The great divide? Cultural capital as a predictor of television preferences among Croatian youth.

• This paper examines the relationship between cultural capital and preferences over television shows among Croatian youth. • Bourdieu's theoretical framework can be used in studying contemporary culture as distinctions continue to persist. • Domestic TV preferences are connected with parents' preference for domestic cultural contents. • Preferences for TV content are not only genre-related since divisions also run along the lines of language. • Language is a demarcation of tastes as students that prefer foreign TV also prefer highbrow culture and foreign music. Despite the abundance of research on television genre preferences, the role of cultural capital has so far received little attention. This research employs Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital – and related theories of cultural consumption – to argue that there is a relationship between the respondents' television preferences and embodied, objectified, and institutionalized cultural capital of their parents. Empirical data was gathered from a large survey conducted on a quota sample of third- and fourth-year high school students in six larger cities on Croatia's Adriatic coast. In order to determine different patterns of television genre preferences, factor analysis was used, which identified two types of taste in television: domestic television spectacles and foreign fiction television. Hierarchical regression analysis was employed to establish the effects of sociodemographic variables and cultural capital of respondents and their parents. The obtained results indicate not only the role of parental cultural capital and taste but also division between global cultural cosmopolitism and cultural seclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]