this, we selected five available activities: (a) watching theater plays, (b) watching dance performances, (c) visiting art museums and galleries, (d) visiting concerts of classical music or opera, and (e) watching art house films and quality foreign TV drama (items on music and books were not used). The answer categories all ranged from 0 to 4 (Cronbach’s alpha = .690; M = 2.76; SD = 2.26). Second, we include an indicator for the degree of connectivity, in line with studies of cultural mavens (Verboord 2019). We asked to what degree someone considered herself to be a “connector.” We used four Likert scale statements (answer categories 1–5): “I am often the connection between friends in different groups,” “I often introduce people to one another,” “I try to bring people that I know together if I think they would like each other,” and “The people I know, often know each other through me.” This was a reliable scale (Cronbach’s alpha = .870). This indicator was based upon Boster et al. (2011). Finally, we include a number of demographic variables in our analyses. In particular, we control for age, sex (coded as Female = 1), and educational level. Statistical Analysis To see which patterns can be distinguished with regards to information production and consumption, we applied latent class analysis (LCA). Latent class analysis enables us to find underlying dimensions in a larger set of manifest variables (Vermunt and Magidson 2016). In contrast to other statistical techniques that aim for dimension reduction, such as factor analysis, latent class analysis allows for attributing cases to one particular class (in a probabilistic way). Thus, based upon the overall patterns in how answers to questions (variables) are distributed among

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individuals, the technique estimates (a) which concrete groups of patterns (clusters or classes) can be distinguished, (b) the degree to which variables contribute to these clusters, and (c) in which clusters individuals are most likely to fall based upon their individual patterns. In contrast to, for example, regular cluster analysis (CA), LCA relies on a statistical model and gives information on the probability that a given individual belongs a certain class (Porcu and Giambona 2017). LCA also presents model fit information which can be used to more formally decide on what the most appropriate number of distinguished dimensions (clusters) is.

Results Appendix 1 summarizes the results of the estimated latent class models (using the cluster option) applied to the survey data. The L2 statistic indicates the amount of association among the variables that is left after the model is estimated: The model fit is better, if this value is lower. At the same time, we are looking for a parsimonious model and therefore inspect the additional criteria. Based upon the Bayes Information Criterion (BIC), the five-cluster solution seems to be the most optional one. This is the model with the lowest BIC value. Table 11.2 shows the profiles of the five distinguished clusters. The coefficients express the conditional probabilities that the indicators lead to membership of the clusters. The closer these probabilities are to 1, the more likely it is that a particular variable is associated with the given cluster. The table also presents information on the size of the clusters. The largest cluster (46%) consists of individuals who are not very active in producing or consuming information on culture. They mainly read consumer reviews, although some of them occasionally also give ratings, follow cultural personas on Twitter or Facebook, and use information on web stores. No individuals in this group look for information on cultural websites or blogs. This suggests that these individuals look for consumer reviews without giving much attention to where these reviews come from. We label this cluster occasional review readers. The second cluster comprises 25% of the sample and can be labeled basic information users. This group almost certainly reads online consumer reviews and visits web stores every now and then, and is also quite likely to give ratings and use IMDb. Other types of websites are not

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Table 11.2 Results latent class analysis (N = 848)

Cluster size (%) Indicators Write review Give rating Write story Read consumer reviews Chat/Discuss Follow TW/FB Imdb Goodreads Meta-websites Music websites/blogs Book websites/blogs Various cultural websites/blogs Web stores

Cluster 1 Occasional review readers

Cluster 2 Basic info users

Cluster 3 Moderate omnivores

Cluster 4 Ardent producers

Cluster 5 Heavy omnivores

46.1

24.4

14.4

10.8

4.3

.00 .12 .00 .48

.05 .41 .01 .91

.51 .87 .09 .99

.72 .87 .38 .92

.53 .75 .44 .97

.08 .10 .02 .00 .00 .00

.03 .17 .36 .08 .17 .12

.38 .64 .69 .09 .27 .18

.37 .45 .00 .01 .00 .00

.64 .73 .82 .77 .72 .92

.00

.18

.14

.00

.89

.00

.06

.09

.00

.89

.11

.85

.98

.26

.94

Note Table shows profile based upon cluster solution. Coefficients are probabilities of belonging to a cluster

popular. They do not write reviews or stories, they do not chat or discuss products, and they hardly ever follow cultural celebrities on social media. The third cluster (14%) consists of individuals who have a relatively mixed set of both production and consumption practices. They engage in almost all sorts of media production (with the exception of writing stories), but their information needs are confined to web stores, which nearly everyone consults, and IMDb. Meta-websites are used by almost one in four persons in this cluster. We label this group moderate omnivores . The fourth cluster can be labeled ardent producers. This group, which is almost 11% of the sample, is hardly interested in information provided by websites or blogs, but is quite active in making their own contributions to the online cultural sphere. Individuals in this cluster almost certainly

