Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet

by Christian Fuchs

This book contributes to the foundations of a critical theory of communication as shaped by the forces of digital capitalism. One of the world's leading theorists of digital media Professor Christian Fuchs explores how the thought of some of the Frankfurt School's key thinkers can be deployed for critically understanding media in the age of the Internet. Five essays that form the heart of this book review aspects of the works of Georg LukAcs, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Axel Honneth and Jürgen Habermas and apply them as elements of a critical theory of communication's foundations. The approach taken starts from Georg LukAcs Ontology of Social Being, draws on the work of the Frankfurt School thinkers, and sets them into dialogue with the Cultural Materialism of Raymond Williams.

Critical Theory of Communication offers a vital set of new insights on how communication operates in the age of information, digital media and social media, arguing that we need to transcend the communication theory of Habermas by establishing a dialectical and cultural-materialist critical theory of communication.

236 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2016

About the author

Christian Fuchs is a leading critical theorist of communication and society. He is a Professor at the University of Westminster, co-editor of the open access journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism and Critique, and the author of Digital Demagogue (Pluto, 2018) and Social Media: A Critical Introduction (Sage, 2017) amongst other works.

Reviews

[Siri · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I will use some parts of this book in my masters, I feel I should say that it gave me something to think about. But this book is hastily made lacking in concepts, and at this point, all the technology from the book is more or less obsolete.
It’s full of numbers in parentheses, but no explanation on what they mean, and that is so frustrating.