Internet, or the society without spectacle

Abstract

The concept of “the society of the spectacle” has been one of the main axis around which the critical discourse on mass media has been articulated. Internet, as a mass media, seems to fall outside the radar of the concept, inaugurating what in this article is called “society without spectacle”. The more than necessary critical discourse on media and mediated communication should be articulated, from now on, bearing in mind the possibility that, at least in part, the spectacular logic is decaying. Against the background of Guy Debord’s book, The Society of the Spectacle (1967), this article analyzes the limits of this concept in order to provide an operative description of the current media ecosystem, its logic, its rhetoric and its effects.