The popularity of cultural objects is often distributed as many unpopular “flops” alongside a few “hits.” Hits can be several orders of magnitude more popular than typical objects but are difficult to predict ex-ante. Most explanations focus on cumulative advantage (CA): rich-get-richer processes wherein the success of cultural objects breeds future success, creating high inequality in popularity and

In this study, we approach environmental practices from a cultural point of view, focusing on the role of cultural capital. While previous studies have looked at educational attainment, we focus on another dimension of cultural capital i.e., cultural engagement. Against this background, we use data from the Flemish Survey on Socio-cultural Shift to (i) examine cultural engagement and distinction in

Black newspapers have historically played an important role within the African American community, reaching preeminence during the World War II era. Embodied in the Double V Campaign, they sought victories for democracy both at home and abroad. In analyzing two different types of cartoons—etiquette cartoons and political cartoons—present within a local Black newspaper during the war and post-war period

This article aims to advance research on interaction rituals (IR) and technology. Its starting point is interaction ritual theory, a key micro-sociological approach that postulates IRs as the micro-interactional glue that holds social life together. This approach sees IRs as requiring bodily co-presence among interactants, thus casting doubt over the ritual potential of technology-mediated interaction

Media effects research has established a positive relationship between media and news consumption and political action—a “more-more” pattern. This paper identifies a coexistent “more-less” pattern in which more political engagement on social media is associated with limited political behavior offline. Traditional approaches that treat media behavior as an independent variable and political behavior

In this study, we examine how social capital developed during the college years is connected to subsequent career outcomes for arts alumni. We analyzed data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an online retrospective survey of alumni from arts-related majors or degree programs (N = 25,460 arts alumni from 132 postsecondary institutions in the United States). Results from mixed-effects

Evidence points towards the key role that networks of both formal and informal relationships play in musicians’ careers. Alongside this, these careers have in recent decades become increasingly understood as engendering emotional stressors around mental health and wellbeing. However, what is the relationship between these two phenomena? In other words, what is the affective impact on musicians’ mental

Research on LGBT-inclusive advertising has been limited to analyzing ad content and commercial effectiveness. This study focuses on viewers’ perception of advertising featuring lesbian, gay, and transgender characters and its prosocial potential. It analyzes the open-ended answers given by participants involved in a survey experiment. These reveal their belief that advertising could support positive

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic showcase festival Eurosonic Noorderslag 2021 took place entirely online. One of its elements consisted of numerous prerecorded videos (each about 15 min long) that showcased artists performing “live”. The unique pandemic circumstances, which forced participating musicians to experiment with a new format, made it possible to observe how various emerging artists utilized

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While many public performances of culture were shut down during much of the pandemic, the homes of many artists became prominent places for making culture. In particular, the pandemic created a rift in the temporal and spatial organization of work and leisure, affecting time management. This article turns to the creative lives of 32 novelists in Sweden who were interviewed online over video in 2020

How do intermediaries affect cultural production in the age of platformized gatekeeping? Cultural production increasingly depends upon digital infrastructures known as platforms (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, et al.) for distribution. These infrastructures supposedly diminish the importance of conventional, non-infrastructural intermediaries, yet cultural production's platformization

In each stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have witnessed initiatives that, through digital technologies, have attempted to ensure the presence of theatre and to nurture the relationship with audiences. Our research asks which entry barriers to the artistic field have been strengthened or weakened by implementing theatre initiatives for online audiences and how these initiatives have affected the regional

In November 2021, Netflix surprised industry observers by announcing the release of three data sets containing information on its viewing metrics. Up until this time, Netflix had been notoriously protective of its data, much to the frustration of industry stakeholders and researchers alike. The new Netflix data marks a significant development for researchers previously hindered by an almost total absence

