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Journalism Practice
ISSN: 1751-2786 (Print) 1751-2794 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjop20
From Ivory Tower to Cross-Media Personas
Nete Nørgaard Kristensen & Unni From
To cite this article: Nete Nørgaard Kristensen & Unni From (2015) From Ivory Tower to CrossMedia
Personas, Journalism Practice, 9:6, 853-871, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2015.1051370
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1051370
Published online: 24 Jul 2015.
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FROM IVORY TOWER TO CROSS-MEDIA
PERSONAS
The heterogeneous cultural critic in the media
Nete Nørgaard Kristensen and Unni From
This article introduces a theoretical typology of four rival yet converging ideal types of cultural
critics in contemporary media culture and in cultural journalism, more specifically, encapsulated
by the term the heterogeneous cultural critic and characterized by different kinds of authority
and expertise: (1) the intellectual cultural critic, who is closely connected to an aesthetic tradition,
bohemia and/or academia, or institutionalized cultural capital; (2) the professional cultural
journalist, who is first and foremost embedded in a media professional logic; (3) the media-made
arbiter of taste, whose authority is closely linked to practical experience with cultural production
and repeated charismatic media performances; and (4) the everyday amateur expert, who offers
subjective opinions and represents experience-based cultural taste. The aim is to provide an
analytical minimum model for future empirical studies by outlining the contours of the multiple,
objective and subjective, professional and non-professional cultural “authorities” of contemporary
media culture.
KEYWORDS celebrity capital; charismatic authority; cultural criticism in the media; cultural
journalism; heterogeneous cultural critics; media capital; media intellectuals
Introduction
A recurring issue in academia as well as in the public debate is who qualifies as
cultural critics or opinion makers in the public realm. The Huffington Post headline “The
Death of Criticism or Everyone is a Critic” (November 14, 2011) encapsulates the current
two-sided debate, often leaning towards the critical side as exemplified by doomsday
headlines such as The Observer’s “Is the Age of the Critic Over?” (January 30, 2011). In “A
Critic’s Manifesto”, published in The New Yorker (August 28, 2012), writer and critic Daniel
Mendelsohn presented the equation “KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGEMENT”
as the essence of cultural criticism, arguing that not everyone is or can be a critic “because
very few people have the rare combination of qualities that make a good critic”. Good
criticism, in his view, includes the capability “to mediate intelligently and stylishly between
a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining
way”. These examples concern the more overarching issue addressed in this article of
the authority and legitimacy of the cultural critic becoming increasingly heterogeneous in
contemporary, Western media culture, and in cultural journalism more specifically.
Today’s institutionalized media—newspapers, magazines, radio, and television—
allocate the role of cultural critic, pundit, or arbiter of taste to a variety of intellectuals,
experts, media professionals, and celebrities from the cultural scene (e.g., Jacobs and
Townsley 2011; Schlesinger 2009). At the same time, ordinary cultural consumers
exchange experience-based cultural evaluations through “likes”, tweets, and subjective
Journalism Practice, 2015
Vol. 9, No. 6, 853–871, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1051370
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
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amateur reviews by means of digital media technologies (e.g., Verboord 2014). Contemporary
cultural criticism and debate, in its many institutionalized and non-institutionalized
forms, thus challenge and complement the agenda-setting function of printed newspapers’
cultural pages, which have long, at least in a Western context, provided an
institutionalized framework for public critical discussion of art and culture and functioned
as a potentially important influencer of public cultural taste and consumption (Blank 2007;
Verboord 2014). This, as indicated by the examples above, puts the traditional authority
and self-understanding of cultural critics in the news media to the test, confronting the
cultural public sphere with democratic potentials and challenges.
In this article, we propose a typology of four rivalling yet converging types of cultural
critics or cultural opinion makers, who are engaged in and influence the cultural debate in
contemporary, Western media culture and in cultural journalism, more specifically. These
four types are encapsulated by what we conceptualize as the heterogeneous cultural critic:
. the intellectual cultural critic, whose authority is closely connected to an aesthetic
tradition, bohemia and/or academia—or institutionalized cultural capital;
. the professional cultural journalist, who may associate her- or himself with the intellectual,
but whose authority is equally embedded in a media professional logic;
. the media-made arbiter of taste, whose authority is closely linked to practical experience
with cultural production and repeated media performances; she or he thus draws on
both professional customs or skills and personal charisma; and
. the everyday amateur expert, offering subjective opinions, and representing experiencebased
cultural taste and layman’s authority.
The first two well-established and relatively clearly demarcated types are challenged
and influenced by the last two newcomers, who have increasingly come to dominate
mediated cultural opinion making. However, they are less easily delineable due to the
blurring of their boundaries vis-à-vis each other. The typology does not provide a
hierarchical perspective; the intellectual is not considered more significant, valuable,
legitimate, or ideal than the media-made arbiter of taste. Rather, the four types are
associated with or characterized by different kinds of authority, expertise, or capital.
As a consequence, the typology implies that rivalling and converging paradigms of
objective and subjective evaluations and media professional and non-professional cultural
authorities coexist and potentially compete in contemporary media culture.
The aim of the article is, firstly, to provide an overview, from a non-normative
perspective, of some of the media historical and structural changes that have occasioned
the contemporary heterogeneity of cultural critics in the media. These include media
technological and institutional changes, professional changes in journalism as well as in
cultural journalism, more specifically, and changes in the relationship between media
producers and media users, or audiences. Thus, even though cultural criticism is a very
broad and cross-humanistic research field, we find that media and journalism studies, in
particular, provide productive theoretical and analytical frameworks because contemporary
cultural criticism is so extensively embedded in and formed by media-related
circumstances. In addition to situating “the heterogeneous cultural critic” within the
broad field of cultural criticism, we have therefore turned to media and journalism studies
as well as celebrity studies. This is done with a view to explaining the more recent
emergence and increasing presence or dominance of media-made arbiters of taste and
everyday amateur experts in the cultural public sphere. One might argue that these
newcomers exemplify the central role of media when it comes to producing and
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reproducing cultural critics. The article also aims to provide an analytical minimum model
of four ideal types for future empirical studies by outlining the contours and the
heterogeneity of the competing, intersecting, overlapping, and mutually influential critical
voices in contemporary cultural debate in Western media.