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read reviews and give ratings, and, from all clusters, have the highest likelihood to write reviews. Chances that they follow cultural celebrities on social media or that they chat about culture online are moderate. The final cluster is the smallest (4%). The individuals in this cluster are involved in basically all types of activities. Only the chance that they write stories remains below the 50%, but even for this activity, the chance of participation is higher than for any other cluster. Almost everyone in this group reads consumer reviews, uses IMDb, music websites, book websites, general culture websites, and web stores. There is also a high likelihood that they follow cultural personalities on Facebook or Twitter, engage in online discussions, and are active on Goodreads.com (the social media platform on books). We label this group heavy omnivores . Table 11.3 presents the Step-3 model with covariates. This type of analysis can be compared to a multinomial regression analysis: We try to predict in which categories individuals are most likely to fall, based upon a set of independent variables. Or, formulated differently, the analysis will show how important these independent variables are for understanding the membership of the clusters found in the first part of the analysis. The table thus shows which variables predict cluster membership. The Wald statistic gives information on whether a variable significantly contributes to explaining differences between cluster memberships. For example, the Wald statistic of sex is not significant, implying that, although the probabilities of men and women show some differences, these are not large enough to say that clusters differ significantly in terms of gender. On the other hand, age shows more profound differences: Cluster 5 hardly contains any older persons, while in the first cluster young persons are quite rare. We should note that the analysis is multivariate: that is, the results show the impact of variables taking into consideration the possible impact of other variables. As such, we can assess which variables are more important in shaping cultural information repertoires than others. Based upon the Wald statistic, of all the internet affordances and other resources that individuals have, cultural capital, internet diversity, and internet convenience, respectively, have the strongest effect. Internet reliability and being a connector matter a little. There is no evidence that internet’s free content or internet’s perceived quality is related to information repertoires. This makes sense for the former variable, while for the latter we have to remember that the reliability of this measure was poor.

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Table 11.3 Outcomes LCA Step-3 analysis: explaining repertoires (N = 755)

Cluster size (%) Covariates Sex Age

Educational level

Internet: convenient

Internet: less quality

Internet: cheap

Internet: reliable

Internet: diverse

Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Cluster 3

Cluster 4

Cluster 5

46.1

24.4

14.4

10.8

4.3

Wald

Values Male Female 16–25 26–39 40–55 56–69 70+ Lower

.38 .62 .05 .11 .25 .36 .24 .38

.51 .49 .10 .21 .30 .28 .13 .14

.48 .52 .25 .34 .26 .13 .03 .16

.45 .55 .14 .21 .27 .27 .11 .35

.58 .42 .35 .26 .23 .14 .03 .36

Middle Higher lowest

.36 .25 .37

.36 .50 .25

.36 .48 .07

.38 .27 .16

.30 .34 .10

15.06**

Highest Lowest

.31 .18 .14 .24

.33 .21 .21 .20

.25 .25 .43 .33

.32 .22 .31 .31

.31 .28 .31 .29

3.41

Highest Lowest

.28 .34 .14 .27

.22 .38 .21 .27

.24 .32 .11 .18

.30 .31 .08 .17

.26 .34 .11 .23

3.56

Highest Lowest

.33 .23 .18 .35

.38 .16 .19 .45

.37 .16 .29 .43

.29 .26 .29 .23

.33 .20 .25 .23

12.35*

Highest Lowest

.19 .30 .15 .22

.20 .21 .14 .07

.20 .18 .19 .02

.16 .34 .27 .14

.16 .28 .33 .06

38.13***

.28 .35

.14 .41

.06 .32

.24 .39

.13 .33

5.98 72.02***

13.99**

(continued)

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Table 11.3 (continued)

