Mass Culture and Popular Culture

By way of simplification, the term “mass culture” is often used interchangeably with the term “popular culture”. However, the scope of popular culture is broader. “Popular” is not always synonymous with “mass”. According to the sociologist A. Kłoskowska, mass culture is based on standardisation and unification of content aimed at reaching the broadest possible audience through the so-called mass media, i.e. high-circulation press, cheap books, commercial radio stations, and the popularisation of American film and TV productions. ^[1]

Rather than getting bogged down in long-winded sociohistorical definitions, let us look at the difference in the meaning of the two concepts using the example of a play staged in the theatre, which obviously belongs to “high art” (see Postmodernity – Fusion of High and Low Art), yet the same play broadcast as a television production already belongs to “mass culture”. Therefore, the difference rests on the medium, and not the content, because any content can be popularized or spread among the masses. Of course, anything popular can have mass reach and vice versa.

The industrial revolution was the “butterfly effect” that caused a “cultural tsunami”. Wave after wave, the world has been flooded with “cocktails of content” turning it into a global village. This brutal process of change began with the invention of the printing press, then the radio and television, and finally personal computers, the Internet, and mobile phones. These latest inventions are favoured by us – the “third wave” generation. ^[2]