From entertainment to citizenship: A comparative study of the political uses of popular culture by first-time voters

How do audiences position their own identities in relation to particular social groupings?

Buckingham argues that, in talking about media, individuals lay claim to and construct particular social identities and that ‘these claims to identity are essentially claims to social power’ (2000: 72). Claims to adult positions, for example, can be an attempt to demonstrate one’s relative maturity over others. In our study, young people frequently asserted particular identities when making judgements about popular culture and when talking about their use of media texts.

In speaking about their judgements and use of television, young people drew on ‘public’ issues such as discourses of national culture and particularly politics of age and gender. This was often evident in talk about particular television programming designed to appeal to them as older teenagers. In the first example below, two boys explicitly construct a gendered identity by differentiating between what they saw as issues that concerned young women and issues that concerned young men. The quotation from the interview illustrates how, for some young people, the appeal of programmes such as Hollyoaks or Skins was based on their identification with the target audience, and they use this to position themselves within a particular ‘younger’ social group.

I watch Holloyaks rather than other soaps like Coronation Street and Emmerdale, I guess because most of the people are younger and you can more relate to the sort of things that are going on rather than with older people. (Interview 18)

Young people spoke about their judgements and use of popular music in a very different way from how they spoke about television programmes. They frequently drew on their own very personal identities, often rooted in family history and relations. In the following example, it is through the sense of place that music appears to offer which the interviewee draws on to identify herself as both Nigerian and British.

England is so multicultural so I really got in touch with my culture here and it was definitely through music. It was just through listening to this Nigerian hip-hop … you identify with things at home, but it’s in a way that you’re used to. There’s this song, and it has to do with food, Nigerian food, and the way they speak, the accents they use, everything is Nigerian, but the way it’s brought, its R‘n’B beat, you can just tell it’s got all the conventions of R‘n’B but what they’re talking about is us, it’s just where we’re from. I love it. (Interview 10)

Music was also talked about as being a form of popular culture that offered diversity and versatility which young people could use to meet their own needs in different contexts. They did so by seeking out certain songs or artists in order to gratify or appeal to particular feelings, emotions and identities. This feature of popular music is articulated well in the following quote, in which one young person attempts to express how she finds popular music polysemic in a way that television is not.

If you’re upset then you’ll look to like a song to find something out of it. It depends how you’re feeling, you just take what you can.… Yeah, I’ll watch television but if I’m feeling sad I’ll always just listen to music. I think music makes you think more. If you’re going through something you want to talk about your problem and with songs you can just say, ‘Look what they’ve said, like it’s the same, they understand’, whereas with television, it’s not always directly what you’re going through, it’s sort of a similar situation that you can relate to because you’ve seen it go on around you rather than it being you. (Interview 14)

While young people commented on the content of television and music, which they use to position their social identities, in relation to video games, it was in the judgements about the type of people who play video games that this positioning was achieved. Young people made judgements far more easily about individuals who play computer games than about those who watched particular television programmes or listened to particular genres of music. Indeed, being identified as a person who plays video games was itself a particularly potent form of identity. For many of the gamers we spoke to, playing video games was an important way of defining who they were in terms of their use of time and in terms of their status amongst their peers. Both of these elements can be found in the following quote, in which the interviewee is clearly identifying himself as a gamer.

I don’t watch much TV.… I won’t sit down at night and just flick through the channels.… I play [video games], most nights for about one hour, two hours.… It’s just one thing which I know I’m good at so I can take pride in that.… I’ve built like a lot of friendships through playing [online] and you don’t want to let anyone down; you’ve got to do it for your team and you’ve got to just be there. (Interview 4)

For those who did not identify themselves as gamers, there was a strong tendency to distance themselves from this particular social grouping and to present themselves as being somehow superior. This was achieved either through comments about the lack of worth in playing video games in general, as is evident in the first quote below, or by associating specific games with other ‘inferior’ social groups, such as children, as is evident in the second example.

