TEFMJ Trends in Economics, Finance, and Management Journal TEFMJ 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press 89 Research Article Intertwinement of Culture Industry, Technology and Mass Consumption: A Scoping Review Celik Bilal Bayburt University, Bayburt, Türkiye 01 01 2025 6 2 43 51 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This essay uses Horkheimer and Adorno’s work on the culture industry to analyze the link between technology and mass consumption. While the digital world has enormous potential to facilitate communication, transcend spatial boundaries, and promote free expression, the utopian promise of this world is undermined by their mirroring of real-world market systems, the exploitation of labor, and the blurring of the line between entertainment and consumption. The culture industry thesis provides a useful starting point for theorizing the digital world and explaining why this place has become a mirror of mass consumption. Within this scope, this study aims to provide conceptual clarity and to contribute to efforts of theorization, considering three main concepts, namely, culture industry, technology, and mass consumption, and correlations between them, which were analyzed based on existing literature.

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