PURPOSE: The purpose of this is to employ content analysis to critically examine how one social issue/problem is discussed and represented in popular culture through music lyrics.
BACKGROUND: There are many agents of popular culture though which the messages, themes and symbols of popular culture are produced and consumed. Media is a key agent of popular culture, and within it music is one mode for the production and consumption of popular culture . The music of the 1960's marked a key period of transition in the United States as themes of social problems and dissidence started to fill the radio waves. This assignment will allow you to explore one social issue or problem in music today.
OBJECTIVES:
- Discuss and compare culture, popular, high culture, elite culture, mass culture, low culture, subculture and counterculture.
- Understand and analyze why the popular becomes popular.
- Outline and apply key cultural theories and analytical dimensions for examining popular culture
- Explore different types of contemporary American culture.
- Examine the various elements of popular culture and how they inform or reflect our attitudes, behavior, and society.
- Discuss the relationship between popular culture and key stratifying factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, region and sexuality
- Locate and analyze culture within individual, social, historical, political, economic, and global contexts.
- Describe the cultural and social significance of popular culture in shaping the larger twentieth century American society.
- Construct and implement effective search strategies in finding resources relevant to popular culture.
- Demonstrate the ability to identify, locate, and retrieve information relevant to popular culture.