Cultural industry, mystification and mass consumption: Technology at the service of “digital entrepreneurs”

This paper aims to discuss the dialectic between the virtual social network Instagram© and the role of “digital entrepreneurs” in contemporary times. The theoretical framework, based on Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1985), recovers aspects underlying the Cultural Industry, mystification, and mass consumption. We establish a transposition of Frankfurt to evaluate the effects of technological instrumentalization in modernity. We argue that critical thinking obliteration has, diachronically, chained subjects in a state of minority conditioning them to various forms of self-preservation, enabling circumscribed masses to enter the digital entrepreneurship domains through virtual social networks. The results point to critical reflections on the effects of the Cultural Industry today and raise broader reflections that could subvert the application of digital technologies, rationalizing them at the service of society rather than ideological interests.

Keywords:
Frankfurt School; Enlightenment; Digital technologies; Dialectic; Cultural Industry