The popular culture and the civic engagement of university students

Abstract

The huge potential of popular culture shaped and transmitted over “mass-media” and “new” media is noticed. At the same time, they are criticized due to their content and their influence on human actions and social relations. A number of social researchers refer to the submission of media to popular culture and entertainment, promoting of immaturity of the recipients and in consequences withdrawn from the public sphere. On the other hand, the popular culture is consider as a factor important for development of the human capital, the bonding social capital, individuals identity and society’s cohesion. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between popular culture and the civic engagement of youth. First, the basic assumptions of popular culture- civic engagement relations are introduced. The second section is based on the chosen findings of author’s pilot study into the field of The youth identity formation in the mobile society era (N=92). The mutual associations between the popular culture consumption of university students and their level of civic engagement are analysed. The research results show statistical significance of the positive relationship in the sample between analysed factors. The higher is level of students’ cultural participation and media consumption, the higher is level of their civic engagement. The article concludes with the explanation of those findings, which may be considered surprising in light of popular culture criticism.