The sixteen Dionyas questions on criticism and the media settle one thing in the design of their asking: a verdict on music may be asked about only by naming two grounds it could rest on and asking how they differ. The eight questions on criticism ask about the grounds of a verdict, not for a verdict, and none of them asks which work is better. The eight questions on the media treat every medium as an editor that selects a face, a sentence, a version or a story, and ask what the selection adds or leaves out. The chapter shows how, and adds to the two debates of the Introduction: on critics, publics and the media, and on consecration, reputation and classification.
1.1Data and method
The data are Dionyas's public list of inquiries, fetched with plain GET requests and kept as snapshots. The list holds 1,539 inquiries across 32 domains, of these kinds: 759 cases, 500 historical questions, 256 general review designs, 18 chart questions and 6 signal questions. It describes its own type as editorial question design and gives its count of generated judgments as 0. A record has the fields that this study reads: a title, a question, a scope that says what the inquiry covers, a list of the material it needs, a boundary that says what it may not claim, and a state.
The selection rule is one sentence: every general review design in the list that names the domain of criticism and recognition among its domains. There are 8 general designs for each of the 32 domains, and each lists four domains: its own and the three that the studio's domain table links to it. Criticism and recognition is linked to repertoire, identity and media; and of all the domains, only media and programming lists criticism among its links. The rule therefore yields 16 records: the 8 led by criticism and recognition, all in the qualitative lane, and the 8 led by media and programming, all in the evidence lane. The rule was chosen to read the studio's general designs on evaluation, written for no particular case, rather than its historical questions and cases, which make up 115 and 12 of the 135 inquiries led by criticism. None names an artist, a work, an awarding body, an outlet, a market or a year, and none contains a figure.
The appendix gives the records read, word for word. The records are in Korean; every quoted sentence below is from one English translation made for this study, sentence by sentence, with nothing added. Dionyas does not say who drafted these sixteen, and no fact about critics, juries, broadcasters or newspapers is drawn from them. Where a record says what a medium does or a jury decides, that is the record's framing, which this study has not checked.
Two kinds of property are set aside before reading. The studio's form, a scope, needs and a boundary in every inquiry, is not a finding. Nor is frame, wording copied from record to record. Frame is measured here by five-word runs, counting a run as frame when it recurs in at least 5% of a site's records and in at least 3. Across the whole list the titles and the questions hold no frame at all, while the scopes are 46% frame, the needs 30% and the boundaries 41%.
Inside the selection the copying is complete. In all sixteen the scope is the leading domain's name followed by one sentence that every general design carries: the artist, work, market and period it applies to are named when it is recorded. The first need is the leading domain's evidence line from the domain table, word for word; for criticism it asks for the actual work, the published judging criteria, the original texts of criticism and opposing evaluations. The second need is a line shared by all 256 general designs, on the subject, the period, the terms of comparison and counter-examples. The boundary is the leading domain's caution line, again word for word. For criticism and recognition it says that the design does not settle artistic superiority by the results of awards or pretend to speak for an institution; for media and programming, that it does not confuse a medium's editorial direction with the artist's own position.
Inside the selection, then, the scope, the needs, the boundary and the state are 100% frame: two scopes, two need lists, two boundaries and one state among sixteen records. The two boundaries state the studio's stance, copied into every design of a domain, and this study does not read them as findings. What is each record's own is its title and its question: sixteen distinct titles and sixteen distinct questions, which hold 0% frame at the site's threshold and inside the selection. These are the evidence.
The questions share a shape. Every one ends in a single question mark. Fifteen of the sixteen open with a situation, a clause that begins when, where or if, before the question proper; every one names two or more things side by side or against each other; eleven ask what, which or where, four ask how, and one can be answered yes or no. Six of the sixteen ask in so many words that two things be told apart, discussed separately, not confused or reviewed together. Every number in this paper comes from a script that reads only the snapshots, by simple word tests on the Korean original; the counts describe the records and nothing else.
1.2Asking for the grounds, not the verdict
The first finding is that the eight questions on criticism never ask for a verdict on a work. Each names a situation in which evaluations diverge or shift, sets two possible grounds of evaluation beside each other, and asks where or how they differ. The plainest instance puts success itself on one side.
Between reading a work without knowing its sales and rank and reading it knowing its results, where do the grounds of criticism change?
The question imagines two readings of one work, one blind to its commercial results and one aware of them, and asks where the grounds of criticism change between them. It does not ask whether knowing the sales corrupts criticism, nor whether criticism should ignore them. It assumes that the grounds may change and asks for the place where they do. Allen and Parsons, The Institutionalization of Fame (2006), propose that consecration is affected by prior recognition and media discourse as well as by achievement. This study reads the question as a small experiment with that mixture, set up for a single reader before any verdict: take the prior recognition away and see what is left standing.
The second question multiplies the evaluators.
When awards, reviews and fans respond differently to the same work, how do the standard of achievement each recognises and the actual experience of listening differ?
