Pop-culture as a factor of Socialization: the Opportunities for Empirical Analysis

The article offers the systematic analysis of the issues related to the sociological research of popular culture at theoretical and empirical levels. The former level of analysis deals with the definitions of pop-culture in comparison with the closely related concept of mass culture as well as interdisciplinary endeavours to conceptualize the range of topics related to popular culture. Furthermore, the functions of popular culture as well as its socialization opportunities (both positive and negative) are outlined. As far as the empirical analysis is concerned, the above-mentioned issues have yet received little attention. The sociological analysis tools usually comprise nothing but youth leisure preferences and value orientations theme-based modules which are not infrequently supposed to confirm the negative influence of television on socialization. The authors put forward another approach to the empirical study of the impact of popular culture with the focus on the analysis of identification models represented in «texts» of popular culture. An example illustrating the application of the given approach (the content-analysis of the youth magazine «Molotok») is provided in this very item.