A new popular music research project in Finland

The Starnet. Changing Discourses of Popular Music Stardom. This research project deals with the relationship between the star phenomenon and popular music. The main questions of the project are: How is popular music stardom constructed at specific historical moments? What kind of meanings popular music stars incorporate? Stardom is characterised by different media-oriented public actions which form a web-like texture. The project calls this discursion the starnet. In order to understand traditions and changes in this discursion, as well as the triumph of stardom in the latter part of twentieth-century, the project produces three studies. Docent Kari Kallioniemi examines the democratization of eccentricism in British stardom and popular music. MA Kimi Kärki focuses on Anglo-American stage designing and the multifaceted relationship between “stadium rock stardom” and technology. Dr Janne Mäkelä explores how Finland’s quest for international popular music stardom in the late tw
entieth-century was connected to globalisation processes and national identity.

The project has funding from the Academy of Finland from August 2005 to December 2007. http://users.utu.fi/kierka/populus.html