As is the case with all typologies, our conceptual model is a theoretical construct
(Doty and Glick 1994), and empirical analysis may reveal that hierarchies among the
stipulated four types do in fact exist. Empirical analysis may also reveal that the same
agent performs varying critical roles in different contexts and thus possesses traits from
more than one ideal type. Accordingly, the typology is not limited to one specific cultural
field (film, literature, fashion, food, etc.), although the performance and authority of the
specific type of critic will most likely be influenced by the cultural field in question. These
empirical issues will not be addressed in this article, since it is first and foremost a
theoretical contribution based on existing research literature, but, hopefully, the typology
will be tested and operationalized in future empirical research.
In the following, first we locate our proposed typology within the very large research
field of “cultural criticism”; second, we briefly introduce “authority” as a theoretical key
concept for our typology; and third, we develop our four-sided typology of the
“heterogeneous cultural critic” and the characteristics of each ideal type. These steps
allow us to argue that the current, Western media landscape provides new voices of and
platforms for cultural deliberation, which dissolve and transform conceptions of authority
and expertise in cultural criticism, and blur the boundaries between professionals and
non-professionals.
Demarcation of Cultural Criticism
Cultural criticism is a broad concept that intersects with a range of humanistic
disciplines and spaces for deliberation. The rich research literature on the topic provides
different definitions, distinctions, and typologies, often associated with various institutional
settings (e.g., Bordwell 1991; Elkins 2003; Said 1984; Titchener 1998). Said (1984), for
example, argues that (literary) criticism is performed in reviews and journalism, in the
historical and theoretical work of scholars/academia, and in classroom appreciation and
interpretation. Similarly, Bordwell (1991) makes a distinction between three kinds of (film)
critical publications associated with different macro institutions: journalism (in the press/
news media), essayistic publications (in monthly magazines, for example), and academic
research (in scholarly journals). The kinds of cultural criticism performed within these
different institutional settings are distinctive and characterized by specific forms of
authority and expertise, or, in the terms of Said (1984, 2), “a very precise division of
intellectual labor”. This division includes, for example, the norms and practices
of professional journalism, or the norms and practices of scholarly work. But these forms
of cultural criticism also influence each other; academic as well as essayistic approaches
stimulate the critical approach in the news media (Gjelsvik 2002) and vice versa (Baumann
2001). A common feature, however, is that they all provide cultural criticism top-down
(Verboord 2014), precisely by being performed by agents (typically) associated with (some
kind of) cultural expertise, knowledge, and authority. In consequence, none of the existing
distinctions include the non-professionals or “amateurs”, providing cultural criticism from a
bottom-up or experienced-based perspective as part of the cultural critical equation.
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A recurring position in the literature on cultural criticism, regardless of its
institutional setting, is a critical stance on the current favouring of generalists at the
expense of specialists (Dahlgren 2012; Walsh 2003) and the, allegedly, increasing
marginalization of traditional cultural criticism and art reviewing, i.e., the decline of
intellectually or academically grounded deliberation and evaluation of art and culture
(e.g., Bech-Karlsen 1991; Elkins 2003; Lund 2005; McDonald 2007). This echoes critical
arguments on changes in (cultural) journalism more generally, declaring that cultural
journalism is increasingly news-driven and de-prioritizes critical contemplation (e.g., Lund
2005; Larsen 2008). These various arguments stress the necessity of more thoroughly
considering the layman’s contributions to the current reconfiguration of cultural critical
authority and expertise in light of the changing relations between producers and users in
the media. Accordingly, Gillespie (2012) argues for a more heuristic definition of criticism
as a concept and distinguishes between feedback (e.g., audiences giving feedback on
YouTube), reviews (by users, advertisers, or journalists involving a more commercial
perspective), and criticism (by professionals and/or intellectuals providing more than
merely judgements of taste) (Gillespie 2012, 62).
Just as it is difficult to narrow down the concept of cultural criticism, it is also
challenging to provide an unequivocal definition of what cultural critics do. As implied by
our typology, the practice of cultural criticism is presently performed in multifarious ways
by a variety of agents, labelled by a range of overlapping terms: intellectuals, experts,
cultural critics, reviewers, cultural journalists, commentators, pundits, opinion makers,
arbiters of taste, etc. In the present context, we use “cultural critic” as an overall term to
emphasize the focus on culture (rather than society at large, politics, or economics), but we
also turn to Titchener’s (1998) distinction between “the critic” and “the reviewer”. Based on
specialized knowledge, the former analyses cultural objects and trends, while the latter,
among other professional obligations as a journalist, reviews cultural objects, often within
a range of cultural fields. One might argue that the “critic” applies a broad, or
anthropological, approach to culture as “a whole way of life” (Williams [1958] 2011), while
the “reviewer” addresses a more confined aesthetic conception of culture (Gans 1999). Our
typology comprises both the “critic” and the “reviewer”, but we emphasize Titchener’s
(1998) distinction because it concretizes the overall practices of cultural critics as “cultural
intermediaries” in the original terms of Bourdieu (1984).
