Online Communities: Streaming, Subcultures, and Digital Cultural Agency

Day and time: Friday (March 20) · 14:00–15:30
Location: Info Center
Format: Talk

Languages and streaming services in Eastern Slavia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022

Presented by: Aleksej Tikhonov

My talk investigates linguistic and media dynamics in Eastern Slavia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, focusing on the intersection of language choice and digital music distribution. Building on a comparative analysis of streaming data, lyrics, and online communication by prominent Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian artists, the study examines how platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and Yandex Music have become key arenas for linguistic and ideological negotiation. Special attention is given to the pragmatic use of Ukrainian and Russian in contemporary popular music, where code-switching and language shift often reflect broader sociopolitical realignments. The research highlights how streaming services and musicians' management mediate audience exposure to national languages and identities, reinforcing or challenging linguistic hierarchies historically shaped by Russian dominance. The talk reveals how digital distribution both accelerates and exposes changes in language and political attitudes across post-Soviet cultural spaces. Ultimately, it argues that the act of choosing a language on global streaming platforms constitutes a form of symbolic resistance or affiliation, situating Eastern Slavia’s linguistic transformations within the larger context of cultural sovereignty and media globalization after 2022.

Is Lofi Hip Hop Dead?: the functionalisation of a genre

Presented by: Joseph Coughlan-Allen

Streaming has transformed musical practices, not least due to how platforms have framed music as a ubiquitous means of mood regulation and activity management. This paper examines the potential effects of this hyper-functionalisation on the production, curation, and reception of music, using lofi Hip Hop as a case. This sub-genre of Hip Hop emerged in the early 2000s with a rough sound quality, messy grooves, and irregular structures. After crystallising within online communities, it was repackaged and mainstreamed in the mid 2010s as “beats to relax/study to” by streaming platform curators. Since then, practices of production, curation, and listening surrounding the genre have shifted in response to this functional framing, “smoothing” the music’s defining characteristics and leading many to ask “is lofi Hip Hop dead?”. Drawing on Netnographic observation, this paper examines how these changes have been experienced and navigated in online communities, how they are interpreted as signs of broader hegemonic mechanisms, and how OG lofi Hip Hop is remembered.

Reviews in your face: how album reviews were used to shape the subcultural field of Dutch Hip Hop

Presented by: Alex van der Hulst

Around 2000, American Hip Hop was at a crossroads with many artists choosing either commercialism or underground. Hip hop was also entering a new phase in the Netherlands. During this period, the next generation of Dutch-language Hip Hop artists emerged. At the same time, a Dutch Hip Hop platform called Hiphop In Je Smoel (in English: Hip Hop In Your Face) was launched online. As part of what Thornton calls niche media (Thornton 1995, 160), Hiphop In Je Smoel (HIJS) prefers to review underground Hip Hop and Dutch Hip Hop. This means that HIJS fits the definition of niche media that does not invent the Hip Hop subculture, but shapes it, marks its core and reifies its borders. As part of ongoing PhD research into Dutch music reviews, I examined the album reviews published in the first three years of Hip Hop In Je Smoel's existence. I coded the evaluation domains of the reviews using a model that I also used to examine music reviews in four other Dutch music magazines (Hitweek, OOR, Vinyl and Bassic Groove). As with other music styles in other niche media, HIJS places particular emphasis on the underground and takes a critical stance on commercialism. I can show how Dutch Hip Hop receives explicit attention and how reviewers assume the role of producers of meaning (Regev, 1994).