Mitologie e potere simbolico. Bourdieu tra società di massa e piattaforme digitali = Mythologies and Symbolic Power. Bourdieu between Mass Society and Digital Platforms

Abstract

Mythologies and Symbolic Power. Bourdieu between Mass Society and Digital Platforms. Drawing on Bourdieu and Passeron's Mitosociologia, this article examines the theoretical construction of mass media as a mythical device capable of explaining social transformation through the presumed uniform effect of communication technologies. Starting from the categories of mass, mass culture and mass media, the study reconstructs how massmediological discourse turns historically situated relations into abstract and homogeneous entities, erasing class differences, social trajectories and the material conditions of cultural consumption. Through the concepts of habitus, symbolic violence, disciplinary power and control, the article then shifts the analysis from media as autonomous causes to the institutions and dispositifs that organize access, recognition and legitimacy. Finally, it argues that this mythical device has not disappeared with the decline of the twentieth-century massmediological paradigm, but has been reconfigured in contemporary discourses on platforms and algorithms, where technical systems are often invested with the power to shape practices and consciousness while obscuring the social mediations that make their effects possible.