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Scholars have consistently found that female artists receive less attention from critics than their male counterparts. In this study, we conduct a closer examination of the mechanisms driving this persistent form of inequality. Drawing on a uniquely comprehensive dataset of all English-language fiction books published in a calendar year, we find that women authors face two significant—and distinctive—gender

Organizations benefit when they are perceived as authentic. Yet, explanations for this effect typically rely on context-specific attributions that can carry different meanings for different people. Here we develop some elements of a broader theory of authenticity. In sketching our theory, we draw from ideas about signaling and transparency in organization theory, and essentialism in psychology. Using

Social scientists of class and inequality have documented the rise of omnivorousness, informality, ordinariness, and emphasis on meritocracy. This apparent decline in class closure contrasts sharply with rising inequality and declining economic mobility. How are these competing developments reflected in everyday class distinction-making? In this article, we answer this question by applying Goffman's

In this paper, I focus on how major fiction publishers renegotiate the art/commerce balance in the contemporary Czech literary field and I discuss their strategies in terms of conservative and progressive variants of rules of art and rules of commerce. I show that Czech publishers face many similar challenges known from the global literary field: they feel the field is getting faster, tighter, and

How do contested emerging subgenres become legitimated and institutionalized? This case illustrates the meso-level negotiation of community sense (Wohl, 2015) as stakeholders of a genre (romance fiction) debate whether genre boundaries include a new subgenre (erotic romance). Erotic romance upended conventions by introducing explicit and sometimes unconventional sex into the traditionally heteronormative

We propose the development of 'digital reflexive sociology', understood as the use of digital methods and Big Data to reflect on the social and historical circumstances of sociologists and sociological thinking. To show this approach's potential, we employ Wikipedia as a ‘reflexive tool’, i.e., an external artefact of self-observation that can help sociologists to notice conventions, biases, and blind

Looking at museums as informal learning environments, it is clear that detailed information on visitors and especially on nonvisitors is key to preparing adequate offers. However, representative or population-based audience studies are scarce, and even less information is available on nonvisitors. Based on a representatively drawn German adult cohort (analytic sample: n = 6,837), we look at characteristics

Studies in the social cognition literature indicate that several strategies play a role in how observers understand an observed actor, including by simulating the actor's perspective (identification), and/or an audience member projecting their own perspective onto the actor's mind (egocentric projection). In processing story characters, there is evidence that taking a character's perspective and projecting

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This article builds on the emerging literature on relation between music genre and social inequalities in the cultural industries. It specifically highlights the role of two localised, genre-specific value systems (the niche-edm genre and the eclectic genre) to understand how and why the gendered outcomes of genres vary across space. Based on qualitative interviews with 36 (mostly white, male) promoters

We report three randomised and pre-registered experiments examining the effects of narrative fiction (vs. narrative non-fiction vs. expository non-fiction) on concern for animal welfare. In Experiment 1a (N = 363) there was no significant increase in concern for animal welfare or willingness to donate to an animal charity among participants who read a narrative fiction text about a monkey's plight

When conventions change, how do cultural producers respond to new trends in heteronomous fields? Established artists in heteronomous fields will be supplanted by newer styles created by new entrants to the field. Market-oriented artists must bend to changing conventions rather than keep to the kinds of cohesive trajectories that shape restricted field careers. Regardless of whether established cultural

I develop a theoretical model of the relationship between the macro-structure of political communications and the micro-structure of individuals’ political attitudes. This model conceives of public opinion as a field of competition, where positions correspond to stances on issues, and are occupied both by individuals and by major political actors who compete over their support via political communications

US colleges and universities are defined by their exclusivity, and the most prestigious schools reject most of those who apply. Yet these same schools also widely advertise their inclusiveness, encouraging students from all backgrounds to submit applications and highlighting evaluation protocols that identify many characteristics worthy of consideration for admission. We surface this paradox and use

In this state-of-the-art article, we review studies of the highly controversial, global rise of private art museums as a new organizational form within art fields. Given that current studies are scattered across different disciplines like sociology, museum studies, economics and anthropology, a systematic engagement with theoretical and methodological issues is difficult. This paper compiles and discusses

