Abstract

The article explains what is meant by ›ranked lists of the popular‹. ›List‹ is used here as a generic term. Rankings of the popular are, among other things, those representations that include the quantitatively determined data of voting records of very many people who are not identified as experts. Examples of such popular rankings include the results of political elections, opinion polls,music charts, book bestseller lists and trending topics. Such lists make a decisive contribution to the assertion of the popular. In this respect, the popular is conceptualized in a different way than in many current theories of popular culture, in which the quantitative dimension plays a lesser role. In the second part, the article looks at previous researchoncharts, rankings and lists and examineswhether their results can be used to assess the rankings of the popular.