The Reflections of Popular Culture: A Multiple Case Study

Serap Yilmaz,
M.A. student
University of Adnan Menderes
Aydin, Turkey

Meltem Cengel
M.A. student
University of Adnan Menderes
Aydin, Turkey

Mehmet Ali Icbay
Ph.D. student
Middle East Technical University
Ankara, Turkey

Popular culture is the global and superficial culture that postpones the conflicts of ordinary life and thus creates artificial happiness. Mass communication tools are the ways to spread this popular culture. Television as a type of mass communication is the mostly utilized way of broadening the popular culture. It aims at manipulating the middle class and consumption-driven viewers through the different kinds of programmes. These programmes produced mainly in the western world such as the United States, the United Kingdom or France are directly exported to the third world countries or adopted to the social norms. The goal of these exported or modified popular TV programmes is to create an artificial joy culture which leads the children in this contemporary world to copy the discourse embedded in these TV programmes. The influence of popular culture thus can be traced in the educational system, especially in the non-formal curriculum, such as the end of term activities, which include student speeches, songs and dances. The primary aim of this ethnographic study is to investigate the influence of popular culture in the end of term activities. Further, the study seeks to answer the role of class difference in shaping the level of popular culture in students’ lives. The participants are the students who attend three different schools, one in the lower class, one in the middle class and one in the upper class, in Aydin. The end of term activities as well as the rehearsals that the students prepare are recorded. In addition to the recordings, the researchers take field notes during these activities.

Key word: popular culture, the end of term activities.