Much of the current research on digital and social media practices uses a Bourdieusian framework to explain stratification processes in the digital realm. This approach typically focusses on social media platform users, neglecting the adequate study of non-users. In this paper, we analyse how cultural, economic and cultural capital are related to reasons non-users in Flanders give for not using social

Many scholars who examine systems of status in art worlds such as film, fashion, and cuisine, have drawn on the analytical and folk categories of art and craft to explain hierarchy in these sites. As Becker argues, art is used to describe “higher status” products made for creative purposes, while craft is defined first by its function, and creative concerns are secondary. However, as art worlds continue

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This study focuses on digital divide in the context of access, use, and perceptual understanding of digital assistants. We pay particular attention to inequalities of perceptual outcomes that may be triggered by the first-(access) and second-level (use) divides. We extend this insight to the level of perceptual understanding and investigate how the understanding of various personalized AI-related applications—as

This paper examines the composition and transition of symbolic boundaries in the New York art world of painting and sculpture from 1940 to 1969 through social network analysis of inter-organizational ties between art venues. As culture-led redevelopments become more controversial in the age of neoliberal urban management, recent studies make it clear that symbolic boundaries and boundary works of urban

Entertainment programming is an important means for public service media (PSM) to address minority audiences, and to fulfill their social mission vis-à-vis these groups. We argue that these efforts are plagued by a thin normative grounding, stopping short at vague notions of representation. In this article, we argue that a capabilities approach invites a much-needed reconsideration of the fundamental

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This article aims to explore the relationship between symbolic action and critical junctures by looking at early responses to the Covid-19 epidemics that broke out in Italy in late February and March 2020. In this regard, Italy's lockdown in the context of the Covid-19’s pandemic that shook the world in Spring 2020 provide material for an analysis of what happens of the relationship between processes

This paper examines how a Copenhagen Night Church worked to affirm and bridge cultural boundaries by relating worship services to an incomprehensible corpo-affective experience and construing the atmosphere as a type of boundary object; an object that provides an interpretational flexibility while conserving an underlying common identity. It starts by exploring a public trial concerning the use of

Empirical studies generally report that aspiring a career in the performing arts is risky business. Within the contemporary European context of neoliberal capitalism, the particular workforce is inclined to occupy a precarious socio-economic position. We aim to contribute to this body of research by discussing how risk and precarity in the artworld are macro- and meso-governed by existing structures

This article explores children's and adults’ online fandom and engagement with the children's animated television programme Bluey. This Australian cartoon has proven extremely popular worldwide with its primary recipients, that is children, and has also received significant attention and positive evaluation from parents, who – we suggest – offer a metarecipient perspective on the series as they tweet

Despite growing concerns over the ability of conventional research methods to effectively tackle key theoretical issues within the contemporary sociology of culture, these have yet to produce concerted efforts at rethinking existing methods, let alone at crafting novel techniques of sociological inquiry. As a result, there is a steadily widening gap between our variegated theoretical conceptions of

This article investigates the contemporary meaning and value of traditional highbrow taste in the United States. Hypotheses rooted in cultural capital theory and social psychology are tested in a nationally representative survey experiment. The results of the experiment are threefold. First, signals of traditional highbrow taste have a positive, cumulative effect on perceptions of social class and

The paper aims to determine how cultural taste and social tolerance coincide and which symbolic boundaries they relate to. The empirical analyses scrutinise three taste orientations – omnivorousness, univorousness and ‘categorical tolerance’ (Lizardo & Skiles 2016) – to answer the following questions using two nationally representative surveys on cultural taste in Finland: (1) How did the cultural

Research into narrative tension is of interest in terms of the progress of knowledge of the processes and mechanisms by which stories are received and enjoyed. We have created four versions of an audiovisual story with three different structures of fiction (suspense, surprise, curiosity) and one of non-fiction. We have investigated the effects of the narrative tension of these stories with four groups

