ideology and media

INTERNATIONAL BACHELOR COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA

Ideology and MediaMP&I

Lecture 3Lela Mosemghvdlishvili

                        Guest lecture "gendered technologies" by Lela Mosemghvdlishvili is

licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Today’s lecture

• What is Ideology?

• What is the relationship between media texts and

ideology(ies)?

• What are the theoretical roots of ideological

analysis?

• How can one analyze media content for its

ideology?

What is Ideology?

“…a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and

that makes value judgements about that world.“. . .

What Is Ideology?

problem with the concept Ideology

The fundamental problem with the concept is its

relation to truth and knowledge.

think about: - how can we judge ideologies?

- is there universal truth that we can compare untruth with?

- is there an accurate view of the world, that we can compare a distorted view with?

one can compare ideologies in terms of their

values, consequences and

social/historical conditions of human existence,

but not in terms of the absolute truth

What is Ideology?

“…a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and

that makes value judgements about that world.“. . .

do not necessarily reflect reality accurately [but] can represent a distorted view.

(Croteau, Hoynes & Milan, 2012: 153)

Ideology and Power

Ideology refers to system of meaning, which while

implying to be universal truths, are historically specific

understandings that obscure and maintain power.

-dominant class- race, gender-criticism of class reductionism

MEDIA AND IDEOLOGYMEDIA AND IDEOLOGY

• media as socialization agent

• ideology as normalization

• media as an arena for “culture

wars”

Theoretical roots of Ideological Analysis

• Marx

• Adorno& Horkheimer

• Gramsci

• Hall

‘philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it’

(11th thesis, Theses on Feuerbach, Marx, 1845)

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

early writings

commodity

labour

capital

social class

base and superstructure

Lithograph showing young Marx (1836) at a drinking club of Trier with students at the University of Bonn

-Young Hegelian- from God to Money

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)

Marx in 1836, aged 18detail from the lithograph

“Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world, the human world as well as nature, of its proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man’s labour and life, and this alien essence dominates him as he worships it.”

A quote from Marx’s “‘On the Jewish Question’”

• economics - the chief form of human alienation

• the material force needed to liberate humanity from its domination by economic mode of production is to be found in the working class (proletariat)

commodity

Use Value

Manufacturing value

Exchange Value

Surplus value

an elementary unit of analysis of capitalism

capital: two ways of its circulation

CMC (commodity - money – commodity)

MCM (money – commodity – money)

Labour

A photograph by Lewis Hine/ Building the Empire State Building

“Capital is nothing than accumulated labour“

notion of class

• working class

• ‘false consciousness’

• class antagonism

• proletariat and bourgeoisie

base and superstructure

• Base - economic infrastructure (means of production) and relations of production

•Superstructure: top layer, determined by base (politics, art, culture)

Recap• Criticism of capitalism

– proletarians have a false conscious– capitalism is self-destructive

Criticism of Marx – economic determination– Class reductionism– ideology

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer(1903-1969)

the Frankfurt SchoolCritical Theory

theoretical roots of ideological analysis

The Frankfort school

– Institute of Cultural Research at Frankfurt University

– Western Marxism (reinterpreted orthodox Marxism in light of recent changes)

• culture could not be explained only as determined by base (economic relations)

• influence of avant-garde movements• Critical Theory (transforming society into a

“real democracy”)

“Dialectics of Enlightenment” (1944) – enlightenment as a mass deception – domination of “instrumental reason”

• the reason, the intellectual faculty of human mind was first utilitarian (out of angst (fear) of nature) its purpose to define and control elements of organic life-world in which humankind finds itself. This was achieved through identification naming and objectifying the elements (of experience).

• culture industry as “false totality of instrumental reason”

– discussed culture in terms of ‘late’ capitalism– culture industry

culture industry• culture commodities• Pre-inscribed (commercial) value• standardization• homogenization

high and low/popular art distinction– High art: autonomous, inherent conflict and

contradiction• often disturbing for audience

– Low art: lack of autonomy, totalizing, absence of real conflict

• mostly comforting for audience, not challenging

“…the culture industry no longer even needs to directly pursue everywhere the profit interests from which it originated. These interests have become objectified in it ideology and have even made themselves independent of the compulsion to sell the cultural commodities that must be swallowed anyway. The culture industry turned into public relations… each object of the culture industry becomes its own advertisement.”

