Joke Hermes

Citizenship in the Age of the Internet

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) have allowed for changes in media content and in practices of media reception. How these changes have impacted on practices of citizenship, is the key question for this article. It starts by showing how notions of citizenship are closely related to public opinion formation, which, in turn is felt to be nurtured by journalism. The demise in newspaper readership is in that regard a worrying phenomenon. By first looking more closely at how the news itself has changed (the inclusion of vox pop segments; the wide use of polls) and by then turning to how practices of representing ordinary people point to the possibility of more inclusive notions of citizenship, the article proposes ‘cultural’ citizenship as a sensitizing concept. As ICTs are most visibly embodied by the Internet, a number of examples are discussed from this perspective. The article concludes that ICTs do not necessarily produce new citizens but that they do provide for new and important citizenship practices.

Hidden Debates: Rethinking the Relationship Between Popular Culture and the Public Sphere

Abstract This article proposes that paying attention to popular cultural practice will benefit “cultural citizenship” and, in turn, the vitality of the public sphere. Although popular culture in Habermassian terms does not fully qualify as a lifeworld domain, the enthusiasm of its users is a strong point to its advantage. Otherwise “ordinary people” hardly participate in public life, which foregrounds them as (emotional) witnesses rather than as experts or persons holding a view or an (interesting) opinion. As debate resulting from popular culture use tends to be among fans, neighbours or co-workers and is in point of fact ”hidden,” a further step would be needed to use the underlying issues and points of view debated in everyday life for public use. Internet communication shows that this is well possible. Indeed, the public-private and the fiction-non fiction boundaries are blurring, and citizenship is practiced in many places. Qualitative audience research could be a key force in reinvigorating the public sphere. By involving audience members themselves and following their cue or by using peer-to-peer formats, it could develop into “civic research” in much the same manner as civic journalism.

Burnt Orange Television, Football, and the Representation of Ethnicity

The Dutch tend to see themselves as a tolerant and antiracist nation, despite frequent evidence to the contrary. One area in cultural life that is both a site of stardom for nonwhite Dutch and a site of extreme racism and prejudice is popular sports and especially football (or soccer). Games played by the national soccer team are major events, in particular when the team comes near the finals in a European or world championship. In such cases, practices of television viewing run over into public social life and carnivalesque outbursts of sports loving and nationalist joy. This article will draw on interviews held with soccer fans that focused on nationalism and ethnicity. The author is interested in the pleasures of television sports viewing and football fandom, and in the representation of the male body (often signified in explicitly ethnic and racial terms) in television sports reporting as perceived by audiences.

Cultural citizenship and crime fiction : Politics and the interpretive community

Based on interviews with 19 readers (15 women, 4 men) of detective fiction (broadly defined as crime novels with a central role for the investigator of the crime, whether a professional or an amateur), I aim to investigate both the practice of reading detective fiction and its possible wider ramifications. In particular I am interested in whether and how this popular genre is connected with ‘cultural citizenship’ and with feminism and gender roles. The link between citizenship and popular culture is made via the concept of the ‘interpretive community’.

Cultural studies and citizenship

This issue of European Journal of Cultural Studies makes a bold statement. It presents six widely differing articles as indicative of how we might (re)think citizenship in terms of cultural studies. The articles use various traditions as their points of departure, including political philosophy, sociology of news, gender studies and theories of the public sphere as well as qualitative inquiry into the everyday meanings of politics and our relationships with others. While new perspectives on citizenship are emerging which challenge the traditional, received ones, the articles here do not aim for any final definitions. Rather, taken together, they provide a sense of the range of alternative approaches as well as the issues that are at stake. These debates have become increasingly urgent over the past decade or so, as changing sociocultural realities underscore the limitations of strictly legal‐formal notions of citizenship; not least, for example, in the face of the social problematics in post-colonial multicultural societies. Democratic rhetoric contrasts more sharply against perceived inequality in everyday life. Older ideological contracts are losing legitimacy, while ultra right-wing populist parties give an ugly face to unrest and disenchantment among broad groups. In the past, such political questions have not been key issues for cultural studies at large. The early edited collection Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (Hall et al., 1978) stands as something of an exception. Although a strong interdisciplinary academic practice which is invested deeply in empirical research in everyday meaning-formation, cultural studies has not been a close neighbour to political science, political communication or political theory. Politics and power relations are, and always have been, important to cultural studies but via the route of the everyday and especially popular culture. In terms of the practices and meaning-making of citizens, civic horizons have not been prominent in

Of irritation, texts and men Feminist audience studies and cultural citizenship

This is a case study of reading detective fiction which argues that different types of methodological and theoretical questions about relations with informants have not been raised sufficiently often in feminist audience studies or have been lost from its research agenda. They are: how to approach the culturally well established?, what is the place of texts in (feminist) audience research? and, how does this affect the positions of researcher and researched? In this case study (set up to research constructions of femininity and feminism in crime fiction), masculinity emerged as an issue because of nagging doubts about the interaction between interviewers and interviewees. Doubts and irritation led to reflection on issues of class, and then masculinity and on how to lay two old ghosts: the fear of being paternalistic in overinterpreting what informants say as an expression of their deepest being rather than as the discursive material that is produced in interview situations; and the fear of conflating audience interpretations with what a researcher may read into a text. Ghosts need laying to rest; therefore the issue of masculinity today is used here to introduce texts into the audience research project. The combination of audience and textual analysis is used to show the link between popular fiction and the public sphere, or how popular genres may contribute to cultural citizenship.