I’d rather go out and spend the money I would have spent on a game doing something with my friends just go bowling, cinema or whatever, rather than staying at home. I almost see video games as a bit of a waste of time, because you don’t really gain anything from it. (Interview 25)

Interestingly, rather than challenging these particular social identities, gamers often accepted their lower status by offering self-deprecating comments, often as a preface to talking about their use of video games. As one interviewee commented on his playing of the video game Sim City, ‘this is so sad: I like building cities and then building a two-sector economy’ (Interview 2).

In summary, young people frequently asserted particular identities, or claims to social power, when making judgements about television and popular music, although popular music was found to offer far greater opportunity for young people to seek out particular identities than television. Identifying oneself as a gamer was found to be an important but polarizing form of identity and one which carried associations with other social groupings.

How do audiences express a sense of their relationship with sources of power in society?

Perhaps the most obvious source of power for young people, and the one talked about most often in our interviews and focus groups, were the media themselves. The discourse young people deployed most often in their talk about the media as a source of power was what Buckingham (2000: 76) describes as a ‘media literate’ discourse. The young people who adopt this particular discourse, use various devices to condemn media forms and specific media texts, and in doing so position themselves at a distance from them.

In Buckingham’s approach to analysing the talk of young people, the discourses that young people deploy are seen, not ‘as straightforward evidence of what people think or know’, but rather as ‘used to achieve a particular social purpose’ (2000: 202). In this way, the use of a ‘media literate’ discourse can be seen as a discursive strategy used by young people to distance themselves from the media as a source of power (most commonly as a source of influence) and claim autonomy. In his study, Buckingham (2000) identifies numerous examples of this discourse in the way the young people condemn the media for its sensationalism, its commercial motivations or its apparent misrepresentation of political issues.

This ‘media literate’ discourse manifests itself slightly differently in young people’s talk about popular culture. In our study it was young people’s observations about the generic conventions of the media which were frequently used to adopt this ‘media literate’ discourse and to claim autonomy from the media as a source of power. In relation to television, participants often claim power over the text by critically referring to acting styles (or quality of acting) and storylines. As one respondent said of the television drama Hollyoaks: ‘it’s so wooden, there’s so much going on at once, the acting is awful, the story lines are ridiculous: it’s just the most ridiculous drivel I’ve ever seen in my entire life’ (Focus Group 8).

Similarly, with regard to video games, most of our participants insist that these games are constructed according to certain conventions and that gamers are aware of this while playing. This was used to support their claims that the content of video games does not affect their behaviour. When talking about the video game Grand Theft Auto, one of our sample said: ‘it’s over-exaggerated because you don’t really go around killing random people … like beating grannies with an axe’ (Focus Group 5).

By contrast, on the occasions when the conventions and production of popular music were talked about, it was to make claims about the authenticity and originality of the text. As one interviewee said, ‘music is made by the people, for the people’ (Interview 11). By not adopting the same critical ‘media literate’ discourse in their talk about popular music, the young people we spoke to positioned themselves as closer to popular music as a source of power (and influence).

This ‘media literate’ discourse can also be identified in the frequent claims young people made about the ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ when talking about television and video games. The latter can be broadly categorized into what they see as fake representations of the real world (for example in soap operas) and constructions of a fantasy world (for example in computer games). In claiming that media texts are in some way ‘unreal’, participants deploy a ‘media literate’ discourse and express a critical distance from the text.

Participants also used claims of the ‘unreal’ to express a critical distance from sources of power represented in texts. Gamers, for example, speak of how they treat the police and the army as elements of a game, which they literally play with. Indeed, being in control (within limits) over these sources of power seems to be one of the pleasures gamers particularly enjoy. At the same time, young people make a clear distinction between the ‘real’ world where sources of power should be respected and the ‘unreal’ world of video games where there are no consequences for acting out the behaviour of a ‘bad’ citizen. This is evident in the exchange below. In making claims about the ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ young people demonstrate both that they know what it might mean to be a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ citizen but also that they know when these conventions of citizenship apply and when they do not.