Cultural capital

Connector

Highest Lowest

Highest Lowest

Highest

Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Cluster 3

Cluster 4

Cluster 5

.15 .33

.38 .17

.61 .13

.25 .22

.48 .03

.27 .24 .17 .20 .26 .21 .21 .14

.22 .27 .35 .22 .30 .15 .21 .13

.25 .26 .36 .16 .23 .13 .25 .23

.23 .28 .27 .07 .18 .23 .26 .27

.10 .25 .62 .06 .17 .20 .29 .29

Wald

58.67***

12.17*

Notes *p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001. The N is lower due to some missing values among independent variables

So, what are the general patterns that stand out? We start with demographics. As we already saw in the first part of the analysis, cluster 1, which we labeled occasional review readers, consists of persons who are not very active in either producing or searching for information. It is therefore not very surprising that elderly and lower educated people are more likely to belong to this cluster. The basic information users are slightly younger and higher educated. Compared to them, the ardent producers are similar in age, but more often lower educated. The moderate omnivores and the heavy omnivores are the youngest individuals, but the former group is slightly higher educated than the latter group. More interesting than the demographic background is the role played by the affordances and the other resources. Occasional review readers appear to be characterized by not seeing the convenience nor the diversity element of the internet. It is not that they are the most critical with regards to reliability, since clusters 2 and 3 are more likely to find the internet unreliable. This might explain their preference for big, relatively popular, and well-known websites. Clearly, cluster 1, however, has the lowest cultural capital. In terms of connectivity, this group strongly resembles cluster 2. This latter cluster, the basic information users, is slightly more inclined to consider the internet convenient, and to acknowledge the diversity in opinions provided by the internet. Cluster 3, although resembling cluster 2 in

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terms of cultural capital, is much more positive about diversity and convenience. This is interesting, as members of this cluster seem to focus on a limited number of online sources. Almost a quarter of the people in this cluster do however consult meta-websites, allowing them to easily compare reviews of different media channels, which might explain their positive attitude toward diversity. Cluster 4, the ardent producers, takes an in-between position on most indicators, with the exception of reliability. This is perhaps surprising, since their repertoire relies more on active forms of participation than on searching behavior. Cluster 5 is particularly characterized by having the highest cultural capital. Admittedly, they also find the internet convenient for getting information fast, and they value the diversity of opinions, but this is not what sets them apart from the moderate omnivores . They do seem to have more trust in the reliability of online information, and in that regard, they resemble the ardent producers. We know from cultural participation studies that interest in culture is more present among higher educated (Kraaykamp and Eijck 2010), and that online participation is less present among older persons (Hargittai et al. 2018). This is also to a large extent visible in our results. Young people in our sample (below 40 years of age) are likely to be a member of cluster 3 or 5, which means they have active and varied repertoires, in terms of combining the consumption and production of cultural information online. However, the ardent production of UGC (cluster 4) is not solely the domain of the younger generation. At the same time, elderly persons are likely to be occasional review readers, the group that is the least active online. Next to being older, occasional review readers also tend to be lower educated, while especially basic information users and moderate omnivores are overall highly educated. Both these groups consume cultural information online, but their production patterns differ significantly. The first group only gives ratings, while the latter group can be classified as “active creators” (Van Dijck 2009, p. 44), as they engage in various kinds of production. Although they are thus quite interested in cultural information, they are trumped by the heavy omnivores , who exhibit an even greater interest in culture, exemplified by a very comprehensive cultural information repertoire. They are the ones with the highest amount of cultural capital. Next to age and education level, the extent to which people engage in highbrow cultural activities appears

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to also be an important variable in shaping audiences’ cultural information repertoires.

