CALL FOR PAPER: Putri Ariani, Golden Buzzer, and the Euphoria of Popular Culture/Communication
Special Issue Editor: Dr. Dian Arymami, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia
The name Putri Ariani skyrocketed after the 2023 America's Got Talent (AGT) Golden Buzzer. AGT is one of the biggest reality talent shows under the Got Talent franchise, and it has won the attention of the global audience. Putri Ariani’s video went viral and became the top trending topic on social media in various countries. Originating from Riau, Indonesia, the nation fled with joy and pride. The young singer became a celebrity with massive coverage in television shows, news, and social media. She guest stars in various interviews and even played in the national presidential palace at the request and invitation of the Indonesian President. The young singer became a media feast, a topic of conversation among citizens with growing discourses regarding the inequality of perspectives of people with disabilities, education and care for children, development of personal potential, and even debates on political interests upon her popularity. Putri Ariani hit the spotlight of Indonesian media, dissecting her life as an inspirational, definable, talented young woman.
The virality of Putri Ariani became a phenomenon in this contemporary society. It is crucial to highlight this phenomenon from a space and time perspective, as these two components highlight the societal context that drives multifaceted dynamics in today's society. Today's contemporary society, known as information, can be described with various terms, such as digital capitalism (Schiller, 2000), information capitalism (Morris-Suzuki, 1997), or informational capitalism (Castells, 2000; Fuchs, 2013). Manuel Castells has seen this growth of communication technology as the fundamental source of productivity and power and constitutes a new social morphology of society (Castells, 2000, p. 21). The various perspectives on today’s society may spur endless debate but highlight the significance of assessing the intertwining media, communication, and technological developments within social dynamics.
In an information society, the rise to stardom in Putri Ariani’s phenomenon cannot be separated from the interplay of media and society. The integration of media in social lives has escalated into meta-processes that influence every sector of society, known as mediatization (Strömbäck & Esser, 2014; Hepp, Hjarvard, & Lundby, 2015). Hence, it can be seen as a part of the growing economy of attention (Simon, 1971), also called the attention economy (Davenport & Beck, 2001; Van Krieken, 2019), where attention becomes the currency of the economic system. It may entail the process of celebritization (Driessens, 2013) that operates within mediatization, commodification, and personalization. The media functions across levels of society and is constantly evolving and influencing the growing media industries, known through the concept of ‘media economics’ (Albaran, 1996). It simultaneously draws critics to the social condition of such a capitalist society (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1989; Debord, 1994; Baudrillard,1994, 2016).
The phenomenon of Putri Ariani is inseparable from the complexity of the growing popular culture in today's digital society. I-Pop, The International Journal of Indonesian Popular Culture and Communication invites various studies regarding the phenomenon of Putri Ariani from diverse perspectives, including, but not limited to, issues related to celebrity, gender, political economy, audience, marketing, commodification, and digital media.
Theme
“Putri Ariani Phenomenon”
Sub-theme
- Celebritization, Celebrification, and Media Digital
- Globalization and Media Economy
- Identity, Minority, and Gender
- Representation and Commodification
- Audience and Spectacle Society
- Celebrity branding, music branding, nation branding, cultural branding
- Digital Communication Strategies
Writing Guidelines
Please refer to the author guidelines of the I-Pop Journal at https://ojs.bakrie.ac.id/index.php/I-POP/Author.
Language
English or Indonesian (with a title and abstract in English)
Important Dates
Submission Deadline : 31 August 2024
Publication Date : 31 January 2025
References
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Albarran, A. D. (1996). Media Economics: Understanding Markets, Industries, and Concepts. Iowa State University Press.
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press.
Baudrillard, J. (2016). The consumer society: Myths and structures. Sage.
Castells, M. (2000). Toward a Sociology of the Network Society. Contemporary Sociology, 29(5), 693-699. https://doi.org/10.2307/2655234
Davenport, T. H. & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of business. Ubiquity, May 2001, 1–es. https://doi.org/10.1145/376625.376626
Debord, G. (1994, 1967) The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books
Driessens, O. (2013). The celebritization of society and culture: Understanding the structural dynamics of celebrity culture. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(6), 641-657. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877912459140
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Goldhaber, M. H. (1997). The attention economy and the Net. First Monday, 2(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v2i4.519
Hepp, A., Hjarvard, S., & Lundby, K. (2015). Mediatization: theorizing the interplay between media, culture, and society. Media, Culture & Society, 37(2), 314-324. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443715573835
Morris-Suzuki, T. (1997). Re-inventing Japan: nation, culture, identity. London: Taylor & Francis
Schiller, D. (2000). Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Simon, H. A. (1971). Designing Organizations for an Information-rich World. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 37–52
Strömbäck, J. & Esser, F. (2014). Mediatization of Politics: Towards a Theoretical Framework. In: Esser, F., Strömbäck, J. (eds) Mediatization of Politics (pp. 3-30). Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137275844_1
van Krieken, R. (2019). Georg Franck’s ‘The Economy of Attention’: Mental Capitalism and the struggle for Attention. Journal of Sociology, 55(1), 3-7. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783318812111
About Guest Editor
Dr. Dian Arymami is a media and cultural studies scholar from Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She specializes in intimacy studies, popular culture/communication, gender studies, and new media studies. Her latest book, Redefining Intimacy: Behind Urban Infidelity (Redefinisi Keintiman: Di Balik Perselingkuhaan Kaum Urban), is one of her academic concerns with a contemporary phenomenon.
