Social and symbolic boundaries in newspaper coverage of music, 1955–2005: Gender and genre in the US, France, Germany, and the Netherlands

Abstract: Musical classifications involve symbolic distinctions that are often linked to social categories, including gender. This paper addresses the relationship between social and symbolic boundaries in the US, Germany, France, and the Netherlands by looking at the distribution of media attention to various music genres as well as to male and female actors in newspapers from each country between 1955 and 2005. While the increasing legitimacy of popular music, as indicated by its growing share of newspaper space, seems to signal a decline in traditional musical hierarchies, it does not appear to weaken social boundaries based on gender. Although women often receive more attention in popular music coverage than in classical music coverage, their inclusion appears to be limited to more peripheral genres. In other words, as certain popular genres climb the aesthetic hierarchy, the media attention they receive tends to become more male-dominated. Thus, as musical hierarchies shift and new genres gain legitimacy, social hierarchies based on gender remain intact over time and across the four countries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]