Conclusion The internet has transformed the field of (cultural) journalism and criticism, not in the least by providing audiences with the opportunity to engage in these “symbolic production” practices themselves. Despite these impactful developments, little attention has been paid to how audiences actually consume and produce information about cultural products in the digital era. In this chapter, we have tried to take a first step in exploring the attitudes and behaviors of audiences by (1) mapping the perceived affordances of the internet vs. traditional media (2) distinguishing between different groups of users based on their behavioral patterns online in the field of culture, i.e., their cultural information repertoires, and (3) establishing how underlying attitudes, resources, and demographic characteristics shape and predict the cultural information repertoires of audiences. Our analysis showed which variables are the most important in explaining the cultural information repertoires of audiences. Age is one of them: elderly people are more likely to be occasional review readers. This is the biggest, but also least active group in terms of consuming and producing cultural information online. By contrast, the youngest people (16–25) are more likely to be heavy omnivores , who exhibit the most varied consumption and production pattern. Furthermore, a strong predictor for cluster membership is cultural capital. To what extent audience members participate in cultural activities with a high degree of cultural legitimacy thus seems to strongly predict their cultural information repertoires. The heavy omnivores —the audience with the most comprehensive cultural information repertoire—have the highest cultural capital, while people with low cultural capital are more likely to be part of the least active group. In addition, perceived advantages and disadvantages of the internet identified in studies on other domains (e.g., Wellman et al. 2003; Morse et al. 2011; Nagy and Neff 2015) proved also (partly) relevant for consumers in the cultural domain. Firstly, people’s opinion about the convenience of the internet appeared to be an important factor in understanding their cultural information repertoires. People who do not perceive the internet as convenient or do not particularly value the diversity offered by the internet proved less inclined to participate online.

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Although this is not surprising, it also means that elderly and lower educated people are still to a large extent left out of the online cultural realm. Especially combining consuming and producing cultural information online seems to mainly be a practice of audiences that are young and/or have high cultural capital. Despite the fact that the practical boundaries for online participation have diminished (almost everyone can have access to an internet connection at low costs nowadays), this does not automatically lead to participation. There are still inequalities present based on age, cultural capital, and education level (Hargittai and Hsieh 2013). Like Van Dijck (2009), we find most of the users in our 2015 sample to be “reactive” (reading reviews by others or following artists, writers and other cultural celebrities on social media) rather than being “active” creators (writing stories) or critics (writing reviews or giving ratings). Since we only offered a limited selection of activities, it is possible we underestimate such “active” behaviors. More generally, our findings appear to provide a more nuanced picture of production patterns than of consumption patterns. Obviously, one can question whether these labels adequately capture online activities: Scholars have also proposed to “prosumption” (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010) and “produsage” (Bruns 2008) to emphasize the blurring boundaries of the two concepts. At the same time, we do not want to suggest that being “active” is necessarily better or more desirable than being “reactive.” One of the truly revolutionary aspects of the internet—in particular web2.0— is how algorithms have elevated mundane acts of clicking to immediate publicly visible indicators of audience evaluation. In that sense, small ostensibly meaningless acts of appraisal or disapproval can through online aggregation develop in “forms of everyday engagement, resistance and empowerment” (Picone et al. 2019, p. 2024).3 An important finding is that people’s attitude toward online diversity—that is, variety of available opinions to consult—proved to make a difference for what repertoire someone adheres to. Especially, moderate omnivores see this as an advantage, followed by heavy omnivores. These groups also value the convenience of the internet (Hennig-Thurau and Walsh 2004). This might challenge the position of institutionalized cultural critics, as they have to compete with other agents in a 24/7 news

3 We want to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out.

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cycle. Rather than waiting for and relying on the advice of that single critic who works for an established medium, these audiences go online to read and compare opinions of multiple agents, including other cultural consumers. Especially, the authority of critics of elite newspapers, who cater to these higher educated audiences with vast amounts of cultural capital, might be affected here. Of course, we should consider to what extent consulting a variety of reviews actually comes at the expense of consulting traditional, institutionalized critical sources. For some audiences, this might also be a complimentary practice, especially given their varied cultural information repertoires. The way these audiences assess the cultural information they consult online deserves more attention as well. Our results suggest that heavy omnivores are the most positive about the reliability of information online, indicating trust in reviews of other consumers. In addition, highly educated audiences that are well represented in clusters 2 and 3 are more critical of the reliability of the internet. They may be the ones that remain more inclined to turn to traditional institutionalized media for cultural information. Hence, further comparative research is needed to establish how various audience clusters assess cultural information provided by more or less institutionalized (online) platforms in terms of reliability, credibility, and diversity, and even commercial interests and influences.

