Media and Ideology

1. Media and Ideology

2. Media and Ideology What do we mean by ideology in common parlance?

3. Media and Ideology • When media scholars refer to uncovering ideology they are interested in the underlying images of society portrayed in the media • Media professionals typically reject the idea that they play a role in creating ideology

4. Media and Ideology • Media scholars see ideology as: A system of meaning that helps to define and explain the world and makes value judgments about that world.

5. Media and Ideology • In examining the ideology of the media, scholars focus not so much on individual media texts such as television programs or films but on their collective implications for defining and thinking about social, cultural and political issues.

6. Media and Ideology • Analysis of media ideology seeks to answer the question: What do media messages tell us about ourselves and our society?

7. Media and Ideology • Debate on nature of media ideology between proponents of the Dominant Ideology thesis and those who hold the Cultural Contradictions position

8. Media and Ideology • Media texts are the site or place where cultural contests over meaning take place, over what is acceptable and legitimate and what is deviant in society. • Media give us pictures of social interaction and social institutions that by sheer repetition play an important role in shaping our social perceptions. Ideological work lies in identifying patterns across texts

9. Media and Ideology • Hall says that the media are engaged in the “politics of signification,” in which they produce particular narratives that give events certain meanings. • That is to say, they do not simply “reflect” the world they “re-present,” it by engaging practices that define reality.

10. Media and Ideology • Ideology as represented in media texts is key to “normalization” of specific social relations. In other words media normalize certain behaviors and ideas while excluding others.

11. Media and Ideology • Key theoretical idea underlying the study of ideology is the idea of “hegemony.” • Drawn from the work of Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who noted that power can be wielded at the level of culture or ideology or the realm of everyday life.

12. Media and Ideology • Hegemony is not simply about ideological domination or forcible imposition of views on people. It involves winning their consent through a type of cultural leadership.

13. Media and Ideology • Hegemony operates at the level of commonsense in the assumptions that we make of social life. For instance, what is natural and what is taken for granted what everybody knows. • Such as ? • Is hegemony unchangeable ?