Modern mass media matured alongside the shift to monopoly capitalism from the 1880s

Evidence

The third phase coincides with the transformation from first-stage to second-stage industrial capitalism, or from laissez-faire to what is rather ambiguously called advanced “monopoly” capitalism. This “long,” uneven, and in many ways uncompleted transition, lasting from about the 1880s—through popular imperialism (in which the new popular press took deep root); the “remaking” of English working-class culture (Stedman Jones, “Notes on the Remaking of a Class”) and the rise of suburbia; the concentration and incorporation of capital; the reorganization of the capitalist division of labor; enormous productive and technological expansion; the organization of mass markets and of mass domestic consumption, etc.—to the present. This is the phase in which the modern mass media come into their own, massively expand and multiply, install themselves as the principal means and channels for the production and distribution of culture, and absorb more and more of the spheres of public communication into their orbit. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 915

Categorization

• XREF: Aligns with the Frankfurt School narrative of mass culture under monopoly capital; the ‘remaking’ of the working class echoes E.P. Thompson lineage.