The NeFCA Popular Media and Culture division provides a platform for communication and media scholars unpacking the mediated construction, distribution, and reception of popular culture.
Our focus lies on cultural objects, ranging from music lyrics to platforms, as well as on practices that make media ‘popular’, including taste formation and media events. Popular media & culture, in this perspective, refers to the ways in which people engage with media to shape meanings, build communities, establish connections, and (de-)construct power relationships on a daily basis.
We welcome diverse methodological approaches (e.g. computational methods; ethnographic approaches) and conceptual frameworks (e.g. cultural studies; media sociology), and seek to bring together scholars committed to fostering deeper insights into the intersections of media, power, identity, and culture. Furthermore, recognizing the global reach and impact of popular media cultures, the division is interested in research that transcends dominant Western perspectives and explores the complexities of cultural flows in our interconnected world. In short, Popular media & culture invites multidisciplinary scholarship that investigates what popular culture is, how it is communicated, and how it relates to political and societal shifts concerning global interconnectedness, cultural hegemony, power, and identity.
The division’s steering committee consists of Dr. Luca Carbone (KU Leuven), Dr. Eduard Cuelenaere (Ghent University/Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Maxine De Wulf Helskens (Ghent University), Dr. Jinju Muraro (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Alexander De Man (Ghent University), Guilherme Giolo Rego (Erasmus University Rotterdam), and Dr. Florian Vanlee (Ghent University).