Mass Culture: An Aesthetic Experience or An Experience of Fear?

According to Étienne Gilson, an endless reproduction of the technical aspects of a work of art can modify not only the aesthetic experience of which it is an object, but also the culture it is embedded in. Since industrialization of a cultural product in the form of the internet is a means of generating mass culture, questions could be raised regarding its sources and effects. This article offers three assumptions: 1) the internet, together with its content and actions taken by internet users, is a source of fear of experiencing cybercrime; 2) experiencing cybercrime is a result of using the internet; 3) in mass culture, the aesthetic experience has been replaced by the experience of fear. In order to address the titular question, I performed comparative analyses of EU citizens’ opinions on the basis of the Eurobarometer study conducted in EU countries (2013-2020) relating to the social perception of cybercrime, treated as a source of experiencing fear, and the level of their personal experience. A secondary quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data were performed, and a comparative method was used.