Appendix 1 See Table 11.4

Table 11.4 Test results of the estimated cluster models in latent class analysis

Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster

1 2 3 4 5 6

L2

BIC (LL)

AIC (LL)

Df

Npar

p-value

2792.1225 1498.5422 1195.1535 980.7554 873.5364 800.6732

9880.5308 8681.4330 8472.5270 8352.6116 8339.8752 8361.4946

9818.7969 8553.2165 8277.8279 8091.4298 8012.2108 7967.3476

840 826 812 798 784 770

13 27 41 55 69 83

1.3e –207 1.5e –41 3.7e –17 9.3–e6 .014 .22

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Index

A Abdulbaki, Mae, 124–126, 128 Aesthetic, 165–168, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177, 180, 181 Affective economies, 70, 72 Affective fan criticism, 71 Affordances, 240–242, 245, 246, 249, 251, 253 Ahmed, Sara, 72 Algorithms, 210, 230 Amateurs, 7, 11, 17, 44, 69, 84, 129, 163, 164, 193–197, 199, 203, 210, 238, 239 Archive, 47, 52, 59 Art, 163–170, 172–181 Art criticism, 163, 165, 167, 174–176 Artnet, 164, 165, 170–177, 179–182 Artsy, 164, 165, 169–174, 176, 177, 179–182 Art world, 163–166, 168–179, 181 Attention economy, 180 Audience research, 209, 211–213, 217, 229 Auslander, Philip, 48, 58

Authority, 1–3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 18–20, 22, 23, 25, 28–30, 32, 36, 38, 39, 92, 94–101, 105–109 Autonomy, 32, 95 Awards show, 91–101, 103, 104, 108–110

B Barnes, Brooks, 120, 122 Becker, Howard S., 166, 176 Bielby, Denise, 141–146, 153 Blogs, 239, 242–245, 247, 248 Body, 48–50, 57, 62 Branded content, 165, 178–180 British television, 143, 153–155

C Carroll, Noël, 92–94, 96, 99, 101, 102, 104, 108, 109 Celebrity, 94, 95, 104–107, 109 Ceremony, 91, 93, 96, 99–101, 108 Cheney-Lippold, J., 114, 121, 132 Child labor, 186, 203

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 N. N. Kristensen et al. (eds.), Rethinking Cultural Criticism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7474-0

261

262

INDEX

Children’s reviews, 202 Churnalism, 177 Collins, Jim, 95, 99, 108 Commercialization, 214 Connectivity, 2 Consumption, 188, 189, 195, 197, 201, 203 Criticism, 1–12, 67–80, 84, 85 Critics, 114, 117, 119, 121–127, 130–132 Critique, 5–7 Cultural communication, 96 Cultural consumption, 214–216, 223, 227, 228 Cultural criticism, 17, 20, 21, 25, 91–96, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 108–110, 209, 210, 229, 237, 239, 240 Cultural evaluation, 93, 98, 99, 104–109 Cultural globalization, 214 Cultural intermediaries, 20, 201, 214 Cultural intermediation, 141 Cultural journalism, 165, 175, 177, 209–211, 213, 214, 219, 224, 226–229, 236–239 Cultural omnivores, 214, 216 Cultural participation, 242, 252 Cultural policy, 215, 216 Cultural reviews, 209, 211, 214–217, 226–229 Cultural valorization, 238 Cultural value, 235, 236 Culture, 1–5, 7–10, 12 ˇ Czecho-Slovak Film Database (CSFD), 5, 11, 68, 72–75, 77, 80–84 D Daily Express , 138, 147, 150, 152, 154 Daily Mail , 138, 144, 149, 150 Daily Telegraph, 138, 144, 149, 151

Dayan, Daniel, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 100, 104 Denmark, 51, 210, 216, 220, 224, 225, 230 Digital inequalities, 241 Digital media, 68, 69, 84 Discourse, 18–20, 23, 26, 29, 33, 35–37

E English, James, 91, 92, 94–97, 100, 101, 103, 109 Exhibition reviews, 167, 168, 172, 176 Expertise, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8

F Fandom, 67, 69, 70, 75, 79 Fans, 67–71, 73, 75, 76, 78–80, 82–85 Film, 114, 117, 119–131 Film criticism, 67–72, 75, 80, 85 Frey, Mattias, 69, 84

G Gatekeepers, 210, 214, 225, 230 Geek cultures, 67, 70, 75, 84 Gillespie, Tarleton, 118 Golden Globe Awards show, 92, 93, 98–101, 107–109 Guardian, 138, 144, 146, 147, 149, 153, 154

H Hard news, 211–213 Heinich, Nathalie, 166, 167, 176 High art, 214 Homophobia, 76, 77 Hybrid media system, 2