Awards, reviews and fans are named as responses to one work, and the question does not rank them. It sets each one's standard of achievement beside something none of them owns, the actual experience of listening. Shrum, Critics and Publics (1991), finds that critics' verdicts go with larger audiences only in highbrow genres, and concludes that the operative aesthetics of popular and highbrow genres are distinct. On this study's reading, the question takes a divergence like the one Shrum measures as its starting point, though his study is of reviews and audiences and not of awards, and asks for its content: not whether juries, critics and fans agree, but what each counts as an achievement, and how far each count is from what listening gives.
Two questions take apart what a single word of praise can hold together. The first separates finish from novelty.
When comparing the contribution of a work that carries out an existing genre's grammar with precision and that of a work that opens an unfamiliar expression, how are finish and novelty to be discussed separately?
The second separates a category from an accomplishment.
When an album that crosses several genres and languages does not fit the award categories well, what must be looked at so as not to confuse the difficulty of classifying it with the work's achievement?
The first question names two kinds of contribution, doing what a genre asks very well and opening something it does not yet have, and asks that they be argued separately. Regev, Producing Artistic Value (1994), describes how critics claimed artistic status for rock by consecrating albums as masterpieces and by defining a sonic language as genuine. This study reads the question as refusing to let either of these claims stand for the other: a masterpiece in a known grammar and a break with that grammar are both contributions, and the question asks that neither be measured with the other's rule. The second question names the moment when classification gets in the way of judgment. Lena and Peterson, Classification as Culture (2008), describe genres as a system of symbolic classification that organises people and songs. The question takes an album that the system cannot place, because it crosses several genres and languages, and asks what to look at so that the trouble of filing it is not read as a failing of the work.
The question on praise and censure asks about the critics' own disagreement, and it is the only one of the sixteen that names a critic.
Reading the critics' counter-examples together
Where strong praise and harsh criticism take the same passage as their ground, what difference in aesthetic standards, rather than in the perception of fact, divides the judgments?
The case it sets up is precise: strong praise and harsh criticism point to the same passage. Since both rest on what is there, the question reasons, they do not disagree about a fact, and it asks what difference in aesthetic standards divides them. van Venrooij and Schmutz, The Evaluation of Popular Music in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands (2010), compare the use of high art and popular aesthetic criteria in reviews and find them used in different proportions in different countries. This study reads the question as moving that comparison inside a single disagreement. It does not ask which critic is right. It asks that the disagreement be described as a difference of criteria, which is the kind of difference that the comparison of reviews can make visible, and the title asks that the opposing verdict be read together with the first rather than set aside.
Time enters with the question on re-evaluation.
When an album whose response was weak at the time of its release is re-evaluated years later, what context of society, genre and audience has changed, rather than the work itself?
The question excludes one answer in advance, that the work has changed, and asks for the context that did. Lang and Lang, Recognition and Renown (1988), find that where preservation was not assured, posthumous reputation depended on the artist's own efforts, on interested survivors, on links to the cultural archives, and on retrospective interest that rediscovers an artist as the representative of emerging identities. Allen and Lincoln, Critical Discourse and the Cultural Consecration of American Films (2004), describe the retrospective consecration of films and find that critics act in effect as reputational entrepreneurs; Schmutz, Retrospective Cultural Consecration in Popular Music (2005), extends that analysis to albums. On this study's reading, the Dionyas question asks the same thing of a single album, and asks it in the form those works answer it: as a change in society, genre and audience. It does not name the critics or the writers whose discourse might have carried the re-evaluation, and so the reputational entrepreneurs that Allen and Lincoln find at work stay outside the question.
The question on judging without an institution's name brings the boundary of the domain into a question of its own.
To review a work's artistic merit without standing in for the position of a particular awarding institution, how are the published categories and criteria to be recorded apart from our own interpretation?
This is the only question of the sixteen that speaks of "our own interpretation", and the only one that names an institution. It accepts that an awarding body has published categories and criteria and that a reviewer may use them. What it asks is how to keep two things apart in the record: what the institution has published, and what the reviewer makes of the work. Allen and Parsons hold that the legitimacy of a consecration project depends on the cultural authority of the organisation and the rigour of its selection procedures. This study reads the question as a reviewer's refusal to borrow that authority. The reviewer may cite the institution's criteria, but may not let the citation pass for the institution's verdict, nor let a personal reading pass under the institution's name.
The last of the eight turns from the critic to the artist.
If, in a review, the concrete production choices that can be fixed are told apart from differences of taste, what is the feedback the artist will take and the disagreement to be left standing?
The question divides a review into two kinds of statement: remarks about choices in the making that could be done otherwise, and differences of taste. It asks which feedback the artist will take, and which disagreement remains. The phrase left standing matters. The question does not expect a review to be settled; it makes room for a disagreement that is neither accepted nor refuted.
Read together, the eight questions describe an evaluation of evaluation. Each takes a verdict that criticism or a jury might give, and asks first what it would rest on: on knowledge of sales, on a standard of achievement, on finish or on novelty, on a category, on an aesthetic criterion, on a change of context, on an institution's criteria, on taste. The debate on consecration describes these grounds after the fact, in the history of films, albums and halls of fame. The Dionyas questions ask an evaluator to name them before the verdict, and none of them asks for the verdict itself.
