Research Report
Background and introduction
Since we have been in the era of information, we are exposed to and absorb many various information resources. The ubiquity of information has made people feel it is hard to see the differences between popular and academic culture. Hence, the accuracy of the definitions of the two cultures has been hard to distinguish. This study is going to talk about two issuespopular and academic culture. The purpose of this paper is to show some of the differentiations between popular and academic culture, and how these work in the processing and evaluation of information. Moreover, this paper will focus on using analysis toolspurpose, audience, evidence, style & languageto elaborate the characteristics of popular culture and academic culture, and to evaluate how accurately we can differentiate examples of the two cultures.
This paper will use some examples to help us to understand what kinds of products belong to popular culture and what kinds of products belong to academic culture. Magazines and advertising are typical examples of popular culture while lecture notes, textbooks and dictionaries represent academic culture.
This paper will use Storey 's work on popular culture (1998) to provide definitions of popular and high culture. We also refer to Gibbs ' explanation of different learning styles (1992) to explain the relationships between surface & deep learning and how it might succeed to popular & academic culture. Also this paper will apply Shermer 's study of what kind of information leads us to wrong thinking (1997), providing us tools to analyze the reliability of information in both popular and academic culture.
So, these sources help us to identify relevant examples for analysis. The specific analysis of these sources emphasizes the importance of reliable analysis, and the definitions of both popular and academic culture present a clear boundary to discriminate their