POPULAR CULTURE

Bennett's five usages of 'Popular Culture'

in an analysis of the content and use of the internet?



Bennett's five usages of 'Popular Culture' in an analysis of the content and use of the internet?

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to make an analysis on the usefulness of Bennett's five usages of popular culture for the analysis of the usage of internet. In order to understand this usage, the paper discusses the clear definitions of the culture, popular culture, discourse, institution, and the Bennett's five usages of popular culture.

Discussion

Bennett's analysis of popular culture is very important in order to analyze the content and usage of the internet. In order to describe the usefulness, it is necessary to describe the key terms.

Discourse

Ideology and Culture (macro-social phenomena) as a collective representation of reality is reproduced in the discourse (on the micro-social level). Discourse is a communicative event that occurs between the speakers, the listener (observer, etc.) in the process of communicative action in a specific temporal, spatial, and so on (Arnold, 2003, p. 14). Thus, in the Bennett's five usages, discourse can be termed as the communication of information through internet.

Ideology

Ideology is the set of fundamental ideas that characterized the thought of a person, a community or an era. It is also the philosophical doctrine focused on the study of the origin of ideas. Ideology tends to maintain or transform the social, economic, political or cultural existent. It has two predominant characteristics: it is a representation of society and has a political agenda (Thwaites, 2002, p. 56). That is, reflects on how society acts as a whole and, on that basis, develop an action plan to approach what he sees as the ideal society. The ideology can be linked to Bennett's five usages in such a way that through internet, people convey their ideologies and signs (Storey, 2003, p. 90). There are different mediums like social networking sites, blogs, youtube etc. through which people can communicate their ideologies in an effective manner.

Hegemony

The concept of hegemony, in the traditional definition, refers to the political leadership or domination especially in relations between states. Hegemony concept can be interlined with the Bennett's five usages in such a way that people normally express their feelings about the political parties through internet (Storey, 1993, p. 112). Hegemony is also defined in the cultural terms i.e. the cultural hegemony. The cultural hegemony can be expressed as the Bennett's five usage, in such a way that people make use of internet in order to express their culture through different social networks and forums.

Culture

Culture is the set of knowledge, skills, traditions, customs, fit for a human group, a civilization. It is transmitted socially from generation to generation and not by genetic inheritance and largely determines individual behaviour (Kaplan, 1992, p. 67). Culture can be expressed as Bennett's five usages in such a way that people use internet in order to exhibit their culture through different forums like Facebook, Twitter ...