News Brief: Consumer Society and the Curation of Culture
Added 2018-11-21 16:13:57 +0000 UTCFocus groups have long-been derided by the left, right, and center for watering down culture and reducing creative and political endeavors to dull, show-of-hand reductionism.
But what if focus groups – which first arose from socialist experiments in 1920s Vienna – are not inherently bad? What if they've simply been exploited by the capitalist class and could, potentially, have much to offer a left-wing, democratic vision of the world?
We are joined by author and professor Liza Featherstone to discuss the problems and potential of the much-maligned, but often scapegoated, focus group.
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Guest
Liza Featherstone is an author, professor of journalism, and a contributing editor to The Nation, where she also writes the advice column “Asking for a Friend.” Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., Slate, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. She is the editor of False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton (Verso, 2016). Her latest book is Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation (OR Books, 2017). Follow Liza on Twitter @lfeatherz.
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Show Notes
Liza Featherstone | February 20, 2018 | The Baffler
Talk is cheap: the myth of the focus group
Liza Featherstone | February 6, 2018 | The Guardian
Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation
Peter C. Baker | December 13, 2017 | Pacific Standard
Mass communication, popular taste, and organized social action [PDF]
Paul Lazarsfeld & Robert Merton | 1948 | The Communication of Ideas
Veronika Duma & Hanna Lichtenberger | February 10, 2017 | Jacobin
The Good Life: Reshaping Society and Social Values through Public Housing in Red Vienna
Mason J. Herleth | Spring 2018 | Vanderbilt Historical Review
Focus Groups Should Be Abolished
Malcolm Gladwell | August 8, 2005 | Ad Age
Home of Coke Laments Change In Winning Formula
William E. Schmidt | April 26, 1985 | The New York Times
New Coke Hater Crusades For The Real Thing
Tom Shales | June 14, 1985 | The Washington Post
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Transcript
For a full transcript of this extended interview, go here.
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