In Distinction, Bourdieu (1984, 325), among other things, addressed the professionalization
of occupations mediating between fields of (cultural) production and
consumption, and he argued that the typical (at that time) “new” cultural intermediaries
included “the producers of cultural programmes on TV and radio or the critics of ‘quality’
newspapers and magazines and all the writer-journalists and journalist-writers”. These
agents represented “professional tastemakers and authorities of legitimation” (Maguire
2014, 21). More recently, Maguire and Matthews (2012) have made a distinction between
three dimensions characterizing what the cultural intermediary does in contemporary
society: frame goods by ascribing value to cultural products; claim expertise based on their
cultural, social, and, in the terms of Couldry (2003, 2012), media meta-capital; and have
impact by attributing legitimacy to cultural artefacts and influencing the negotiation of
“quality”. Of particular importance in this context is their argument that “all cultural
intermediaries rely more or less on personal dispositions and cultural capital as the basis of
their professional credibility” (Maguire and Matthews 2012, 556). This namely alludes to
the blurring boundaries of the personal and the professional, the private and the public.
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It also indicates that the concept of the cultural intermediary ties in with our proposed
typology but must be further developed, because it originated in a media context quite
different from the current one. The heterogeneity of cultural criticism in today’s crossmedia
landscape implies that the “old” and “new” cultural intermediaries in Bourdieu’s
original conceptualization (that is, the cultural intellectuals and professional cultural
journalists in our typology) are supplemented and potentially challenged by the “newnew”
cultural intermediaries, suggested by our typology (that is, the media-made arbiters
of taste and the everyday amateur experts). These new voices potentially (also) come to
influence “notions of what, and thereby who, is legitimate, desirable and worthy, and thus
by definition what and who is not” (Maguire and Matthews 2012, 552).
Authority
Before addressing the heterogeneous authority of the cultural critic in contemporary
media culture in more detail, we briefly address the concept of “authority” itself. When
trying to define “what is authority”, Furedi (2013, 9) in his recent book on the sociological
history of authority argues that “Those in authority are presumed to have ‘power over the
opinions of others’, they have power to ‘inspire belief’ and a ‘title to be believed’”. This is
only one of many definitions in the extensive literature on the multifaceted concept of
authority. It does, however, comply well with our conception of how the cultural critic (in
his or her many forms) claims cultural authority by performing as “cultural intermediaries”
as defined above, originally by Bourdieu (1984) and more recently by Maguire and
Matthews (2012, 2014).
Of particular interest to this article is the recurring observation that authority is
increasingly being questioned or challenged in contemporary society, rather than being
affirmed or appraised (Furedi 2013). The traditional institutions of authority, such as
religion or, later, science, have lost their authority, which already in the mid-twentieth
century led Arendt to argue that “authority has vanished from the modern world” (quoted
in Furedi 2013, 11). Forty years later, Giddens (1991) contended that in the age of high
modernity there are no “determinant authorities” (194), but rather multiple or a “diversity
of ‘authorities’” (5), which the public can invest their trust in or choose to ignore, the point
being that the command of these multiple authorities “[is] no longer ‘taken as binding’” in
contrast to earlier times (Furedi 2013, 3). This leads Furedi to proclaim that “society faces a
crisis of authority” (11). Couldry links this crisis of authority to the societal transformations
promoted by the changing and digitalized media landscape: “One emerging aspect of
media’s influence on social organization is the transformation of authority in a digital
media age” (Couldry 2012, 153) because “new information flows make institutions more
porous” (154). As indicated, some argue that this situation also characterizes the authority
of the cultural critic, at least the cultural critic traditionally associated with academia and
aesthetic knowledge, as explained below.
The ambition of this article is not to clarify whether the current heterogeneity of
cultural critics is a sign of crisis or prosperity but rather, as indicated, to display this current
diversity and explicate on what kind(s) of authority the legitimacy of the four ideal types
rests. Sociologists have discussed what constitutes legitimate authority for many years.
Among the most quoted and contested suggestions are Weber’s (1978) distinction
between three ideal types of legitimate, political rule or authority: traditional, rational, and
charismatic authority. Even though Weber’s typology links to contexts quite dissimilar
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from the socio-cultural sphere of mediated, cultural criticism, we find it useful, not least
because it provides a starting point for discussing the historical positions of (cultural)
authority and suggests one way of characterizing the competing forms of authority of
contemporary cultural critics in a changed media landscape. Rational authority and
charismatic authority are of particular importance in the context of this article in light of
“the gradual dissolution of the authority of tradition” (Furedi 2013, 3) explained above.
Rational authority is based on rules and regulations that determine who are in a position
to rule. In the context of cultural critics, this can be linked to which societal groups are
officially or formally perceived as cultural critics, based on their credentials, or their
institutionalized cultural capital, to use Bourdieu’s (1986) term. Rational authority is thus
not associated with a specific empirical person but rather with those who, based on
existing regulations, are appointed to rule. Charismatic authority is contradictory to
rational authority since it is first and foremost associated with a specific individual and the
exceptional attributes of this persona, as long as she or he is viewed as exceptional. A
range of cultural personas—e.g., celebrities, pundits, or media-made arbiters of taste—are
characterized by precisely this kind of charismatic authority, and are, as a result, granted
media access and attention. Celebrity status is thus by some associated with charismatic
authority (see Couldry 2012; Driessens 2013; Ferris 2007; Kurzman et al. 2007). It can be
argued that (some) cultural critics are also associated with traditional authority because,
historically, they (and their peers) have been acknowledged for their intellectual
performance. In these cases, their authority is not least based on the legacy associated
with enlightenment, intellectualism, and the aura of art and aesthetic creation.
