1)    Before the Algorithm: The Long Arc of “Making” Culture

 Long before social media, mass media served as a cultural machinery.  Critical theorists of the Frankfurt School (e.g., Max Horkheimer, with Theodor Adorno) argued that industrial capitalism had routinized culture into standardized products that encouraged conformity—what they called the culture industry—anticipating contemporary concerns about manufactured consent and commodified lifestyles.  This historical context sheds light on the roots of our current cultural manufacturing landscape, providing a deeper understanding of the issue.

In the U.S., post-World War II consumerism supplied the economic engine.  Flush households, suburbanization, and television diffusion created a marketplace where brands linked identity to goods, using narrative and image to anchor meanings that could be bought, collected, and displayed.  The period’s growth in disposable income and retail formats (malls, catalog retail) paired with marketing’s strategic use of symbols to normalize mass consumption as a way of life.

At the same time, content rules curated values onscreen.  The Hays Code (1934–1968) enforced moral clarity and sanitized depictions; its replacement by the MPAA ratings in 1968 enabled segmentation by age band and more adult themes—changing both what stories could be told and how studios priced and marketed them.

2) Television, News, and Agenda: Who Decides What We Think About?

Through the 1960s, U.S. prime time essentially offered escapist genres even as network news showed war, civil rights, and political crises; the “relevance movement” of the late '60s/early ’70s brought social conflict into sitcoms and dramas, narrowing the gap between entertainment and the nightly news.  This shift didn’t just reflect society; it reset the boundaries of advertiser tolerance and audience expectations.

In the 1970s, programs such as All in the Family made race, gender, and class conflict the plot—and won top ratings—demonstrating that culture could be profitably manufactured around candid debate rather than polite consensus.  Meanwhile, the miniseries (e.g., Roots) proved that ambitious, issue-driven storytelling could deliver both scale and prestige.  These programming choices illustrate agenda-setting effects: media rarely tell us what to think, but they strongly influence which issues we consider salient—the distribution model matters.  HBO’s subscription launch (1972) and satellite expansion (1975) reduced reliance on advertiser vetoes, enabling bolder content while teaching viewers to pay for access—a key step toward today’s paid digital ecosystems.  Museum collections and television histories further demonstrate how production geographies and archival practices influenced what survived to Impact later generations.

3) Profit Motive in Action: Eventization, Branding, and the Blockbuster

By the mid-1970s, studios discovered the economics of eventized culture.  Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) pioneered wide releases, seasonal “tentpole” scheduling, and massive marketing tie-ins, proving that manufactured anticipation could concentrate attention and drive outsized returns—then monetize across merchandise, licensing, and (later) home video.  This financial model enabled the creation of cultural moments to become a core business function.

On television and in advertising, brands increasingly traded on identity and emotion—associations deliberately built to influence not just purchases but self-concept.  Media theory frames these as socialization and consensus functions: content transmits norms and stitches together majority viewpoints, often aligning with commercial incentives to sustain demand cycles.

4) The Platform Turn: Algorithms, Attention, and the New Gatekeepers

In the digital age, platform algorithms intermediate culture at scale.  Most U.S. adults now use social media, with YouTube and Facebook being the most dominant platforms, and a rising share (especially among younger users) getting news directly within these platforms.  This shifts agenda-setting power from editors to algorithmic systems that prioritize engagement, reshaping what topics trend and which narratives rise.

Public sentiment reflects unease: large majorities believe tech companies wield too much political power, and Americans hold mixed views about the algorithmic detection of misinformation.  These attitudes underscore the perception that cultural flows are no longer neutral but are instead engineered by firms that optimize engagement and revenue.

Conceptually, the digital information society amplifies this dynamic by making information abundant, instantly shareable, and economically central.  That abundance increases reliance on algorithmic curation, creating new gatekeepers whose rankings and recommendations subtly manufacture what seems popular, regular, or urgent.

5) Design for Behavior: Nudges, Dark Patterns, and Self-Censorship

Behavioral design and dark patterns—interfaces that steer choices—extend cultural manufacture into micro‑interactions.  Research and policy discussions highlight how digital marketing practices can undermine autonomy and justify expanded scrutiny under unfair trade standards.  When platforms engineer friction (or reduce it) to boost sign-ups, sharing, or watch time, they embed profit motives directly into cultural habits.