1.3The medium as editor
The second finding is that the eight questions on the media treat each medium as an editor whose choice can be taken for the artist's own. Every one of them names something a medium selects or shapes, a character, a sentence, a scene, a version, a press release, an appearance, a representative, an amount of exposure, and asks what the selection adds, leaves out or costs.
The first question is about a face.
When a programme stresses a particular character more than the music, what different effects can arise for new recognition and for long-term musical identity?
The question puts the choice of what to stress with the programme. It names two effects that may part ways, recognition among people who did not know the artist and the artist's musical identity over a long time, and asks how they differ.
The second is about a sentence.
When only one sentence of a long interview spreads as an article or a short video, does the interpretation of the person change once the original question and the remarks before and after it are checked?
This is the one question of the sixteen that can be answered yes or no. It names the medium's cut, one sentence lifted from a long interview, and the way back to the whole, the original question and the remarks on either side. It does not assume that the interpretation will change. It asks whether it does, and so leaves open that a sentence read in context may say what it seemed to say.
The third question is about timing.
If, after an appearance on a music show or an entertainment show, searches and listening move on different days, which scene of the programme is linked to the next action?
Two kinds of response are kept apart by their days: searching for an artist and listening to the music. The question asks which scene of the programme leads to the next step, which, on this study's reading, makes the scene, a choice made in the programme, the unit of inquiry. Shrum's finding that the visibility of reviews matters more than their evaluative function is about critics, not programmes. This study reads the question as asking a related thing of a broadcast: which part of the attention it gives turns into listening, and on what day.
The fourth question sets reach against intention.
When a version suited to radio programming changes the length and expression of the original song, how are wider access and the work's intention to be reviewed together?
Here the medium does not only select; it asks for a different object, a version whose length and expression differ from the original song's. The question does not ask whether the radio version should be made. It asks how two goods are to be reviewed together, the wider access the version brings and the intention of the work as first made. It is the only question of the sixteen that asks for two things to be reviewed together rather than told apart.
The fifth question is the one that brings criticism into the media domain.
Should repeated news be taken as independent evaluation?
Where several outlets have rewritten the same press release, how is the volume of coverage to be told apart from independent criticism and interest?
It is the only one of the eight media questions that names criticism. The case is exact: many reports, one source. The volume of coverage looks like a crowd of independent voices; the question asks how to tell it apart from criticism and interest that arose on their own. This is, on this study's reading, Shrum's distinction between visibility and evaluation turned into a test for a reader of the press. Shrum finds that reviews matter through the visibility they give more than through their verdicts. The Dionyas question addresses the case where coverage gives visibility and carries no independent verdict at all, and asks that the two not be counted as one. Verboord, The impact of peer-produced criticism on cultural evaluation (2013), finds, in film reviews, that the differences between print, webzines, blogs and amateur postings are continuous rather than dichotomous, blurring media boundaries. The question draws its line elsewhere, not between kinds of outlet but between rewriting a release and judging on one's own.
The sixth question is about the newcomer.
Between a short appearance on a major broadcast and a long interview on a small music channel, which conditions matter more in conveying the expression of a newcomer not yet known?
It is the one media question that does not open with a situation. It sets two media against each other, large and brief against small and long, and asks which conditions matter more for conveying the expression of someone not yet known. It does not ask which medium is better for a career; it asks what conveys the expression.
The seventh question crosses borders.
When local media introduce a particular artist as the representative of a country or a genre, what of the actual differences between works and of the industrial context is left out?
The medium's choice here is to make one artist stand for a whole country or genre, and the question asks what the choice omits: the differences between actual works and the industrial context. Janssen, Kuipers and Verboord, Cultural Globalization and Arts Journalism (2008), find that newspapers' coverage of foreign culture stays concentrated on a few countries. This study reads the question as asking about the same concentration from the other side, inside the story told about one artist: when attention to another country's music is narrow, one name may be asked to carry it all, and the question asks what falls out when it does.
The last question weighs exposure against work.
Where back-to-back appearances raise recognition but cut the time to prepare the music, which exposure is to be kept and which reduced for the next activity?
It names a trade within the artist's own time: appearances raise recognition and take away the time to prepare music. The question asks which exposure to keep and which to reduce. It is the only question of the sixteen that asks what to keep and what to reduce, and even here it asks which exposure, not whether to appear at all.
Taken together, the eight questions describe the medium as a maker of selections: the character a programme stresses, the sentence an article lifts, the scene that leads to listening, the version radio needs, the release many outlets repeat, the format a newcomer is offered, the representative a foreign press chooses, the amount of exposure a schedule allows. In each the question asks what the selection adds or leaves out, and in each the artist's own expression, intention or identity stands on the other side. To the question of what coverage does besides judge, the design answers that it selects, and keeps the selection in view, apart from the artist.