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Abstract

Objective: The international university ranking lists as reported in the public discourse in Greece, fuel arguments for making important decisions about higher education. This paper detects the main principles of these lists and their methodological problems. It also analyzes their reconstruction by the mass media to highlight the ways that the issues on the universities reform are included in their agenda influencing the public debate, as well as the attitudes of various fragments of the academic community, and contributing to the reorganization of the higher education system.

Methods: The most publicized ranking systems and their basic methodological problems were analyzed, considering the relevant literature and research. The ways in which these rankings were presented in the public discourse during the last two years have been analyzed, focusing on the daily and weekly press. The quantitative and qualitative methods of content and critical discourse analysis were employed, and indicators for impartiality and integrity of presentation were measured. Indicators for infotainment – and more specifically the type and the tone of writing about the Greek universities and the global rankings – were also measured.

Results: The findings show that the discourse on the international rankings that appear regularly in the Greek press is biased and incomplete. Features of infotainment are also found in the reporting and news about global university rankings. The findings indicate clearly the political and ideological functions of this discourse as well as the necessity to distinguish between quality assurance and assessment of the education and research processes on the one hand and the hierarchical rankings on the other. They also show the severe negative consequences that the unreserved adoption of these rankings may have for both the strategic plans of the academic institutions and the policy on the higher education. The analysis of the findings shows also that the discourse on the global rankings in the Greek press cultivates systematically positive stereotypes about hierarchical classifications, commercial rankings and competition in the academic field while it produces and reproduces negative stereotypes about the Greek Universities, suggesting the idea that the academic field is not a field where questioning flourishes, knowledge and innovation are produced, but a field of fierce competition without rules that generates winners and losers. Finally, the paper discusses the contribution of the findings in the debate on the assessment and quality assurance in the academic institutions and the need to reflect on what “success” and “failure” might mean in the global commercial university rankings.

Last Updated: 07 November 2016

Abstract

This paper presents the main points of an empirical research on the uses of music by the university student population in a Greek regional urban center (Alexandroupoli). This is a quantitative research on a representative sample of 400 students to trace the influence of several factors on the uses of this particular cultural good. The literature review shows that little research has been done to study the influence of personality traits and social values on cultural consumption. In this study, these variables were included along with gender and the field of studies.

Participants indicated their values on an abbreviated version of the Schwartz Value Survey and their personality traits on the Big Five Inventory scale. Statistical analysis of the data (principal component analysis and hierarchical regression) confirmed the following hypotheses:

1. The operationalization of the consumption of music revealed more types of uses compared with those found in the literature.
2. Social values influence the uses of music.
3. Individual differences, traced by studying personality traits, contribute in predicting the various uses of this particular cultural good.
4. The field of studies (natural or social sciences) influences the various uses of music.
5. Gender is also one of the factors that contribute in predicting the various uses of music.

Finally, the paper presents the main conclusions of this research which highlight the multidimensional nature of cultural consumption and the need to develop similar research on different types of cultural goods.

Last Updated: 07 November 2016

Abstract

The paper explores the complexities of collecting statistical data on the music industries. It is based on the generally accepted assumption about the contribution of culture to the development - the so-called "cultural turn" realized on a global level during the last decades of the twentieth century. This turn has been expressed both in theory and practice through - on the one hand - the shift from the notion about the cultural to the concept about the creative industries, and on the other, through decisions made, policies developed and institutions created about the creative economy and the creative industries. However, analysis shows that the Greek case seems to contradict and lag behind these developments due to several reasons. Hence, there is a rather problematic situation concerning the collecting, processing and distributing data on the complex set of music-related activities, goods and services.

Two main interrelated issues - a political and a methodological one - are discussed on this basis:

• On the one hand, data is needed for developing appropriate policies to support the growth of a music sector able to contribute to the development of the country. On the other hand, investment in infrastructure, technical support, and expertise development in this field, are impossible under the dominant political mindset for horizontal cuts regardless of consequences and future costs. The paper discusses this paradox.
• Secondly, it analyses – on this background – the complex methodological issues raised by the current nomenclatures and classifications of products, services and economic activities from the perspective of the data needed on the music industries for research and policy making.

If there is something positive in the Greek case concerning the lag behind the developments, this may be the opportunity to elaborate and improve the methodology for collecting, processing and distributing data on the music industries (and other sectors of the cultural production as well). The paper concludes with a suggestion to resolve both issues mentioned above.

Last Updated: 07 November 2016

Abstract

The paper takes a critical stance toward the dominant notion of a single music industry and outlines a far more complicated and contradictory system: the system of the music industries. Some recent trends in the development of the recording industry as part of this broader system, are also discussed. A main argument developed in this paper, is that understanding recent developments and the crisis of the recording industry requires a broader perspective that includes the process of creative destruction in the context of globalization, as analyzed by Tyler Cowen, as well as the six facets of the production of culture at large, as explicated by Richard Peterson.

In terms of this perspective, the paper discusses some of the basic features of the recording industry in Greece and describes some of its recent developments to the extent that this is possible in a conference paper. Several peculiarities of the Greek case, are presented and associated with the features of the symbolic production in the capitalist periphery and at large as well. Research shortcomings are explained on the basis of political and economic reasons and the technophobic attitude of this industry is discussed. In contrast with the recording industry rhetoric, the paper holds that the current crisis is rather the crisis of a specific section within a particular sector of the music industries. What the recording industry experiences as a destruction – the paper maintains – might be a creative destruction for the system of the music industries, the creators, and the audiences.

Finally, the paper concludes that investing in research and development of new business models instead of litigation and wars against technology – as the recording industry has done throughout the last century – might be more fruitful and efficient. It might even help to find a way out of the labyrinth of the current creative destruction, as well.

Last Updated: 07 November 2016