INDEX

I Influencers, 116, 119, 120, 129 Instagram, 186–189, 191–193, 198 Intellectual, 18, 19, 21–23, 25–38 Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), 2, 5, 9, 18, 20, 26, 28–30, 33, 34, 37–39 Intercommunication, 114, 115, 123 Intermediaries, 171, 175, 176, 181

J Jaakkola, Maarit, 138, 140–142, 145, 146, 148, 151, 153 Jahns, Jeremy, 127–130 Jenkins, Henry, 69, 70 Journalism, 27, 30–32

K Knowledge, 138–140, 146, 148, 155, 156

L Latent class analysis (LCA), 246–248, 250, 255 Liquid journalism (criticism), 140 Lotz, Amanda, 139, 141–143, 145–148, 150, 151 Lowenthal, Leo, 95, 104

M Marketplace of ideas, 20, 37 Marshall, P. David, 46 McDonald, Paul, 92, 94, 96–98, 100 Media audiences, 6 Media events, 91, 92, 94, 96–100, 104, 108–110 Media logics, 2, 4, 9, 10 Media regulation, 215 Media repertoires, 237, 242 Mediatization, 121, 123

263

Media use, 220, 223, 230 Meta-position, 22, 23, 25 Meta-review websites, 239 Misinformation, 224 Moss, Elizabeth, 99, 104, 106, 107, 109 Moulin, Raymonde, 166, 167

N the Netherlands, 237, 242 Newsification, 177 Newspapers, 137, 138, 142–146, 148, 154, 156 Nordic media model, 215

O Omnivores, 248, 249, 251–255 Online communities, 67, 70, 72, 73, 84 Online criticism, 156

P Participatory culture, 9, 187 Patreon, 17, 29, 33, 34 Performance, 44–49, 58 Persona, 36, 38, 45–52, 55, 57–59, 61–63, 114, 115, 119–132 Persona-driven cultural criticism, 45, 63 Personal narrative performance, 50 Platform, 164, 165, 169–182 Platformization, 31, 38, 164 Platform society, 2, 30 Platform vernacular, 188, 198, 204 Popular culture, 213, 214, 216, 217 Postcritique, 70 Power, 138, 140, 151 Presentational, 117, 127 Pro-am, 194–196, 199, 204

264

INDEX

Professionals, 185, 188, 190, 193–196, 198–200, 202–204 Prosumption, 254 Public intellectual, 17–23, 25–39 Public sphere, 17, 19–21, 26, 27, 37, 38 R Radio, 47, 49, 51–55, 57, 58, 60, 61 Repertoire, 47, 55, 59 Reviewer persona, 115, 127–132 Reviewing, 5–7, 12, 114, 116, 119, 121, 126, 129, 131 Review platforms, 194, 239 Reviews, 5, 6, 12, 68, 73, 75–83, 137–139, 141–143, 145–155, 210, 213–215, 223, 225–228 Rotten Tomatoes, 115, 119–124, 126, 127, 130–132 S Selection-as-evaluation, 91, 94, 97–99, 102, 103, 108–110 Service journalism, 145 Social media, 17, 19, 26, 32, 33, 36 Soft news, 212, 229 Spatiality, 49, 50, 57 Stuckmann, Chris, 127–130 Subjectivity, 10 Sun, the, 138, 147, 149, 150, 152 Survey research, 242 T Tastemakers, 151, 214 Television critic, 137–140, 142, 144–146, 150

Television criticism, 138–141, 144, 146, 148, 153, 155, 156 Theatricality, 48 Thinkspot, 34 Time’s Up, 93, 99–101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110 Times, The, 138, 144, 153, 154 Trolling, 70–72, 76, 77, 80 Trust, 217, 220, 224, 230 Twitter, 17, 18, 33, 34 U Unboxing, 189 User-generated content (UGC), 193, 236–241, 252 V verbal, 5, 48, 49, 58, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74–85 Vernacular, 2, 6, 12 Visual art, 163–165, 169, 172, 174, 176–178, 180, 181 Vlogs, 239 Voice, 44, 49–51 W Weber, Max, 8 Welfare model, 215 Williams, Raymond, 4 Wine criticism, 62, 63 Y YouTube, 17, 18, 25, 28, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 114, 115, 122, 126–131, 186, 188–192, 197, 200, 201