Live or recorded? Reassessing the “decline of the highbrow arts” debate using European newspaper data, 1960–2010

Figures & data

Table 1. The proportion of articles on different highbrow arts according to year (percentages).

	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010	Average
Architecture	0.9	0.8	1.4	1.1	1.3	0.9	1.1
Ballet/modern dance	1.0	2.0	2.1	2.6	1.6	2.2	2.0
Classical music	14.1	13.7	12.5	12.5	7.1	7.4	10.6
Literary fiction	10.3	5.7	11.4	10.8	10.3	12.7	10.2
Theatre	20.5	18.4	10.8	9.2	5.9	4.8	10.6
Visual arts	7.2	7.4	6.6	6.8	6.0	5.4	6.5
Non-highbrow articles	46.0	51.9	55.3	57.0	67.8	66.7	59.1
Total (N)	100 (1380)	100 (1887)	100 (1404)	100 (2089)	100 (2798)	100 (2217)	100 (11,775)

Table 2. The proportion of articles on “live” and “recording” formats of the cultural products discussed according to year (percentages).

	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010	Average
Live	62.0	65.9	52.4	46.0	39.3	32.9	46.8
Recording	38.0	34.1	47.6	54.0	60.7	67.1	53.2
Total (N)	100 (732)	100 (940)	100 (845)	100 (1177)	100 (1687)	100 (1442)	100 (6823)

Table 3. Articles on highbrow arts according to year, the format of the cultural product discussed in the articles, and their interaction effect. Odds ratios (with 95% confidence intervals in brackets) and Wald statistics from logistic regression analysis.

	Unadjusted	Model 1	Model 2
Decade (Wald)	214.02***	75.20***	7.46***
1960 = 0	0.80***	0.84***	0.93**
	[0.78, 0.83]	[0.81, 0.87]	[0.88, 0.98]
Format of the cultural product (Wald)	780.58***	601.42***	291.74***
Recording (ref.)	1.00	1.00	1.00
Live	4.25***	3.93***	7.16***
	[3.83, 4.70]	[3.52, 4.38]	[5.71, 8.98]
Decade × Format of the cultural product (Wald)			36.50***
Decade × Recording (ref.)			1.00
Decade × Live			0.82***
			[0.76, 0.87]
Constant		0.47***	0.33***
χ^2 change of the model		1063.76***	36.96***
Nagelkerke pseudo R^2 change		0.193	0.006

Notes: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Models 1–2 include control variables for the newspaper, the number of cultural pages, the size of the article, and the type of the article. N = 6817.

Figure 1. The proportion of articles on all highbrow arts (left) and classical music (right) according to year and the format of the cultural product discussed in the articles (percentages).

Table 4. The proportion of highbrow and non-highbrow articles in the newspaper data according to year; articles on “live” and “recording” formats of the cultural products discussed separately (percentages).

	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010	Average
Live
Highbrow	78.9	72.7	67.0	63.7	54.8	54.6	64.9
Non-highbrow	21.1	27.3	33.0	36.3	45.2	45.4	35.1
Total (N)	100 (454)	100 (619)	100 (443)	100 (542)	100 (663)	100 (474)	100 (3195)
Recording
Highbrow	39.2	29.3	30.1	32.8	27.1	30.0	30.3
Non-highbrow	60.8	70.7	69.9	67.2	72.9	70.0	69.7
Total (N)	100 (278)	100 (321)	100 (402)	100 (635)	100 (1024)	100 (968)	100 (3628)

Note: The differences according to the years are significant at the level of p < 0.001 in the case of articles on “live” cultural products, and at the level of p < 0.01 in the case of articles on “recording” cultural products. The difference between the articles on “live” and “recording” cultural products are significant at the level of p < 0.001 across all years.

Table

	Country	Circulation 1960	Circulation 2010
ABC, used for 1960–1970	Spain	180,000^a	249,539^b
El País, used for 1980–2010	Spain	–	370,080^b
Dagens Nyheter	Sweden	341,000^c	298,200^b
The Guardian	UK	264,695^d	282,002^b
Helsingin Sanomat	Finland	251,492^e	383,361^b
Le Monde	France	166,000^f	319,022^b

^a Davara Torrego (2005). ^b IFABC (2013). ^c Gustafsson and Rydén (2010) (the number given is from 1958). ^d Taylor (1993) (the number given is from 1961) ^e Tommila, Ekman-Salokangas, Aalto, and Salokangas (1988). ^f Kelly, Mazzoleni, and McQuail (2014).

Table

	N	%
Highbrow/non-highbrow articles
Highbrow articles	4816	40.9
Non-highbrow articles	6959	59.1
Year
1960	1380	11.7
1970	1887	16.0
1980	1404	11.9
1990	2089	17.7
2000	2798	23.8
2010	2217	18.8
Newspaper
ABC/EP (ABC/El País)	2768	23.5
DN (Dagens Nyheter)	2522	21.4
GU (The Guardian)	1739	14.8
HS (Helsingin Sanomat)	2836	24.1
LM (Le Monde)	1910	16.2
Format of the cultural product
Recording	3628	30.8
Live	3195	27.1
Missing (no suitable cultural product in the article)	4952	42.1
Number of cultural pages
1–2	2409	20.5
3–5	3866	32.8
6–10	2255	19.2
11 or more	3245	27.6
Size of the article
Smaller than a quarter page	6787	57.7
At least a quarter but less than full page	4129	35.1
Full page or more	843	7.2
Type of the article
Reviews and commentaries	4508	38.3
Journalistic reports (features, interviews)	2080	17.7
News and previews	2939	25.0
Other (announcements, lists, etc.)	2248	19.1
Total	11,775	100.0

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