Populism and Popular Culture

Popular culture has served as a theatre of populist politics. This entry examines the concepts of populism and popular culture and demonstrates the interlinkages between the two by analyzing the world’s most dominant popular culture, i.e., American culture. It does so critically in examining the sites of popular culture and its utilization by politicians and media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in America. The entry also considers the close links that populism and popular culture share with the exercise of citizenship rights and concludes on the note that populism despite its shortcomings serves as a bridge between the intellectuals and the people.