Cultural products go online: Comparing the internet and print media on distributions of gender, genre and commercial success

This article examines whether the attention to cultural products on the internet is more democratically structured (in terms of gender and genre distributions) than in traditional print media, and how these types of media attention affect commercial success. For the U.S. fiction book releases in February 2009, I analyze consumer ratings at the web store Amazon.com and the social networking site Goodreads.com. The results show that on the internet far more books receive attention, and that this indeed comes to the advantage of female authors and authors of popular fiction. Moreover, online publicity positively affects commercial success. These outcomes suggest that online attention to cultural products dampens the effects of institutionally embedded evaluations, while word-of-mouth mechanisms are becoming increasingly prominent in terms of how cultural products are discussed

Internet usage and cosmopolitanism in Europe: a multilevel analysis

Despite the transnational interconnected nature of the internet, cross-national comparisons in internet usage and their effects are still relatively scarce. Moreover, one of the core intrinsic properties that internet theorists have distinguished, the ability to increase democracy and ‘global understanding’ through its connectivity, has hardly been empirically studied. This paper examines how internet usage affects individuals’ openness to other cultures: cosmopolitanism. I analyze two manifestations of such openness: first, the cosmopolitan orientation toward other cultures in the broad sense; second, the interest in foreign cultural expressions. Using Eurobarometer data on 29 European countries, the results show that interactive internet practices are positively associated with openness to foreign culture. Buying culture online is positively related to interest in concrete expressions, but negatively to cosmopolitan orientation. Importantly, individual effects on cosmopolitan orientation are often moderated by the country people live in, whereas effects on interest in foreign expressions are more stable across Europe

Market logic and cultural consecration in French, German and American bestseller lists, 1970-2007

This paper analyzes how cultural classification has changed, during the period 1970-2007, in France, Germany and the United States for one particular case: fiction book bestseller lists. Drawing on recent studies in the material production (the publishing field) and symbolic production (the literary field) of literature, I examine the impact of the market logic and cultural consecration on the content of bestseller lists by (a) mapping trends, (b) comparing countries and (c) conducting multivariate analyses. To do so, I offer a nested, multilevel approach that attends to producers, authors and product types. The results show that, in all three countries, authors who have properties that signal the market logic become more dominant, while retrospectively consecrated authors less often make the lists. This trend is stronger for the US than for Germany and France. The differences between the latter two countries decline over time

Dimensions of Conventionality and Innovation in Film: The Cultural Classification of Blockbusters, Award Winners, and Critics' Favourites

Today's complex film world seems to upset the dual structure corresponding with Bourdieu's categorization of 'restricted' and 'large-scale' fields of cultural production. This article examines how movies in French, Dutch, American and British film fields are classified in terms of material practices and symbolic affordances. It explores how popular, professional, and critical recognition are related to film production as well as interpretation. Analysis of the most successful film titles of 2007 offers insight into the film field's differentiation. Distinction between mainstream and artistic film shows a gradual rather than a dichotomous positioning that spans between conventionality and innovation. Apparently, the intertwining of small-scale and large-scale film fields cannot be perceived as a straightforward loss of distinction or an overall shift of production logics, but rather as 'production on the boundaries' in which filmmakers combine production logics to cater to publics with various levels of aesthetic fluency and omnivorous taste patterns

Assimilation into the literary mainstream? The classification of ethnic minority authors in newspaper reviews in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany

This article addresses to what extent literary critics in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany have drawn ethnic boundaries in their reviews of ethnic minority writers between 1983 and 2009 and to what extent these boundaries have changed in the course of ethnic minority writers’ careers and across time. By analysing newspaper reviews, we find that American reviewers less often mention the ethnic background of Mexican American authors than their Dutch and German colleagues refer to the background of Moroccan and Turkish minority writers. While these relatively strong ethnic boundaries become weaker over time in the Netherlands (boundary shifting), Turkish German authors encounter particularly strong boundaries in subsequent book publications (ethnicization). In the US the reverse is true: ethnic boundaries weaken after the debut has been reviewed (boundary crossing). The findings are likely to be the result of national differences in the chronic accessibility of ethnic classifications (US and Germany) and sp

Globalization and ethnic diversity in Western newspaper coverage of literary authors: Comparing developments in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, 1955 to 2005

In contrast to most studies on cultural globalization, this article examines the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange between and within (Western) nation-states. Through content analysis, the authors study the extent and composition of newspaper coverage given to literary authors of non-Western ethnic origin-both foreign and domestic-in four nations across 50 years.The analysis reveals, among other things, that newspaper attention to ethnic minority authors appears related to various features of a nation's ethnic minority population, the extent that a given national literary field is receptive to ethnic diversity, and the relative position of that nation in the literary world-system

Classificaties in de Kunstjournalistiek

This article seeks to elucidate changes over time and cross-national variations in the status of art forms through a comprehensive content analysis of the coverage given to arts and culture in elite newspapers of four different countries – France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States – in the period 1955–2005. The authors explore how cultural hierarchy is affected by specific features of these societies and their respective journalistic and cultural production fields. The four countries show significant differences in journalistic attention to high and popular art forms. Throughout the period of study, the American newspapers and to a slightly lesser extent, French elite newspapers generally devote more attention to popular art forms than their Dutch and German counterparts. In accounting for cross-national differences in the coverage given to popular culture, field-level factors like market structure and the position and size of local cultural industries seem more important than more remote factors such as national cultural repertoires and the level of social mobilit

Comparing cultural classification

This article seeks to elucidate over time changes and cross-national variations in the status of art forms through a comprehensive content analysis of the coverage given to arts and culture in elite newspapers of four different countries – France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States – in the period 1955-2005. The authors explore how cultural hierarchy is affected by spe- cific features of these societies and their respective journalistic and cultural production fields. The four countries show significant differences in journalistic attention to high and popular arts. Throughout the period of study, the American newspapers and to a slightly lesser extent, French elite newspapers generally devote more attention to popular art forms than their Dutch and Ger- man counterparts. In accounting for cross-national differences in the coverage given to popular culture, field level factors like the structure of the newspaper market and the position and size of local cultural industries seem more important than remote societal factors such as national cultural repertoires a

Genderongelijkheid in de dagbladberichtgeving over kunst en cultuur

Dit artikel behandelt de mate waarin en de manier waarop genderongelijkheid is veranderd in de dagbladberichtgeving over artistieke genres in Frankrijk, Duitsland, Nederland en de Verenigde Staten van 1955 tot 2005. Via een kwantitatieve inhoudsanalyse van twee elitekranten per land voor de jaren 1955, 1975, 1995 en 2005 zijn alle artikelen over kunst en cultuur in kaart gebracht (n = 15.379). Onze resultaten laten ten eerste verrassend weinig cross-nationale verschillen zien in de dagbladaandacht voor vrouwen in kunst en cultuur. Ook constateren we dat er in de afgelopen vijf decennia in geen van de onderzochte landen ook maar bij benadering gendergelijkheid is bereikt. Hoewel vrouwen ondervertegenwoordigd zijn in de dagbladberichtgeving over alle artistieke genres, vonden we duidelijke verschillen tussen genres, met name tussen archit