As also emphasized by Weber (1978), these three types of authority are theoretically
viewed as pure but will often be mixed in empirical practice. Accordingly, the cultural
critics outlined by our typology must in theory be viewed as ideal types although they will
often be associated with more than one kind of authority in practice. This is not least due
to the fact, as argued by Couldry (2012, 155), that “questions of authority are best
understood by reference to the detailed dynamics of specific subfields” and thus the
specific cultural areas and mediated contexts in which the various types of cultural critics
perform.
Typology
In the following, we develop our typology more thoroughly in order to provide a
descriptive but theory-based framework to further elaborate the contours of contemporary
cultural critics in the media.
The Intellectual Cultural Critic
One noteworthy voice in cultural criticism and in cultural journalism, more
specifically, is provided by the public intellectual, who historically has been a front figure
and still seems to possess a role in the framing of cultural debate, reviewing, and opinion
making. Examples of such twentieth-century thinkers include Palestinian American cultural
critic and intellectual Edward Said, and Italian semiotician, philosopher, author, and literary
critic Umberto Eco. However, as indicated, the intellectual has also been challenged or
even marginalized, particularly by the media-made arbiters of taste and everyday amateur
experts but, following Dahlgren (2012, 95), the role of the intellectual critic has always
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“evolved and changed under changing historical circumstances”. Thus, whereas the public
intellectual formerly represented a strong pillar within society, the intellectual today has
become one voice among other strong voices (Madsen 2009, 47–48).
Scholars have analysed and discussed the role and nature of the intellectual
intensively. Posner (2001, 35) defines the public intellectual as someone “expressing
himself in a way that is accessible to the public, and the focus of his expression is on
matters of general public concern of (or inflected by) a political or ideological cast”. Thus,
the public intellectual may, as already indicated, address a range of issues relating to a
broad or anthropological conception of culture (Gans 1999; Williams ([1958] 2011) and
“offer general reflections on the direction or health of society” (Posner 2001, 35). Another
common definition, in line with Posner’s, asserts that public intellectuals are sometimes
affiliated with universities, they are typically driven by ideas and characterized by their
often extreme viewpoints and involvement in controversial discussions or debates, and
they have a communicative capacity to reach and engage large audiences (Dahlgren
2012). Accordingly, they have traditionally been associated with projects of enlightenment
(Arnoldi 2005) and intellectual autonomy (Gramsci 2003), and they have often situated
themselves in opposition to the ruling class (e.g., Said 1994).
However, this idealistic approach to the public intellectual is complemented by two
other definitions (Arnoldi 2005). Firstly, public intellectuals are also perceived as an elitist
group belonging, paradoxically, to the ruling class by virtue of their often professional
identity as academics. They are thus associated with the power elite of society, who they
were also implicitly destined to challenge. Secondly, public intellectuals are viewed in light
of their role as mediators, communicating and translating scientific knowledge, results, and
approaches to a broader public. This latter depiction transcends traditional conceptions of
the public intellectual and overlaps with the “professional cultural journalist” in our
typology, whom we return to below. Cultural journalism was, for example, attended to or
performed by academic specialists for many years (Hovden and Knapskog 2008, 2015),
whose authority was defined by a strong knowledge of art and aesthetics and legitimized
by their cultural capital as academics or performing artists (Arnoldi 2005, 40).
These definitions of public intellectuals as an elitist group and as mediators of
knowledge are closely interrelated, also in cultural criticism. Both are associated with
tradition, the legacy of enlightenment, and the aura of art and aesthetic creation. But at
the same time, their authority is anchored in institutionalized cultural capital (Bourdieu
1986) in terms of their academic or artistic credentials—certificates, titles, awards, etc.—
which provide the elitist public intellectual with the rational authority or legitimacy to
perform as experts on general public affairs, for example, in the media, or as consultants in
public committees, etc. (Albæk, Christiansen, and Togeby 2003, 939). Thus, they occupy
powerful positions within society, including the political and cultural public sphere,
because they are given the opportunity to comment on and evaluate cultural policies
in general, and cultural trends and products, more specifically. In consequence,
this conception of the public intellectual explicitly contrasts with Posner’s definition,
emphasizing independence and autonomy as well as the potential engagement of
broader publics.
These definitions suggest how the various voices of public intellectuals have
contributed and continue to contribute to the cultural debate. In line with Dahlgren (2012,
98), we argue that the definition of the genuine public intellectual is “a grey zone”,
because “there is no census of the population” (Posner 2001, 170), and because the
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different and yet converging types of public intellectuals all seem to play a role in cultural
criticism in a mediated context.
Another way to conceptualize the cultural critical voice of the public intellectual in
the media is to outline the genres they use when engaging in the public debate, and
when they are used as sources within journalistic texts. According to Posner (2001, 36), the
public intellectual applies a range of genres, but of particular importance are commentary,
criticism, political satire, and the expert testimony. Posner mainly addresses the content of
the output of public intellectuals, while others have worked with formalistic and stylistic
genres such as the essay (Madsen 2009) as the hallmark of public intellectuals. Such
opinionated genres epitomize cultural criticism within cultural journalism, they have
framed the field for a long time (Kristensen and From 2011), and they have been used by
the various intellectual voices in different ways. First of all, some intellectuals have
engaged as authors of their own texts, either in opinion pieces or analyses, published in
the press or other publications in order to comment on the state of the cultural public
sphere. Secondly, especially the elitist intellectuals are given voices as news sources of
specialized scientific knowledge, e.g., when communicating specific scholarly results.
Furthermore, intellectuals are framed as legitimate sources of opinion within journalistic
texts, and under these circumstances, provide more generalized knowledge anchored in
a general conception of intellectuals as authorities to be consulted in light of their
autonomous viewpoints. Thus, writers of intellectual capacity and scholars within the
humanities compose a continuum of intellectual cultural critics associated with various
forms of authority, institutional ties, and public engagement.
