ABSTRACT
The academic significance of popular culture studies has been already legitimized. This phenomenon is closely related to the mainstreaming of cultural studies in communication studies, and sociology and anthropology as well; meanwhile, the changing nature and perspectives of popular culture itself have contributed to its increasing importance in academia (Lent & Fitzsimmons, 2013). As in cultural studies research, the qualitative method, like historical analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography (participant observation), textual analysis and in-depth interviews are intensively utilized in studying popular culture. The first book that covered Asian popular culture broadly was Asian Popular Culture (Lent, 1995); the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movements was launched in 2000, following the first Inter-Asia Cultural Studies conference in Taipei in 1998 (Chen & Chua, 2007). In the last decade, Cultural Studies, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the Journal of African Cultural Studies and the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies have all appeared within the SSCI journals by Thomson Reuters. Therefore the importance of popular culture studies in academia has been consolidated.