Adorno, Selected Essays on Culture Industry (as quoted in Taylor & Haris, 2008)

• Recap – mass culture is imbued with capitalistic

ideology of the upper class– cultural commodities are inferior to high art– they presuppose commercial nature and are

influenced by mode of production– there is no real conflict in cultural commodities– systematic repetition numbs the mind and

destroys the ability to think critically

• Criticism– context (1930s-1940s) – Elitist, absence of agency of audience/readers

theoretical roots of ideological analysis

Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937)

Italian / neo-marxismHegemony

Antonio Gramsci Criticism on Marxism

The Prison Notebooks (1926)

• what are the relations between authority, ideology and culture?

• connecting culture, power & ideology• Hegemony is achieved through consent and cultural

leadership

Hegemonytraditional meaning of the word: a form of indirect political rule, where a Hegemonic state rules sub-ordinate state by not by direct power, but by implied power.

Gramscian hegemony

•Prevailing cultural norms of society (“the way things are”) are imposed by the ruling class and accepted as the cultural norm by subordinate classes; 

•Hegemony (totalizing discourse) justifies the status quo of the dominant ideology and its economic, political, cultural and social situation as inevitable/natural/normal. 

• through consent and not through coercive power only

• class struggle = struggle of meanings• class struggle involves ideas and ideology• dialectic instead of determinist

• people have agency

Antonio Gramsci Criticism on Marxism

Ideological hegemony is the process by which certain ways of understanding the world appear so self-evident and/or naturalized as to render alternatives as nonsense/unthinkable.

after the break

• Stuart Hall, active audience, cultural studies

• How to analyse media texts for ideological connotations?– economic news– Advertisement and consumer culture

Coffee Break

Stuart Hall(1932 - )

Birmingham Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies

• How dominant ideology is constructed and negotiated in the media

• the politics of signification: – construction of meanings, not simple reproduction– re-presensentation

Reception ModelEncoding/Decoding of media texts (Stuart Hall, 1972)

encoding

decoding

meaningful discoursesocial context

Isocial context

II

Recap• Media – as a discursive arena• media – as a site of construction and

contestation of cultural meaning• struggle of meanings in the media: Culture

Wars • never one image, but a patternpattern of

images/instances/ideas• a certain timetime and placeplace

– corporate voice– not questioning dominant

ideology of neo-liberal capitalism and belief in “free market”

– coverage of 2008 financial crisis (40% investors vs. 2% labour union)

Economic news as ideological construct

• http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/posters_from_occupy_wall_street.html

Ads and consumer culture• mass advetisement emerged in 20ies

• aim: creation of consumer lifestyle rather than selling an individual product

• cross-class ideology • focus on consumption, pleasure and social statys gained through consumption

• idea of a `consumer choice` •connection with political freedom

•globalization of consumer goods

Culture Jamming

Ideological Analysis1. reflection of producers2. reflection of audience preferences3. reflection of society in general4. influence on audiences5. self-enclosed text

Re-Presentation and social inequalities

• what about the roles and identities, and their representation in media texts?

•Race

• Gender

• Ethnicity

• Sexuality

not only manifested but implied messages/ connotative meanings

denotation and connotation

• denotation: – ‘literally’ ‘dictionary’ meaning– common-sense, obvious meaning

• connotation:– second order meaning (the associations that

are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word)

– “..interaction that occurs when the sign meets the feelings or emotions of the users and the values of their culture.” (Fiske, 1990, p. 86)

a word: Snake

denotation: a type of reptile

connotation: evil, dangerous

Portrayal of racial and ethnic differences

1. Inclusion2. Roles 3. the control of production

Race •early Hollywood movies (20-30) Afro-Americans portrayed as servants/entertainers

• by 2000 – 16% of characters on prime-time TV

• traditional vs. modern racism (Entman, 1992)

Gender• inclusion (Global Media Monitoring

of 130 countries, 2010, 24% of news

subjects were female)

• roles/identities• new momism

• change in women’s roles

• inequality in control of

production (28% female writters,

27% on executive positions)

1932 cigarette advertisement, photograph: Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis

Recap: Ideology

• gives meaning and defines:– what is normal and what is deviant

• is a construct and dynamic– historical roots of theoretical analysis

• is a system of ideas/values• problem with truth

• Dominant ideology Media Content gives us impressions of (dominant) ideology in a certain time and place

•Hegemony (and antagonism)

•Resistance? Social Movements, Campaigns, Culture Jamming, Satire, Art

Recap: Ideology

Last note on Ideological Fantasy

The point is not that people possess distorted representation of reality, since in our post-ideological society many people no longer tryst ideological truths, but rather, that even when we keep an irony distance from totalizing ideological representations, we still act according to these representations.

e.g. Commodity Fetishism Slavoj Žižek