Classic media theory suggests that agenda-setting and censorship/self-censorship (including industry “self-regulation”) remain enduring tools of influence in both legacy and digital systems—another reminder that cultural outputs reflect institutional choices about what is promoted, suppressed, or withheld.

6) The Creator/Influencer Economy: Manufacturing at the Edge

Today’s cultural manufacturing is also decentralized.  The booming influencer market—forecast to exceed $30 billion globally by mid-decade—turns millions of creators into micro-studios, whose content subtly blends lifestyle, values, and commerce.  Brands expand their budgets because creators outperform many paid ads in terms of trust and conversion; platforms adopt this model to deepen engagement and increase ad inventory.

This sits atop audience behavior: a majority of adults receive news on social platforms at least sometimes, and creators are increasingly enlisted to “translate” news or social causes for their followers—blurring the lines between editorial, advocacy, and advertising.  Industry analyses detail how marketers standardize KPIs and broaden influencer use beyond social media feeds (OOH, TV, retail), intensifying the fabrication of trends through cross-channel repetition.

7) So, How Much Is Manufactured?

A practical way to think about it is a spectrum of influence:

·         Organic culture (peer practices, subcultures, art scenes) that later gets noticed.

·         Curated culture (editorial and playlist choices; festival programming);

·         Optimized culture (A/B‑tested formats; algorithm‑led scheduling and thumbnails);

·         Programmed culture (tentpoles, franchise universes, synchronized drops);

·         Engineered culture (behavioral nudges, agenda-setting campaigns, brand‑purpose activations).

Media sociology and theory suggest that modern systems tend to slide toward levels 3–5 as scale increases, because industrialized communication rewards repeatable formats, cross-channel amplification, and data-driven iteration.

The upshot: while the origins of cultural ideas are often grassroots, wide diffusion typically passes through infrastructures—networks, algorithms, and marketing budgets—that manufacture salience and durability.  That doesn’t make culture fake; it means power and profit help decide which versions win the spotlight.

8) What To Do About It (for citizens, policymakers, and investors)

Investors and citizens: diversify your information sources (utilize multiple outlets and formats), be aware of platform incentives, and verify the origin of a “trend” to determine if it is driven by campaign spending or coordinated seeding.  Empirical studies demonstrate the increasing dependence of news discovery on platforms; awareness serves as a form of insulation.

For policymakers: target transparency and choice—auditable recommendation settings, clear disclosures around paid partnerships, and enforcement against deceptive dark patterns—to mitigate manipulation without prescribing culture.  Existing frameworks around unfair practices and concerns about digital power provide precedent.

For investors and operators: recognize manufactured culture as a moat and a risk.  Eventization and creator partnerships can compound returns, but reputational whiplash and regulatory headwinds are real; a balanced slate across tentpoles + trust-rich creators with clean disclosures is less volatile.  Historical shifts in TV and film economics demonstrate the benefits of new distribution models (e.g., HBO) when combined with effective brand management.

Conclusion: Manufactured—But Not Monolithic

From the culture industry critique to algorithmic agenda‑setting, the throughline is clear: institutions with capital and distribution shape a sizable portion of everyday culture because the payoff—attention, legitimacy, and revenue—is enormous.  However, culture keeps escaping its manufacturers: communities remix messages, creators subvert scripts, and new technologies open fresh channels.  The real task is not to lament manufacturing, but to see it, demand transparency, and cultivate pluralism, so that what we live by reflects more than the pursuit of control and profits.

Sources (selected)

• Media theory & sociology:oxfordreference+1
• Media functions, agenda‑setting, censorship:oxfordreference+2
• Post‑war consumerism & branding:history+1
• Film/TV regulation & shifts: Britannica+1
• Television History & relevance movement: Britannica
• All in the Family/miniseries:televisionacademy+1
• Distribution (HBO): Britannica
• Blockbusters:britannica+1
• Digital platforms & news:pewresearch+1
• Public attitudes toward Big Tech & algorithms:pewresearch+1
• Information society & infrastructure:oxfordreference+1
• Dark patterns and online marketing practices: FTC
• Influencer economy:statista+1