The Media Society
The Media Society

Summary/Abstract: There are several approaches to diagnosing contemporary society, but many authors define it as a media society. The main characteristic of this type of society is, paraphrasing Descartes, I am mediated, therefore I am, I am not mediated, therefore I am not. This article refers to the famous work by Horkheimer and Adorno, representatives of the Frankfurt School, Dialekthik der Aufklaerung, a work where cultural industries are first defined as industries of producing truth. In the media society, interrogations become contextual, contemporary culture restricts values and has a paradoxical result globally. Gianni Vattimo discusses in his papers the unexpected effect of the media society; the contemporary human being stops understanding the world as a whole, a fact the Italian philosopher considers positive as a unitary picture of the world is characteristic to totalitarian systems.

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