Entertainment Content and Popular Media: The Digital Pulse of Modern Culture

Ribeiro, M. H., Ottoni, R., West, R., Almeida, V. A., & Meira, W. (2020). Auditing radicalization pathways on YouTube. Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 131-141.

Film and Cinema: Major Hollywood blockbusters, independent films, and international cinema that provide immersive storytelling experiences.

Based on the findings of this review, several recommendations can be made:

Early media theory often viewed popular entertainment with suspicion. The Frankfurt School’s concept of the "culture industry" (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944) argued that mass media produced standardized, formulaic content designed to pacify audiences and reinforce capitalist ideology. In this view, entertainment was a tool of social control. Conversely, the "uses and gratifications" theory (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973) posited that audiences are active consumers who select media to fulfill specific needs, such as identity formation, social integration, or simple diversion.