Digital Tools, Radical Views, Appealing Aesthetics. Comparative Approaches to Popular Culture from Eastern Europe
Digital media and practices have fundamentally changed our understanding of the public sphere and play an increasingly important role in the formation of political opinion. Especially populist movements and authoritarian governments are using digital tools to spread their often right wing rhetoric and symbols. However, radical views are not only shaped in the political field. Popular culture is also crucial for the dissemination and normalisation of radical or populist narratives: not only among a broader public, but also among protest movements or alternative cultures. Its different formats and products are often the means by which collective desires and trends as well as social unease and civic upheaval find an appealing form and come to play an often over-looked part in the formation of political opinion.
But what is the relationship between technological progress (‘digital tools’), political opinion-forming (‘radical views’) and popular culture (‘appealing aesthetics’) in specific historical and cultural contexts? Are certain trends in popular culture only characteristic of populist and authoritarian regimes, or are they rather a symptom of a more general social transformation? The workshop aims to explore these questions from a comparative perspective, looking at the recent past and present of Eastern Europe.
The admission is free, no registration required.
Program
Thursday, 13 February 2025
11.15
Rethinking Populism and Popular Culture
- Matthias Schwartz (ZfL): Adjustments to the Public: Rethinking Popular Culture in Digital Times
- Svetla Koleva, Niya Neykova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia): Rethinking Populism with Pierre Rosanvallon
14.15
Popular Culture as a Weapon
- Oleksandr Zabirko (University of Regensburg): Naming the Enemy: Popular Culture in Ukrainian and Russian War Rhetoric
- Vyara Angelova (Sofia University): Weaponizing Sound: Technology, Power, Cultural Codes
16.15
Musical Heritage, Mapping Sounds
- Zhana Popova (Sofia University): The West and the Soviet Union in the Autobiographies of Bulgarian Estrada Musicians after 1990
- Aleksandra Kolesnik (Bielefeld University/ZfL): Signifying the Rock Heritage of Ekaterinburg (Russia): The Experience of Creating an Online Map
Friday, 14 February 2025
10.00
Mobilizing the Past and the Present
- Milla Mineva (Centre for Liberal Strategies/Sofia University): Memes of the World, Unite! Travelling Memes and How They Mobilize Social Groups
- Nina Weller (ZfL): Contested Past. Historical “Heroes” as Figures of Resistance in Pop and Protest Music
12.00
Conservatism and Populism in Digital Media
- Aleksandra Szczepan (University of Potsdam): Polish Tradwives: Popular Culture and Digital Media in the Service of Conservative Identities
- Veronika Hermann (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest): Populism and Popular Media in Illiberal Hungary
15.00
Roundtable
- Concluding Discussion on Popular Culture, Digital Media and Populism