In speaking about video games, it was in their talk about the opportunity to interact with the media, and with representations of sources of power in the media, in which young people expressed their relationship to sources of power. Although young people’s interaction with the text is not part of Buckingham’s framework, for the young people we spoke to, it is an important way of expressing their relationship to sources of power.

In summary, the young people in our study tended to adopt a particular critical discourse in their talk about television and video games in order to position themselves at a distance from sources of power, just as Buckingham found in young people’s talk about news media. However, young people do not always claim not to be influenced by popular culture as the same critical ‘media literate’ discourse was not evident in their talk about popular music.

How do audiences express a sense of the ‘personal’ and the ‘political’ when discussing media texts?

Buckingham’s concern for the ways in which young people conceive of the relations between the ‘personal’ and the ‘political’ stems from the argument that ‘seeing one’s own experiences as representative of those of a larger social group … is effectively a prerequisite for social action’ (2000: 205). He argues that the way in which the news media in particular ‘favors a view of people as an aggregate rather than as a collective’ (2000: 205) can inhibit audiences from relating their personal experiences to wider public concerns. Buckingham reports that the young people in his study do indeed struggle to make connections between their everyday lives and wider political discourses. On the occasions that they do, they ‘refute the suggestion that politics as conventionally defined has anything to do with their experience’ (2000: 84).

Studies of television soap operas also suggest that they may discourage audiences from connecting their own lives to the concerns of wider society because political issues are presented as being confined within the context of individual experience and personal relationships (Gillespie, 1995). Interestingly, though, the results of our study show that young people can and do use the content of entertainment television, such as the plots of soap operas, to talk about political issues. For the interviewee in the quotation below, the contributions of her peers to a conversation in her German lesson mirror those of characters in the soap opera Hollyoaks, and she relates both of these to wider political issue such as prejudices in society and the role of the media in tackling prejudice.

There was [an episode of Hollyoaks] the other day with two characters … one of them had HIV and it was good how other people dealt with the prejudices against them. Because in my German lesson the other day we were talking about it and it was funny to see people still had the same prejudices against it despite seeing it on the show and how people still think you can catch it from having the same glass and things like that, which is what one other character thought.… That was for like a mass audience and so people had the chance to not be ignorant about the topic, because it is broadcasted widely. And yet people still say things. I think shows like Hollyoaks can sort of help get rid of prejudices or make people not ignorant to things they possibly wouldn’t come across in everyday life. (Interview 1)

Even those individuals who claimed autonomy from the media as a source of power when talking about television soap operas frequently made implicit connections between the personal and the political in their talk about such programmes. Young people often brought their personal experiences to bear in their criticisms of television soap operas. In the following heated exchange about the realism of Hollyoaks, the existence of three pregnant girls in the school is used as evidence to debate the extent of teenage pregnancy in wider society.

In contrast to television, many of the young people we spoke to often invest a lot of emotion and value in the popular music they listen to, and they spoke about popular music as a resource they would use to suit their own personal needs at a particular time. One thing young people frequently talked about was the way they used both private and public sentiments expressed in song lyrics to make sense of their own personal lives. This point is illustrated in the following example, in which one young person not only relates public issues discussed in popular music to his own life, but also explains how it is the text itself which initiated thoughts about and connections with wider society.

The talk of the young people in our study showed that video games do enable audiences to conceive of the relations between the personal and the political. However, this is not necessarily achieved in the same way that Buckingham suggests in relation to television programmes – by audiences thinking or talking about what they observe on the screen. Those young people who positioned themselves as non-gamers frequently used their experience and perceptions of the reputation of video games and the books, films, blogs and advertisements that surround video games, rather than the text itself, to comment on wider political issues. Criticisms of this ‘paratextual universe’ (Jones, 2008: 17) frequently took the form of discourses about the vulnerability of younger siblings and the impact of video games on their behaviour. As the following example illustrates, young people drew on their own personal family experiences to evaluate the apparent influence of computer games and drew connections to political issues such as parental responsibility and the role of regulation.

