In 2020, The Swedish government agency SCB presented a report that examined the educational and social background of admitted students at university level arts- and culture programmes in Sweden. Results showed that 79 percent of those admitted during the period 2015-2019 had parents with post-secondary backgrounds. The figures show that the middle class is overrepresented at the institutions that teach arts at higher levels of education and indicate a broader issue of homogeneity in social backgrounds within the cultural field. This study is interested in how power is being constituted in modern arts journalism and how certain personal skills and traits create a hierarchy of power within the cultural field. By examining this we want to contribute a critical examination of a journalistic genre that we feel is overlooked in media studies of hegemony. Arts journalism remains a significant compartment in commercial mass media. There are still writers and news agencies working in traditional media that remain popular, credible and powerful in the eyes of the public when it comes to representing the arts and cultural debates. In Sweden Dagens Nyheter (DN) is a daily newspaper that is highly considered when it comes to arts journalism and long format texts. To be featured in DN Kultur is therefore an extra vital token of confirmation for creators of art in Sweden. But what does it take for a creator to be represented in DN Kultur? This essay examines a selection of 13 profile texts from 2021 published in DN kultur. Each text is about a performer acting through a certain art form. With a theoretical framework including Pierre Bourdieu's field theory as well as semiotic analysis – this study explores how myths and capital create a hierarchy that is constituted through DN. The results show that the symbolic capital that DN recognizes in the cultural field is found in experience. The actors who have the most power are the ones who can prove themselves to be learned. They do so by referencing high-cultural upbringings, being alumni of respectable schools of art, or recognition by dominant parts of their artistic field. Furthermore, the study finds that artists who receive the most power through ongoing myths about arts and labor, are the ones that embodies a dualism between conservatism versus progressivism, freedom versus responsibility, and authenticity versus commercial recognition.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-197210 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Magnus, Bergman, Måns, Antman Debels |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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