Media and Cultural Classification: Cultural Hierarchy in European and U.S. Elite Newspapers, 1955 to 2005.

This paper seeks to elucidate over time changes and cross-national variations in the status of popular art forms through a comprehensive content analysis of the coverage given to arts and culture in elite newspapers of four different countries - France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States - in the period 1955-2005. The authors explore how cultural hierarchy is affected by specific features of these societies and their respective journalistic and cultural production fields. The four countries show significant differences in journalistic attention to high and popular art forms. Throughout the period of study, the New York Times, and, to a slightly lesser extent, French elite newspapers generally devote more attention to popular art forms than their Dutch and German counterparts. In accounting for cross-national differences in the coverage given to popular culture, field level factors like market structure and relationship with local industries seem more important than more remote societal factors such as national cultural repertoires, the level of societal openness and social heterogeneity ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]