Disco ball and lectern

How are popular culture, science and society connected? This question was examined by the Popular Culture and Media working group of the Society for Media Studies (GfM) at its annual conference "Pop/Knowledge/Transfers". Here is an interview with the organisers Prof. Dr Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer (Institute of Music) and Prof. Dr Martin Butler (Institute of English and American Studies).

QUESTION: What results do you take away from the conference?

BUTLER: The diagnosis that knowledge about popular cultures is very heterogeneous and at the same time fragmentary. This is because the humanities, cultural and social science disciplines work on the subject with very different cognitive interests and methods. And what's more, knowledge about popular cultures is not just academic knowledge - fans also know a great deal. With this conference, we wanted to help initiate a dialogue between these actors.

QUESTION: Why does science deal with pop culture at all?

BINAS-PREISENDÖRFER: Cultural forms of expression shape our lives on a daily basis and help to shape them. Pop culture is everywhere, even in the life of a scientist. Research on popular music has existed in the English-speaking world since the late 1970s. In Germany, its academic localisation only began in earnest in the early 1990s. In East Berlin, however, the Popular Music Research Centre had already existed since the mid-1980s.

QUESTION: Which pop cultural phenomena are you specifically investigating?

BUTLER: I am particularly interested in the mobility of popular cultures in the North American context
and examine processes of "hybridisation" - focusing primarily on popular music. I am also interested in forms of urban popular culture.

BINAS-PREISENDÖRFER: I research the connection between media and popular music; I also work on fan culture, youth cultures and scenes as well as on the history of recording formats, globalisation, migration and transculturation in the field of popular music.