From Culture Industry to Information Society: How Horkheimer and Adorno’s Conception of the Culture Industry Can Help Us Examine Information Overload in the Capitalist Information Society

Abstract

In the contemporary so-called information society, which is first and foremost a capitalist society, information and information-artifacts are increasingly commodified; a development that serves the interest of powerful elites. A central problem in the capitalist information society, both on a societal and an individual level, is the phenomenon of information overload. As the problem of information overload becomes acute, its dialectic relation to the concept of information society is revealed. Horkheimer and Adorno’s thoughts about the mechanisms of the culture industry, it’s role in the structures of late capitalism, the interplay between the culture industry and the subject, as well as the individual’s and collective’s agency offer us interesting insights when addressing the capitalist information society and the phenomenon of information overload.