The media’s framing of the intellectual as a legitimate source of information and
opinion is also a discursive construction of authority. As a consequence, the intellectual or
“expert” is assigned authority because journalists “qualify and mix statements and roles
and functions of sources and often it seems to be the way the source is introduced or
described that has influence on whether they are perceived as experts, advocates or in
other roles” (Allagaier 2011, 481). This indicates that even though an overall characteristic
of the intellectual is his or her independent voice in the public cultural sphere, this voice
may, in fact, take various forms and be used in quite dissimilar manners by professional
journalists, who themselves, as discussed further below, increasingly frame cultural critique
from a media-professional perspective.
The Professional Cultural Journalist
The professional cultural journalist often identifies with the intellectual critic which is
justifiable, since many cultural journalists, as indicated, have one leg in academia and/or
the arts world and another in journalism. Cultural journalists are also often better educated
than the average journalist (Hovden and Knapskog 2008), so cultural journalists such as
American film critic Roger Ebert, awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his film criticism, British
commentator on music, culture, and cultural politics Norman Lebrecht, or Danish cultural
editor Rune Lykkeberg, are in many ways characterized by considerable, institutionalized
cultural capital. However, media institutional and technological changes have altered the
professional practice of cultural journalism and cultural criticism in the news media during
the past decades. In the following, we outline how these changes have influenced the
ways in which the professional cultural journalist gains authority by way of competing
types of professionalism—organizational professionalism, occupational professionalism,
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and aesthetic specialization—which today all seem to define the professional cultural
journalist as a cultural critic.
Örnebring (2009) argues that two kinds of professionalism characterize and strive in
contemporary journalism more generally: organizational professionalism, giving priority to
organizational goals and division or rationalization of labor, etc.; and occupational
professionalism, focusing on the ideals, norms, and values of the profession. The former
emphasizes an efficient and commercially sound production of cultural journalism that
includes multi-skilled journalists or generalists who cover several cultural beats and
produce “news you can use” on cultural offerings. The stories are distributed to several
platforms and by means of various genres—news, critique, opinion pieces—that may
brand the news medium; that is, cultural journalism dominated by media logics (Hjarvard
2013). In contrast, occupational professionalism emphasizes critical, independent, original,
and investigative/analytical cultural journalism, adhering to the publicist and sovereign
norms of journalism; that is, cultural journalism dominated by the ideals and logics of the
profession (Kammer 2013).
However, the occupational professionalism of cultural journalists also differs from
the occupational professionalism of news journalists more generally, since cultural
journalists feel “qualitatively different from mainstream reporters” (Harries and WahlJørgensen
2007, 626; see also Hellman and Jaakkola 2012; Kristensen and From 2011). First
and foremost, cultural journalism is dominated by an evaluating or opinionated rather
than a neutral approach. This is particularly due to the above-mentioned centrality
of opinionated genres, such as the review, and in-depth and/or narrative genres,
such as the portrait and the feature, but it is also due to the implicit association
with literary journalism. Both the opinionated and the “featuristic” generic approach aims
to convey not only aesthetically grounded evaluations or information about cultural
persons, products, and trends, but also to provide entertainment, cultural experiences, and
engagement (From 2010). Furthermore, cultural journalists have traditionally been closely
intertwined with the cultural sphere and its creative agents who perform as news sources
(Marshall 2005). These source networks, and sometimes even friendships, with artists and
cultural producers (Kristensen 2003) provide the journalists with considerable social capital
(Bourdieu 1986). However, they also challenge their professional autonomy or occupational
professionalism in the traditional sense, and thus their professional authority. Not
only are cultural journalists typically passionate about their topic(s); they also perceive
themselves as conveyors or communicators of culture rather than watchdogs (Kristensen
2003), performing as “cultural intermediaries” between producers and users or consumers
of culture (Bourdieu 1984) rather than adhering to the adversary model of traditional
journalism (Blumler and Gurevitch 1981).
Research indicates that the cultural and aesthetic paradigm of specialization in
cultural journalism and criticism is increasingly being subordinated to the media
professional or organizational paradigm, focusing on news values, news genres, adaption
to reader interests, and new patterns of use—or media logics (Hellman and Jaakkola 2012;
Jaakkola et al. 2015; Larsen 2008; Kristensen and From 2011). Generalists are thus
challenging the specialists among the professional cultural journalists. The decreasing
number of freelancers, associated with the universities, performing the role as reviewers in
the news media is empirical evidence of the increasing dominance of the media
organizational logic (Hovden and Knapskog 2008), as is the replacement of aesthetic
(and intellectual) experts by professionally educated cultural journalists, carrying out
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cultural reporting as well as cultural reviewing. Hjarvard (2009), more generally, speaks of a
new cultural class of professional media representatives, giving priority to the interests of
the audience and the media institution rather than canons and art, and thus displacing the
power balance of the cultural elite. This can be seen as one example of how the authority
of traditional institutions has been challenged. Furthermore, Kristensen and From (2011)
demonstrate the importance of cultural journalists/critics as branding tools and trademarks
for institutionalized media in the increasingly competitive media environment. At
the same time, the media logics—or organizational professionalism—reinforce the
authority and status of the professional cultural journalist in the increasingly heterogeneous
landscape of cultural pundits and opinion makers. Media institutions even
(re)produce their own media intellectuals (Jacobs and Townsley 2011) by providing
specific cultural journalists with public visibility, cultural legitimacy, and voice. In return,
these media representatives supply brand value and reinforce the media institutions’
cultural profile, thus supporting the organizational professionalism.
This implies that professional cultural journalists presently gain authority, first and
foremost, from their affiliation with the institutionalized media and the media logic but
also from what Couldry (2012) has termed media meta-capital, a concept that will be
developed in the following section.