The argument made in this section is that young people found it much easier to connect the political aspects of their personal lives with the public discourses of politics evident in television programmes and popular music, compared to video games. But while it is in their judgements of television content that young people drew connections between the personal and political, for popular music, the text itself initiates thoughts about and connections with wider society. Buckingham’s framework does not provide for the role of emotion, yet it was the emotional responses engendered by music which were found to be particularly important in helping young people to connect their personal lives with the political world. With regard to computer games, it was in the responses to the ‘paratext’, rather than the text itself, that non-gamers made connections between the private and the public.

Seen together, these results suggest that popular culture is relatively more successful than news media in allowing young people to conceive of relations between their personal experiences and wider public concerns, which Buckingham describes as ‘characteristic of a distinctly “political” mode of thinking’ (2000: 205).

How do audiences make sense of the local, national and international arena, and do they make connections with their own experiences?

In the news media, which was the focus of Buckingham’s study, there is often a very clear distinction made between the local, national and international arenas. Buckingham found that ‘the preoccupations of national politics were dismissed in favour of the more immediate concerns of the local’ and that ‘in the process, the potential connections between the two were often lost’ (2000: 24).

In the different forms of popular culture with which our study is concerned, the distinctions between the local, national and international arenas are far less clear. Political issues are seldom explicitly dealt with at clearly divided and defined levels. Thus, determining how audiences make sense of these different arenas using popular culture and whether or not they make connections with their own experience becomes more problematic. We assume that if audiences are to use popular culture to connect to wider public arenas, points of identification (Hall, 1990) need to be provided by popular culture, such as symbols of the local, national or global, or dialogue referring to specific communities or geographic locations. And we looked for examples of evidence of these points of identification in the talk of young people.

The young people in our study found entertainment television programming to be a particularly rich source of symbols for national communities, and there was evidence in young people’s talk about television programmes that these did make them feel part of a national community. The example below illustrates how young people often revealed their judgments about Britain and Britons in talking about television genres. It also illustrates how this connection with a national community is often achieved in opposition to the USA.

As might be expected, young people’s experience of the international arena appeared to be the most mediated. But while television did inevitably provide some references to the international arena, it was in talk about popular music that points of identification with other parts of the world were most often drawn upon. As the example below illustrates, popular music also encouraged young people to make often very strong emotional connections between the international arena and their own lives.

In Diamonds are Forever, Kanye West is talking about poverty and how people are starving and we’re living in a good society and we should make the most of it … listening to a song like that, it hits you so deep.… I reflect upon myself, what have I done, have I done mistakes, have I done false in life, have I done positive stuff in life, have I helped out the poor in life? (Interview 13)

Young people found the points of local identification provided by television to be relatively inauthentic. By contrast, local music was talked about as a particularly important way of connecting to the local arena. One young person talks about how the success of local bands and the status of local crowds is important to her understanding of both the local and national.

The interactivity offered by video games did appear to offer young people numerous opportunities to make sense of the local, national and international arena. In the following two examples young people talk about the different communities that interactive gaming allows them to become a part of. It is important to note that the evidence for this comes, not from treating young people’s talk about video games as discourse, as Buckingham argues it must, but from treating young people’s talk simply as evidence of their thoughts and behaviour.

X-Box Live matches you with people with your skill and I’ve met a few friends from across the UK from that, especially in Derby. I know a lot of people in Derby through the game and at the football we meet each other when Norwich plays Derby. (Interview 4)

The point made in this section is that while young people talk about television as providing particularly salient points of identification with a national community, it was popular music, rather than television, which young people referred to when talking about the local and international arena. It was the interactivity provided by computer games rather than the content which provided gamers with a connection to different political arenas.