Digital media and practices have fundamentally changed our understanding of the public sphere and play an increasingly important role in the formation of political opinion. Especially populist movements and authoritarian governments are using digital tools to spread their often right wing rhetoric and symbols. However, radical views are not only shaped in the political field. Popular culture is also crucial for the dissemination and normalisation of radical or populist narratives: not only among a broader public, but also among protest movements or alternative cultures. Its different formats and products are often the means by which collective desires and trends as well as social unease and civic upheaval find an appealing form and come to play an often over-looked part in the formation of political opinion.

But what is the relationship between technological progress (‘digital tools’), political opinion-forming (‘radical views’) and popular culture (‘appealing aesthetics’) in specific historical and cultural contexts? Are certain trends in popular culture only characteristic of populist and authoritarian regimes, or are they rather a symptom of a more general social transformation? The workshop aims to explore these questions from a comparative perspective, looking at the recent past and present of Eastern Europe.

The admission is free, no registration required.

Program:

Thursday, 13 February 2025

11.15: Rethinking Populism and Popular Culture

Matthias Schwartz (ZfL): Adjustments to the Public: Rethinking Popular Culture in Digital Times

Svetla Koleva, Niya Neykova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia): Rethinking Populism with Pierre Rosanvallon

14.15: Popular Culture as a Weapon

Oleksandr Zabirko (University of Regensburg): Naming the Enemy: Popular Culture in Ukrainian and Russian War Rhetoric

Vyara Angelova (Sofia University): Weaponizing Sound: Technology, Power, Cultural Codes

16.15: Musical Heritage, Mapping Sounds

Zhana Popova (Sofia University): The West and the Soviet Union in the Autobiographies of Bulgarian Estrada Musicians after 1990

Aleksandra Kolesnik (Bielefeld University/ZfL): Signifying the Rock Heritage of Ekaterinburg (Russia): The Experience of Creating an Online Map

Friday, 14 February 2025

10.00: Mobilizing the Past and the Present

Milla Mineva (Centre for Liberal Strategies/Sofia University): Memes of the World, Unite! Travelling Memes and How They Mobilize Social Groups

Nina Weller (ZfL): Contested Past. Historical “Heroes” as Figures of Resistance in Pop and Protest Music

12.00: Conservatism and Populism in Digital Media

Aleksandra Szczepan (University of Potsdam): Polish Tradwives: Popular Culture and Digital Media in the Service of Conservative Identities

Veronika Hermann (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest): Populism and Popular Media in Illiberal Hungary

15.00: Roundtable: Popular Culture, Digital Media and Populism