The Media-made Arbiter of Taste
During the past 10 years, a new type of cultural critic has appeared more and more
frequently in the public realm; we have termed this critical agent the media-made arbiter of
taste. The authority of this new type is closely linked to practical experience with cultural
production as well as to repeated media performances. In other words, it is linked to a mix
of professional skill and personal charisma; examples include British media producer
Simon Cowell, British comedian Russell Brand, and British chef Jamie Oliver. The digital
cross-media environment has promoted these critical voices, who gain authority
particularly by means of their “media meta-capital” (Couldry 2003, 2012) or their “celebrity
capital” (Driessens 2013).
In Couldry’s (2012, 140–142) conceptualization, drawing on Bourdieu and Champagne,
the media increasingly determines what counts as important forms of capital
within specific fields. Making reference to the political field and the increasingly porous
authority of societal (including political) institutions, he argues, for example, that
“individual political authority has … become increasingly reliant on media-related capital
and the ability to perform personality in the media” (Couldry 2012, 155). Similarly, media
exposure and successful media performances have progressively become a determining
factor for agents of artistic or cultural sub-fields, for commercial, political, and prestigious
or symbolic reasons (Kristensen 2003; Kristensen and From 2015). The media’s coverage of
and attention to these fields may “alter the internal workings of that sub-field”, according
to Couldry (2012, 141), because intensive media attention or accumulated media visibility
may grant authority and power to agents performing within cultural areas such as food,
music, or fashion—authority and power that may be used in other fields (Couldry
2003, 29).
The media-made arbiter of taste embodies these structural transformations because
this type of cultural critic is characterized by the combination of professional performances
and media performances: the primary experience of the media-made arbiter of taste is
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within cultural production, such as designers designing fashion, architects shaping
architecture, chefs creating gastronomy, and music producers composing lyrics. Such
cultural production is based on professional skills, knowledge, and expertise, providing the
media-made arbiter of taste with the (traditional) authority typically bestowed on
practitioners of specific professions or crafts (e.g., Parsons 1939). At the same time, the
media-made arbiter of taste is characterized by repeated performances in the media
associated with his or her professional work. These performances could be blogging,
featuring in articles, or participating in reality-formats, lifestyle programmes, television
contest-programmes or game shows, such as Project Catwalk, Hell’s Kitchen, or The X Factor.
In these media (con)texts, the media-made arbiters of taste are acknowledged for their
(“objective”) talent for, for example, cooking, fashion design, or music production, at the
same time as they are expected to convey or perform their subjective views and
personalities. Thus, their authority as cultural critics is also attached to their status as
publicly well-known figures. This public status allows them to perform the role of cultural
experts on gastronomy, fashion, music, and lifestyle, and to provide (subjective) judgements
of taste on, for example, “the good life” (healthy food, sustainable fashion textiles, etc.).
These cross-media performances reproduce their status as publicly known and legitimate
authorities within but sometimes also across cultural fields, because, as indicated, mediarelated
capital can be used in various contexts. British cook Jamie Oliver, for example, not
only performs the role of chef in the media but also becomes a critical voice on food,
gastronomy, and ways of life (e.g., parenting) (Lewis 2008), and thus participates in public
debate on lifestyle issues and the “good life”.
Hence, media-made arbiters of taste are granted access to these media arenas also
because of their charismatic authority, or their combination of cultural and media-related
capital—or, in the terms of Maguire and Matthews (2012), their combination of the
professional and the personal. As a consequence, they will often be bestowed with some
kind of celebrity status (Kurzman et al. 2007). Couldry (2012, 143), for example, argues that
“celebrities are people who have acquired large amounts of media-related capital through
their appearance in media, which, under specific conditions, is available for use in a
number of specific fields”, while Driessens (2013, 552) proposes “celebrity capital” or
“recognisability” as “accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media
representations”. However, the media-made arbiters of taste are not only known for their
charismatic personas performed in the media, i.e., their “well-knownness” (Boorstin 1961)
or “attributed celebrity” (Rojek 2001). They are also known for their cultural production or
“achieved celebrity” (Rojek 2001), because they must have some expertise, knowledge, or
skill in order to become a media-made arbiter of taste, a cultural authority, and thus a
cultural critic or expert in our conceptualization. This implies that the media-made arbiters
of taste are personas, performing both their professional and (semi)-private selves.
Accordingly, the media-made arbiter of taste may follow different paths into the role
as cultural critic by being invited to demonstrate specific talents (e.g., cooking or fashion
design) or by commenting on specific issues in institutionalized (news) media (e.g., food in
public schools or sustainable fashion production). She or he may also blog or tweet on
various cultural issues and launch new ideas of cultural importance on social media.
However, in contrast to the intellectual and the professional journalist, whose authorities
are closely connected to tradition, knowledge, and professionalism, the primary charismatic
authority of the media-made arbiter of taste is fragile. This, as argued by Weber
(1978), is because charismatic authority is primarily bestowed upon individuals perceived
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to have exceptional attributes. Thus, the media-made arbiter of taste only has authority as
long as she or he is viewed as exceptional by the media and by the public. Weakened
media capital, celebrity status, or celebrity capital, on the other hand, entails weakened
authority (Couldry 2012) as cultural critic or arbiter of taste. Just as Kurzman et al. (2007,
363) claim that “Celebrity is status on speed”, the media-made arbiter of taste could
similarly be viewed as a cultural critical agent on speed, quickly accumulating celebrity
capital but potentially fading just as quickly.
Summing up, the media-made arbiter of taste thus combines objective and
subjective evaluations, based on a combination of professional expertise as cultural
producers and personal charisma.
