[Go to annotation](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/G65NGSHM?page=null&annotation=JUX9LUHD) “They coined the term "culture industry" to signify the process of the industrialization of mass-produced culture and the commercial imperatives that drove the system. The critical theorists analyzed all mass-mediated cultural artifacts within the context of industrial production, in which the commodities of the culture industries exhibited the same features as other products of mass production: commodification, standardization, and massification. The culture industries had the specific function, however, of providing ideological legitimation of the existing capitalist societies and of integrating individuals into its way of life.” ([“The Frankfurt School”](zotero://select/library/items/WG56JK2E)) The first is the industrial principle of standardization and commodification. Just as a factory produces identical cars, the culture industry produces formulaic and predictable cultural products, stripping art of its critical potential and transforming it into a mere commodity [Go to annotation](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/G65NGSHM?page=null&annotation=PQ2MICZD) “mportant agents of socialization, mediators of political reality, and should thus be seen as major institutions of contemporary societies with a variety of economic, political, cultural and social effects.” ([“The Frankfurt School”](zotero://select/library/items/WG56JK2E)) Twenty-first century brought us digital social media platforms. They quickly evolved from tools of communication to a force of organizing life, restructuring economies, mediating political realities, and shaping the human subjectivity [Go to annotation](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/G65NGSHM?page=null&annotation=6NDEHY2M) “from a site of rational debate into one of manipulative consumption and passivity. In this transformation, "public opinion" shifts from rational consensus emerging from debate, discussion, and reflection to the manufactured opinion of polls or media experts. For Habermas, the interconnection between the sphere of public debate and individual participation has thus been fractured and transmuted into that of a realm of political manipulation and spectacle, in which citizen-consumers ingest and absorb passively entertainment and information. "Citizens" thus become spectators of media presentations and discourse which arbitrate public discussion and reduce its audiences to objects of news, information, and public affairs. In Habermas's words: "Inasmuch as the mass media today strip away the literary husks from the kind of bourgeois self-interpretation and utilize them as marketable forms for the public services provided in a culture of consumers, the original meaning is reversed" (1989: 171).” ([“The Frankfurt School”](zotero://select/library/items/WG56JK2E)) digital space shifts human engagement from active communication to curated subjectivity. Related Links: [[Digital Government]] [[Intersubjectivity]] [[Social Norms]] [[Communication]] [[Media]] [[politics]] [[Herbert Marcuse]] [[Max Horkheimer]] [[Theodor Adorno]] [[Walter Benjamin]]