Short Answer Questions (please refer to research uploaded)

1. How is the audience commodity produced? And by who? Who buys this commodity and why?

2. According to John Cheney-Lippold, our identities online are algorithmic. What does he mean by the term “algorithmic identity”? Explain how our identities are formed online.

3. John Storey argues that “the term ‘popular culture’ is not as definitionally obvious as we might have first thought. A great deal of the difficulty arises from the absent other which always haunts any definition we might use” (13). What is the absent other? What absent other(s) do Horkheimer and Adorno (“Culture Industry”) and Adorno (“On Popular Music”) invoke in their critique of the popular culture produced by the culture industry?

4. Why does Adorno argue that the “necessary correlate of musical standardization is pseudo individualization” (para 23)?

5. Various scholars you have read for this course (Sayr and King, McKee, McKee et. al., and Horkheimer and Adorno) have, albeit with some overlap, differed in their respective definitions of entertainment.* How would you define entertainment in terms of the three main elements/points that you think are most important? From the various definitions of entertainment we’ve discussed, choose three points (from one or a combination of scholars) which you think best defines entertainment.

6. Why is the entertainment industry characterized by a high degree of risk? What are some of the ways in which the entertainment industry has mitigated risk?