Political messages in popular culture : an examination of political messages in pop-culture music videos

Abstract

The youth in the United States and other countries are apolitical because of their minimal consumption of traditional news, higher consumption of entertainment media and on-line news sources, as well as lower voter turnout in comparison with other age brackets (Shearer & Gottfried, 2017). Some scholars (Sloam, 2007; Henn and Foad, 2012) respond that youth are politically involved but their methods of political engagement have changed. They note that youth get information from such entities as Facebook, music videos, blogs, continually evolving online news sources specifically targeting them, and other non-traditional informational outlets. This study examines political messages in popular culture, more specifically in music videos, and analyzes three well-known popular songs to determine the political themes in the visual and lyrical presentations. The study uses symbolic convergence theory to analyze how group coherence works in fantasy chaining in the three music videos and outline the processes artists use to attempt to engage youth in political messages and information through entertainment and music videos. This study also examines arguments concerning political and apolitical youth, since much of society perceives youth as high consumers of popular music but low participants in political engagement.