The Everyday Amateur Expert
During the past decade, scholars have discussed whether new digital media
technologies strengthen or challenge democracy (Dahlberg 2011; Dahlgren 2012). It has
been suggested that a more inclusive public sphere has emerged through media
technologies, potentially giving individuals outside established media organizations
voice (Castells 2001; Russell 2011). However, politically focused studies examining the
actualization of this democratic potential apply a sceptical view because old structures
seem to remain relatively unchanged (Hindman 2009; Morozov 2011), nor does digital
democratization necessarily entail more people participating in political democracy (see
also Dahlgren 2012). However, some argue that the cultural public sphere constitutes itself
vibrantly across media platforms (Jenkins 2012; Kammer 2015; Verboord 2014) because
digital technologies have paved the way for a new circuit of cultural critique, involving
professionals, semi-professionals, and amateurs.
Following this line of reasoning, we argue that the amateur is an inevitable figure in
contemporary cultural criticism in the media, not only because she or he provides new
perspectives on cultural debate, but also because the amateur symbolizes a deconstruction
of the division of labour between professionals and laypersons. The emergence of
non-institutionalized media platforms as forums for cultural debate have contested the
hierarchical and elitist logic of especially the printed cultural pages, which for years has set
the agenda for cultural communication, review, and debate in a Northern European
context. Especially since the introduction of WordPress, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.,
in the mid-2000s, the amateur has become a noticeable voice in public debate. Some even
argue that amateurs are “bypassing institutional gatekeepers and experts (like retailers,
journalists, media critics and scholars) for the content generated by their counterparts”
(Verboord 2014, 922).
However, what—or who—constitutes an amateur? Precise definitions of the
amateur are sparse. One recurring but simple definition describes an amateur as someone
who does not make a “livelihood from the activity” (Cox and Blake 2011, 206) but benefits
from the activity by acquiring knowledge and skills, self-actualisation, and gratification,
thus building up a strong identity through activities such as reviewing movies, collecting
posters, discussing specific kinds of literature or popular music, etc. Thus, often amateurs
have other careers but a strong passion for specific additional activities (Cox and Blake
2011, 206). Accordingly, the amateur has historically been defined as “taking the
professional as a counterpoint” (Hamilton 2013, 180). Stebbins (1977, 594), for example,
argues that the amateur is someone who strives to reach a professional level through
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dedication, thus embodying the etymological meaning of “amateur”, i.e., “a lover of” (see
also Hamilton 2013, 179). At the same time, the amateur is a person who either “intends
to join the professional ranks” or a post-professional who “decided to abandon his
profession” on a part-time basis (Stebbins 1977, 594).
However, recent research on “civic journalism”, “citizen journalism”, or “alternative
journalism”—the diverse field has many terms—has more or less explicitly argued that
amateurs and professionals are, at one and the same time, quite different but also quite
similar, and they interact (e.g., Atton 2009). This indicates that we need to reconsider the
professional as a “natural” counterpart of the amateur and vice versa. While the ethos and
authority of the professional is anchored in an institutional, organizational, and, as implied,
professional framing, the ethos of both the amateur and the professional is closely
associated with their passion and capability to structure an argument targeted at a specific
audience. Moreover, amateurs nowadays “sometimes get paid for their efforts” while
“professionals often volunteer their services” (Hamilton 2013, 179). Due to these blurring
boundaries between their worlds, a strict separation of the amateur and the professional
seems neither productive nor reasonable anymore. Or as Atton (2009, 271) puts it, there “is
a significant similarity between the fan as amateur writer and the professional writer as
fan” because the dedicated amateur recognizes and adapts “the standards of excellence
set and communicated” by the professionals (Stebbins 1992, 38).
This designates a complex and dynamic relation between professionals and
amateurs displayed through newer concepts such as “the pro-am” (Leadbeater and Miller
2004), “the produser” (Bruns 2008), and “the prosumer” (Toffler 1980). When writing about
television fans, Jenkins (2012, 86) even proposes the “fan critic” as an emerging critical
institution despite its lack of official recognition. These “new” types of amateurs use a
variety of genres and communities to engage in the public debate, for example, as critics
on culture, providing evaluations and ideas legitimated by their subjective opinions and
experience-based cultural taste. The amateurs participate in many different ways, the most
important ones being as reviewers or commentators on professional cultural products on
news websites (e.g., on movies; Verboord 2014), as reviewers or commentators on other
amateurs’ productions on websites (e.g., reviews of blogs or YouTube productions), and as
producers of fanzines, articles, blogs, and columns on the Web and in the printed press
(e.g., on popular music or television series; Atton 2009; Jenkins 2012). Recent examples of
digital media used as a platform for cultural critique by amateurs—or rather, pro-ams—are
gamers, such as ProJared or PewDiePie, who discuss, test, and rate computer games
online.1
Both have engaged very large communities and represent new ways of reviewing
(and testing) by combining visual insight, gaming skills, and (amateur) experience with
and knowledge on the games, communicated by means of humour, identification, and
personality. Hamilton (2013, 180) argues that these types of amateurs, gamers, and their
peers, e.g., “the reality-celebrity, the social media user, the blogger, the citizen journalist,
the hacker, and the media intern are all roles performed somewhere between the lines of
paid/unpaid, professional/amateur, authorised/unofficial”.
Thus, newer digital media technologies have given ordinary citizens—or the everyday
amateur experts—the opportunity to express subjective opinions and experience-based
cultural taste to an unprecedented extent. They do so primarily by means of a layman’s
authority, authenticity, and credibility, and by facilitating playful identification among
peers. This explains the (potential) shift in division of labour between professional and
non-professional critics. However, due to the multitude of “critical” voices, some of them,
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e.g., ProJared or PewDiePie, paradoxically turn to mobilizing charismatic authority in order
to gain popularity, voice, and thus the power to be critical agenda setters and tastemakers.
