My Experience with Pop Culture, Representation and Identity

The term ‘pop culture’ has different meanings depending on who is defining it and the context of use. It is generally recognized as people’s culture that predominates in a society at a point in time, it also involves the aspects of social life most actively involved in by the public, as the ‘culture of the people’, it is determined by the interactions between people in their everyday activities, their styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals and the foods that people eat, gym, sports, lottery are all examples of non-digital pop culture (“Pop culture: an overview”, 2007).

We also have the digital pop culture which are mobile phone devices, music, film, television, radio, video games, eBooks, internet and many more. My experience with the mobile phone devices and how it has shaped my experience considering the social aspect is that it is a pop culture that has been important communication tool as it was built to enhance social contacts, used in checking the latest news, weather conditions, setting alarms, listening to music and playing games. It helps in maintaining physical and psychological health when family members are far away from home. This pop culture contributes negatively to social attitudes or behaviour with the rate at which people are overusing, misusing and abusing its use.

Continuous use may mean spending too much time and being distracted. Economically, increase levels of mobile phone subscriptions are linked with improvements in education and higher level of economic growth compared to when there was none. It provides new services and applications that provide opportunities to generate income and lowers the cost of transmitting and acquiring information. Political relationship with mobile phone is its use in spreading information by giving updates on political events, news and campaigns. The internet enables people to be more involved in democratic participation, follow all political actions through videos, pictures and real view of what is happening. Lotteries as a pop culture run for or by governments are economically used in supporting public programs such as infrastructure development, public safety, public health and education. Studies have found that the burden falls disproportionately on people with lower incomes, who typically spend a greater portion of their income on lotteries than those with higher income, it is a burden because the odds are worse than other forms of gambling (“EconoMeter: Does the lottery have any economic benefit? ”, 2012).

According to one expert, the dynamic is as follows: “Voters want states to spend more, and politicians look at lotteries as a way to get tax money for free”, lottery promoters believes illegal gambling already exists, a state-run lottery is an effective device both for capturing money for public purposes that otherwise would disappear into criminal hands and also for suppressing illegal gambling (National gambling impact study commission, 2000). Lotteries are undeniably a pop culture that is culturally and socially phenomenon. They are operated on almost all the continent around the world with both young and old being part of the programme.