Evaluating and reflecting upon Theme 2

As I approached this week's theme, the mix of topics did not really make sense to me. Enlightenment, myth and mass media seemed like quite a strange combination. But after reading the text and attending the lecture it all made more sense. I must say that reading the text and understanding the concepts of it was this week a little bit easier compared to last week. I think this was both because of me getting used to the writing style and concepts presented in these kind of philisophical texts, but also because of this text being more concrete in its ideas and concepts in my mind. The authors examplified their reasonings with more hands-on media phenomenons which invited the reader to more easily get the full picture, I believe.

It was interesting to get a little more background of the text and its authors during this week's lecture. I actually looked up some on the authors myself even before the lecture as I was interested by my impression of the authors being somewhat a little bitter between the lines. And reading up on their background, I do not think it is strange for that being the case. One can only imagine how it was to witness the development of World War two first hand. To witness it as jewish and also being forced to migrate, must of course have been even more hopeless. When you take this background into account, it is understandable that the two had developed the specific critisism about mass media and the culture industry as they had. If there was any time in history where media was swarmed by deception and propaganda, the time of the second World War does of course rise as a top contender.

As I read through the blog posts of this week's theme I get struck by the fact that pretty much everyone mention that the text feels very applicable on today's society. This was something I thought about and wrote myself. I think this is quite interesting as the text is about culture and media, something that in my mind is everchanging - at least always developing into newer forms. Nevertheless, the foundations that modern media and culture relies on are still the same compared to these earlier days of mass media. Propaganda still exists, but most often in more variegated forms, and the deception of mass media is evident daily, however in more minor forms as well. One might argue that the work of a journalist, tweaking a story to get a more commercialized story, is a form of deception. That Adorno & Horkheimer's text was written in the wake of World War two makes their examples very evident and clear, which - in my opinion - increases the quality of it, as it becomes easier to understand and easier to apply on other time spans in history.

I think it was a great thing to add a question for the blog posts regarding own thoughts about concepts or ideas that you found interesting yourself. It enjoyed to get enlightened by competent own thoughts on topics varying from social control to branding terminology. More of that please!