Consequently, they come to mimic some of the characteristics of the media-made arbiters
of taste and their mediatized cultural critique.
Conclusion
In this article, we have proposed the concept the heterogeneous cultural critic and
diagnosed four co-existing, potentially converging and competing ideal types of cultural
critics, populating the digital cross-media landscape of the 2010s. By means of this
typology, we have displayed the increasing heterogeneity of cultural critical agents in
today’s mediated cultural public sphere and, in particular, the various grounds on which
their authority and legitimacy as cultural critics rest.
Our typology suggests that the rational and professional authority of the intellectual
cultural critic and the professional cultural journalist—two well-established types of critics
—is challenged and influenced by the charismatic and layman’s authority of the mediamade-arbiter
of taste and the everyday amateur expert—two newcomers currently
transforming and expanding mediated cultural criticism. The typology denotes that these
multifarious cultural intermediaries’ framing of cultural goods and claims to authority and
expertise are anchored in different kinds of capital since personal or subjective
preferences as well as media capital, or celebrity capital, appear to be as important as
cultural capital and thus seem to constitute new types of symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1984;
Couldry 2003, 2012; Dahlgren 2012; Driessens 2013; Maguire and Matthews 2012, 2014).
Our outlining of the four ideal types has revealed that within each type, a variety of
sub-types or sub-agents co-exist, for example, the autonomous, bohemian intellectual, and
the expert associated with academia; the professional cultural journalist grounded in the
norms of the profession of journalism, and the freelance aesthetic occasionally reviewing
or commenting on culture in institutionalized news media; the cultural producer
becoming known in the media and bestowed with media or celebrity capital and the
celebrity connoting cultural capital and/or becoming a cultural producer; the ordinary
amateur or fan writing for pleasure and the pro-am developing a semi-professional brand
and a crowd of peer followers. This suggests that the four ideal types and their many subvariants
have different media institutional ties and different relations to their audiences,
conditioning their particular authority and making them contribute to the cultural public
sphere in quite dissimilar ways. Intellectual cultural critics, for example, are characterized by
independence from media institutional agendas and bonds. They are not hired opinion
makers but offer viewpoints and expertise for free, or for “the public good”, through a
variety of media (books, opinion pieces, etc.). Furthermore, they are driven by their ideas
and convictions and thus address broad audiences or an inclusive public sphere across
cultural tastes, hierarchies, and media segments. Despite the norms of autonomy guiding
journalism, the professional cultural journalist is indeed embedded in media institutional,
organizational, and occupational structures since today’s institutionalized news media
reinforce the personal brand of professional cultural journalists, who, in return, become
trademarks for specific media institutions. The media-made arbiter of taste, like the
intellectual but contrary to the professional cultural journalist, is not part of particular
media institutions. However, contrary to the intellectual and similar to the professional
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cultural journalist, she or he is certainly dependent on institutionalized as well as noninstitutionalized
media for gaining visibility and recognition of her or his aura as persona
and exceptional within cultural production. Finally, the everyday amateur expert is, in
theory, dissociated from institutionalized media outlets even though these may merge
into institution-like (media) groups or communities (see, e.g., Kammer 2015). They typically
reach quite fractioned or specialized audiences or sub-publics, separated from a broader
public discourse, but are still potentially capable of gathering larger groups of particular
peers.
However, a common feature of the four ideal types is that they all need to possess
some kind of cultural knowledge, skill, or expertise in order to gain authority and legitimacy
as cultural critics despite this knowledge taking many different forms: intellectual expertise;
professional journalistic norms and routines; skills as cultural producers; or layman’s
fascination and authentic devotion. Another common feature is the importance of the
media displaying their knowledge and expertise, and supporting, reproducing, or reaffirming
their authority as cultural critics, even though their ways of performing in and thus
communicating by means of media differ. In other words, in mediatized culture and society
(Hjarvard 2013), all four types have to convey some sort of personal charisma through
various types of media to establish their authority and earn public recognition for their
expertise.
The four ideal types can thus be said to reflect various historical periods of transition
that have contributed to “heterogenizing” the critical voices participating in the cultural
public sphere in a Western context. The intellectual cultural critic, who has been part of
public, cultural debate for centuries (e.g., Posner 2001, 26), is still an important figure, but
she or he has been transformed, especially during the past decades, due to reciprocal
societal and media-related changes. The professional cultural journalist as we know him or
her today is very much the result of professional changes in journalism during the
twentieth century (e.g., Donsbach 2010), as well as media institutional transformations,
especially during the past two decades. The media-made arbiter of taste, in the most
extreme sense, exemplifies the mediatization of culture and society alluded to above
(Hjarvard 2013) since the media-made arbiters of taste are a product of the media while at
the same time providing content to the media. Finally, the everyday amateur expert is
facilitated by digital media technologies, which have reconfigured the relations of media
producers and media users, especially since the mid-2000s.
They thus jointly embody the complex and heterogeneous field of cultural criticism
in contemporary media culture. How they more specifically interact and develop new
types of criticism (and authority) within and across cultural fields, and within and across
media, are empirical questions for future research to scrutinize.
NOTE
1. American ProJared has more than 570,000 followers on YouTube (https://www.youtube.
com/user/DMJared/about, accessed April 15, 2015), while Swedish PewDiePie has more
than 36 million followers on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie/about,
accessed April 15, 2015).
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Nete Nørgaard Kristensen (author to whom correspondence should be addressed),
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen,
Denmark. E-mail: netenk@hum.ku.dk
Unni From, Department of Communication and Aesthetics, Aarhus University,
Denmark. E-mail: imvuf@dac.au.dk
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