Of old the idea exists that art critics work autonomous when they select and criticize a cultural product. However, theories and studies have shown that art critics are influenced by factors outside the artwork itself, for example the reputation of the artist. Besides this fact, the role of the journalistic criticism in the daily papers has changed in the last decades. Factors that contributed to these changes are the fade of the borders between forms of ‘high’ art and ‘low’ art, the commercialization of the artworks and the influence of digitalization and the advent of web 2.0. These changes can result in a consistency between the attention for art and cultural products in daily newspapers and the commercial success of the product. This consistency has been analysed in this thesis. This thesis specifically focuses at the patterns of attention in newspapers for books and movies based on these books. Besides this, the difference between media attention for books and movies and ‘popular’ cultural products and ‘literary’ cultural products has been studied. The results show that there is still a difference between traditional ‘high’ cultural products and ‘popular’ cultural products. The findings of this thesis confirm that an autonomous art criticism does not exist and that the role of art criticism in newspapers has changed.

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Dijk, Dr. N, van
hdl.handle.net/2105/10975
Media & Journalistiek
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication

Christiaansen, C.M. (2011, August 31). Het boek was beter. Media & Journalistiek. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2105/10975