Werber, Niels
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Publication Access status: Metadata only , Getting Noticed by Many: On the Transformations of the PopularThis Article argues that the transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, have established a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular that has become dominant over the course of the 20th century. As a result, the popular is no longer either the culture of the ‘lower classes’ or the inclusion of the ‘people’ in the service of higher goals. The popular today is hardly the object of desired transgressions (Leslie Fiedler’s “cross the border, close the gap”) or an expression of felt or feared “massification” or “flattening”. Rather, being popular now means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged, as rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. These quantifying formats do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share, like, or retweet important, but popular news. Even the ‘unpopular’ can be popular: a despised politician, a hated jingle, an unpopular measure. The popular modifies whatever it affords with attention. Its quantitatively and hierarchically comparative terms (‘bestseller,’ ‘outperformer,’ ‘high score,’ ‘viral’) generate valences that do not inhere in the objects themselves. Conversely, the non-popular, which does not find any measurable resonance in these terms, risks being dismissed as irrelevant or worthless simply because it does not appear in any rankings or ratings. This can be observed particularly with artefacts whose relevance as part of high culture may be taken for granted even when they do not achieve mass resonance. The purpose of this Article is to outline a theory of the popular that does justice to these developments by identifying two decisive transformations: 1. the popularization of quantifying methods to measure attention in popular culture around 1950; 2. the popularization of the internet around 2000, whereby the question of what can and cannot become popular is partially removed from the gatekeepers of the established mass media, educational institutions, and cultural elites and is increasingly decided via social media.Source Type:Article2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Metadata only , Paratextual Negotiations: Fan Forums as Digital Epitexts of Popular Superhero Comic Books and Science Fiction Pulp Novel Series(2023); This Article examines the reception of popular serial narratives. Starting from the assumption that this reception presents both a challenge (how to study the vast and heterogeneous readerly engagement with these texts?) and a chance (readers of such texts tend to comment profusely about the reception process), we identify the paratext as a privileged space of readerly communication on, and serial engagement with, popular storytelling. We develop the concept of “paratextual negotiation” as a means of understanding letter columns and fan forums as (now mostly) digital epitexts that shape the evolution of particularly popular—widely noticed, commercially successful, long-running—narratives, with a focus on the German science fiction pulp novel series Perry Rhodan (1961–) and additional thoughts on the US American comic book superhero Captain America (1941–). Taking the quantitative-empirical metrics of attention measurement and their public display seriously by identifying and close-reading the most popular forum threads and the most broadly recognized commentary about these narratives, we argue that the participatory element of popular culture can be reconstructed in the interplay between series text and serial paratext and can be described as a force in serial evolution that thrives on a combination of variation and redundancy and of selection and adaptation.Source Type:Article2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Metadata only , Partizipation und Paratext(2023); Lang laufende, populäre Serienerzählungen wie Perry Rhodan (seit 1961) stellen für die Rezeptionsforschung eine besondere Herausforderung dar, weil die vielen über Jahre und Jahrzehnte hinweg in Form von Leserbriefen, Fanzines und Foren publizierten Kommentare genauso wenig zu überblicken sind wie die Abertausenden von Seiten umfassende Heftromanserie; sie bieten aber auch eine einzigartige Chance, da Leser:innen solcher Serien Fans sind, die dazu neigen, ihren eigenen Rezeptionsprozess ausgiebig zu kommentieren. Der quantitativen Herausforderung der populären Serie begegnen wir mit einer Fokussierung auf diejenigen Themen, die auch bei den Fans am meisten Beachtung gefunden haben. Unter dieser Vorgabe untersuchen wir den Paratext der Serie als privilegierten Raum der Leserkommunikation über und der seriellen Auseinandersetzung mit populären Erzählungen. In den Peritexten der »Leserkontaktseite« und den Epitexten des digitalen Fan-Forum lassen sich besonders populäre Aushandlungen zwischen Leser:innen, Autor:innen und Redakteur:innen beobachten und auf die Weiterentwicklung der Serie beziehen. Wie die Serie gelesen und wie sie weitergeschrieben wird, ist eine Frage der paratextuellen Aushandlungen und der Popularität dieser Aushandlungen.Source Type:Article4 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Metadata only , Reassessing the Gap: Transformations of the High/Low Difference(2023); Popular culture is a relational term that denotes the other side of the high culture coin (Hügel 2003, p [...]Source Type:Article1
