ideology and media
TRANSCRIPT
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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.
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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?
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What is Ideology?
“…a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and
that makes value judgements about that world.“. . .
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What Is Ideology?
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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?
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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
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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)
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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
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MEDIA AND IDEOLOGYMEDIA AND IDEOLOGY
• media as socialization agent
• ideology as normalization
• media as an arena for “culture
wars”
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Theoretical roots of Ideological Analysis
• Marx
• Adorno& Horkheimer
• Gramsci
• Hall
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‘philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it’
(11th thesis, Theses on Feuerbach, Marx, 1845)
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
early writings
commodity
labour
capital
social class
base and superstructure
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Lithograph showing young Marx (1836) at a drinking club of Trier with students at the University of Bonn
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-Young Hegelian- from God to Money
G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)
Marx in 1836, aged 18detail from the lithograph
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“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’”
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• 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)
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commodity
Use Value
Manufacturing value
Exchange Value
Surplus value
an elementary unit of analysis of capitalism
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capital: two ways of its circulation
CMC (commodity - money – commodity)
MCM (money – commodity – money)
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Labour
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A photograph by Lewis Hine/ Building the Empire State Building
“Capital is nothing than accumulated labour“
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notion of class
• working class
• ‘false consciousness’
• class antagonism
• proletariat and bourgeoisie
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base and superstructure
• Base - economic infrastructure (means of production) and relations of production
•Superstructure: top layer, determined by base (politics, art, culture)
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Recap• Criticism of capitalism
– proletarians have a false conscious– capitalism is self-destructive
Criticism of Marx – economic determination– Class reductionism– ideology
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Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer(1903-1969)
the Frankfurt SchoolCritical Theory
theoretical roots of ideological analysis
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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”)
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“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
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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
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“…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)
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• 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
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theoretical roots of ideological analysis
Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937)
Italian / neo-marxismHegemony
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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
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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
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• class struggle = struggle of meanings• class struggle involves ideas and ideology• dialectic instead of determinist
• people have agency
Antonio Gramsci Criticism on Marxism
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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.
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after the break
• Stuart Hall, active audience, cultural studies
• How to analyse media texts for ideological connotations?– economic news– Advertisement and consumer culture
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Coffee Break
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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
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Reception ModelEncoding/Decoding of media texts (Stuart Hall, 1972)
encoding
decoding
meaningful discoursesocial context
Isocial context
II
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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
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– 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
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• http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/posters_from_occupy_wall_street.html
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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
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Culture Jamming
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Ideological Analysis1. reflection of producers2. reflection of audience preferences3. reflection of society in general4. influence on audiences5. self-enclosed text
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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
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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
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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)
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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)
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1932 cigarette advertisement, photograph: Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis
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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
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• 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
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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
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