It is convenient to describe the current model of social behaviour using the metaphor of “social magnetism”: when we get into certain “magnetic fields”, we find ourselves objects of attraction/repulsion. Like magnetic arrows, we turn towards “magnetised” social phenomena (political, cultural, historical, religious, economic, marketing, etc.) and are “attracted” to them – whether it is the personal magnetism of a politician or the magnetism of a “prestigious thing” – depriving ourselves of the need for a conscious individual choice.

In today’s world, the mass media serve as a tool of “magnetisation”, which “not only spreads social conventions but also increases their impact on the mass audience” (S. Melrose).

How do we regain the status of a subject, how, feeling the “irresistible” force of attraction, do we maintain the critical distance from the “magnetised” social phenomenon that allows us to make our real choices? How to establish a space of “social freedom” in a situation of “total magnetism”?

Social magnetism largely determines the patterns of our existence and action in the modern world, our social choices. Are we able to develop effective mechanisms of self-orientation in a “media society”, to make our individual and collective choices based on our own critical assessments and independent judgements?

A prerequisite for such a realisation (and therefore a prerequisite for social freedom) is the acquisition of a comprehensive, “contextual” vision of the surrounding reality; an independent, critical view of its phenomena. A view capable of distinguishing between…