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Digital traces of distinction? Popular orientation and user-engagement with status hierarchies in TripAdvisor reviews of cultural organizations.
- Source :
-
New Media & Society . Nov2018, Vol. 20 Issue 11, p4218-4236. 19p. - Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Cultural organizations are categorized by cultural products (high or popular culture) and by organizational form (nonprofit or commercial). In sociology, these classifications are understood predominantly through a Bourdieusian lens, which links cultural consumption to habitus and a class-based struggle for distinction. However, people’s engagement with institutionalized cultural classifications may be expressed differently on the Internet, where a culture of hierarchy-free equality is (sometimes) idealized. Using digital trace data from a representative sample of 280 user-generated reviews of four London cultural organizations, we find that reviewers are concerned with practical issues over cultural content, displaying a popular orientation to cultural consumption (an “audience-focus” or an “embodied” approach). A very small minority of reviewers claim status honor on a variety of bases, including symbolic mastery of traditional cultural capital. Overall, we find an online space in the cultural sphere in which cultural hierarchies are not relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14614448
- Volume :
- 20
- Issue :
- 11
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- New Media & Society
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 132694738
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818769448