This mixed-methods study examines how political leaders mobilize collective intentionality during the COVID-19 pandemic in nine US States, and how collective intentionality differs across republican and democratic administrations. The results of our computational and qualitative analyses show that i) political leaders establish collective intentionality by emphasizing unity, vulnerability, action,

This methods paper addresses a simple, yet curiously understudied question: When do we first acquire the ability to view specific persons, properties and practices as ‘similar’ or ‘different’, ‘equal’ or ‘unequal’ in social status? Despite sociology's theoretical commitment to the importance of ‘primary socialization’, sociological research on the ontogenesis of our ability to situate ourselves and

Research on the tastes of higher status groups has long prioritized analysis of aesthetic preferences. However, recent work has brought more attention to the moral dimensions of tastes. In this paper, we investigate the intersection of morality and aesthetics in tastes. Drawing on survey data and focus groups, we investigate how aesthetic and moral concerns operate in the domain of food, and meat specifically

Using data from large scale Annual Social Surveys of the CBS in Israel, the current research focused on patterns of digital inequality among Israeli mothers between 2014 and 2019. The main purpose of the current study was to investigate digital inequality among mothers based on their marital status when controlling for their socioeconomic status (SES) and to clarify whether the patterns of digital

Recent research on cultural production has drawn attention to significant inequalities. This paper aims to unpack one possible explanation for these inequalities by focusing on the people with ultimate responsibility for arts institutions: the boards of directors. Using data from the UK's Companies House, it analyses the boards of Arts Council England's National Portfolio Organisations. It then “hops”

Does family background link to cultural lifestyles beyond two generations? To address this question, we analyze three-generation data from Denmark with information on cultural consumption in the grandchild generation and information on economic, cultural, and social capital in the parent and grandparent generation. We report three key findings. First, we identify four cultural lifestyles in the grandchild

This essay describes a novel dataset that facilitates the quantitative analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth-century French painting. Based on titles listed in the Paris Salon livrets, the dataset assigns detailed keywords indicating the content for each of the more than 148,000 paintings shown at the Salon—the principal French art exhibition of the era—from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. To

Research on cultural intermediaries has frequently highlighted their roles that shape, regulate, organize, and govern processes of value formation and legitimization in creative economies. Here we move beyond a focus on individual brokers in cultural intermediary occupations to examine cultural intermediary work performed by organizations, focusing on strategies of organizational intermediary work

Despite their importance, little is known about the companies behind global university rankings and how they have legitimized the use of league tables as structuring devices in the higher education sector. Taking a computational approach to Burke's dramatistic pentad, we analyse a corpus of 3,296 articles printed between 1994 and 2020 in the Times Higher Education magazine, publisher of the World University

This paper addresses the role of critics in evaluating a creative work when the creator has been accused of sexual misconduct. I explore how critics are influenced by their role as both cultural journalists and experts in the art world of film. Critics are often noted as serving as guides for audiences in alleviating quality uncertainty; here I will show how critics respond in an instance of ethical

Individuals adjust their behavior on social media to varying extent, and commonly in their idealized way. Most studies have focused on the problems associated with materialism and social media use, yet their potential positive contributions remain less clear. In fact, impression management holds potential for both negative and positive: it has been linked with materialistic attitudes, but also increased

Among artists who have made their debut, a minority will become credited a second time in their career. This article investigates why some fiction authors continue publishing books while others do not. The study tracks all 1479 novelists, who published their first book between 2001 and 2010 in Sweden, including their literary activities and the literary reception of the book and data on any second

Scholarly attention on literary production usually presupposes the value of the works studied. This article argues that a sociological approach is vital to address the historical process behind the definition of literary value. The question resides on how a successful literary career is built, such as the one of the Argentine writer César Aira, who, in stark contrast with the recognition of being in