Politicization of the Creative Elite as Reflected in Digital Public Space (Analysis of Political and Cultural Codes and Narrative Schemes)

Abstract

The dialectics of confrontation and cooperation between the world of art/culture and the world of politics has always been a relevant and controversial issue. But for the first time, modern digitization of everyday life has enabled an incredibly extensive debate about the attitudes and activities of celebrities from the world of culture, while simultaneously considerably expanding their influence on public opinion. Owing to new informational technologies, private “kitchen conversations” transformed themselves into interviews, personal video blogs, and reports, leaving their private space and becoming accessible for Internet users. Incidentally, the producers and consumers of information have remained geographically located in the same proverbial “intellectual kitchens”. Hence, the increasing opposition of creative elites, as well as emerging communication technologies necessitate their analysis as a new challenge to current political realities. In most cases, views of critically-­minded people from the creative spheres are transmitted through social networks, because they are denied access to television, even to entertainment channels. This article is aimed at exploring both the motivations and modalities / forms of politicization of the creative elite. Approximately one hundred interviews with celebrities from the spheres of culture, art and show business, posted on YouTube channels, served as a source of the empirical data. The analysis of the narrative patterns and the politico-­cultural discussion codes of the personal experience of the politicization of creative intellectuals is an important contribution to understanding the specificity of modern public deliberations and of the ways of constructing a dialogue between the public and the power.