Platform capitalism and administrative culture: theoretical discussion of the algorithmic culture industry

Abstract

Contemporary digital culture is shaped by algorithmic dispositifs that, beyond managing access to content, organize aesthetic experience according to principles of profitability, efficiency, and segmentation. Under platform capitalism, the promises of innovation, diversity, and participation are functionally integrated into the logic of cultural administration and instrumental reason. While platformization introduces far-reaching technological innovations, it also reproduces key continuities with the mechanisms of standardization and control characteristic of mass society, as described by Critical Theory in its critique of the culture industry. Through a conceptual reconstruction grounded in a dialectical perspective, and informed by a critical theory and political economy of communication and culture, the article examines contemporary phenomena such as algorithmic pseudo-individualization, digital aestheticization, and predictive personalization. The continuities and mutations of administered culture are explored considering the regime of the algorithmic culture industry. This article, as a theoretical contribution, foregrounds negativity emerges as a central category to interrogate its limits and conditions of total administration, not only offering a critique of its mechanisms of social reproduction and integration, but also reclaiming the possibilities for transformative resistance it still holds.