Sleeping with the enemy: audience studies and critical literacy

Audience studies is not the vibrant field it was in its 1980s and early 1990s heyday. Cultural studies today has a more balanced interest in production, audiences and texts. A renewed focus in audience studies on everyday meaning production, identity and relations of power could benefit from recent developments. Theorization of power especially has benefited from recent work on governmentality. In accord with recent work on ‘affect’, there is an opportunity for renewed vitality and urgency. Was audience studies damaged beyond repair by the charge that it is a populist field that celebrates rather than interrogates everyday media culture? Could a concept such as cultural literacy provide a bridge to help re-establish the critical credibility of audience studies or would it burden this field with its implied notions of standards, distinction and cultural exclusion? The article discusses recent work with youth audiences to inquire into the possibilities of ‘critical literacy’. It proposes taking up questions and insights raised by affect theory, to merge appreciation, criticism and understanding of the forces that drive (the possibility of) change, and to embed critical literacy in cultural studies’ ongoing interest in the construction of (cultural) citizenship.

The Performance of Cultural Citizenship: Audiences and the Politics of Multicultural Television Drama

Popular culture has been suggested as an important resource for the performance of cultural citizenship (Hermes, 2005; Morley, 2006). In this paper, we address this suggestion by investigating how multicultural television drama may be used to build connections and strengthen civic culture in multicultural societies. We base our argument on a large study of audience reactions to the provocative Dutch multicultural reality show WestSide (AT5, 2006) that was explicitly designed to foster intercultural understandings and tolerance. Results showed that most viewers deployed a limited set of repertoires to make sense of the show. In so doing, however, they sometimes touched on political issues. Within specific circumstances, this led to the performance of cultural citizenship. Our analysis suggests that emotional involvement in multicultural drama may lead to discussions of dilemmas surrounding the role of cultural difference in the everyday lives of viewers. Based on these findings, we define the performance of cultural citizenship as an “insurgent” practice which requires further mediation into other spheres of private and public life by policies or civic action to produce critical societal impact. Furthermore, we suggest that care must be taken not to conflate the “active viewer” with the “active citizen”—even though the two may be related in some circumstances.

‘We have given up so much’: Passion and denial in the Dutch Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) controversy

Forceful debate has erupted in the Netherlands over the celebration of Sinterklaas in the 2010s. Sinterklaas festivities revolve around December 5 and the giving of presents, mostly to children. The debate centres around the figure of Sinterklaas’s helper Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). While an object of criticism for its implied racism (Zwarte Piet sports an Afro hairdo, blackface, full red lips and big golden hoops) for over half a century, the current actions and demonstrations by a group of protesters have led to rivalling Facebook groups endorsed by some 2 million Dutch, partly in response to an intervention led by United Nations expert Verene Shepherd. This article focuses on the main Facebook page, using ‘passion’ as a key analytical term for the suffering the mostly White Dutch commenters bear witness to. Against a backdrop of increased right-wing populist presence, nationalism has become acceptable again, manifesting itself as the forceful exclusion of the sentiments of non-White Dutch. The passionate defence of national heritage appears to be built on a sense of (White) suffering, which simultaneously excludes the possibility of non-White suffering. The article uses qualitative research methodology to analyse a vast number of posts, and provides more insight into the nature of meaningmaking in and around social network sites by referring to Jenkins, Ford and Green’s term everyday curation.

Labour and passion: Introduction to themed section

In this introduction to the themed section on ‘Labour and passion’, it is argued that work has bled into all areas of life. Political economists and media production researchers have shown how both paid and unpaid labour are singularly important and build upon one another. The set of articles presented here is the precursor to a general issue on Media and Passion (to be published later). It is the result of the same invitation. The articles can be seen to show how neo-liberalism may have convinced us that work is the ultimate definer of individual identity but that this invitation is meaningless without the energy of passion, emotion and affect. The articles in the themed section address creative work generally, song-writing and self-help guides for those seeking work. The link between cultural studies and political economy is re-established. Wrestling last but not least proves the ultimate example that paid labour and free labour can both be a labour of love. Without the passionate involvement of sportsmen, organizers and audience members, it would not exist.