Spaces of mass media: “modern” and “postmodern” approaches

The paper proposes a comparison of two opposing views on the mass media. One of them is a classical theory of the Frankfurt School of the “modern” era (“Dialectic of Enlightenment” M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno), which researches the impact of mass media on the consciousness and behavior of an individual. The other one is based on the work “Transparent Society” written by an Italian theorist of postmodernism D. Vattimo. The second approach views mass media as a tool facilitative in representing chaotic information and entertainment, as well as modern ideological clichés. A conclusion on the consistency of the chosen approaches described on the metanarrative level as well as their applicability for a volumetric analysis of such complex and ambiguous phenomenon as mass media is drawn.