assignment paper 8 Media Hegemony

Name:- Vidhya Pandya

Semester:- MA -2

Roll No:- 32

Subject:-The Cultural Studies

Enrolment No:- 2069108420190031

Year:- 2018-20

E-mail id:- vidhupandya10497@gmail.com

Submitted to:- Department of English

Paper no:- 8

Topic:- Media hegemony

Media hegemony is a perceived process by which certain values and ways of thought promulgated through the mass media become dominant in society. It is seen in particular as reinforcing the capitalist system. Media hegemony has been presented as influencing the way in which reporters in the media – themselves subject to prevailing values and norms – select news stories and put them across.

A form of hegemony

The concept of hegemony, first put forward by Antonio Gramsci (1971), refers to the moral, philosophical, and political leadership of a social group, which is not gained by force but by an active consent of other social groups obtained by taking control of culture and ideology. During this process, the leading social group exerts its impact and gains its legitimacy mainly through social mechanisms such as education, religion, family and the mass media. Based on the definition of hegemony, media hegemony means the dominance of certain aspects of life and thought by the penetration of a dominant culture and its values into social life. In other words, media hegemony serves as a crucial shaper of culture, values and ideology of society (Altheide, 1984).

For example, television news departments are considered as extensions of a capitalistic economic order (Hall, 1979). The products of the media contain messages that convey the nature of society, the nature of relation of production within the media and the domain of institutions and social process (Golding, 1979). Thus it is crucial to decode media to figure out the latent capitalist ideology within the products of the media, and more importantly to realize the role of the media as tools to produce merchandise in a late capitalist economic order.

Altheide (1984) has cautioned against the "uncritical" application of the media hegemony paradigm to television news coverage.

Results of media hegemony

Media hegemony is said to operate in several ways within news reporting. Firstly, the socialization of reporters including guidance, work norms and orientations will be greatly influenced by the dominant ideology (Mueller, 1973). Socialization of journalists means that they are socialized into professional and organizational norms (Gieber, 1960). And some basic values and norms they share are influenced by ideology, as it is hard to be independent from the culture that the dominant class shapes (Gans, 1979). Though journalists claim that they are autonomic from the state and marketing forces and that they are always on the side of the public as social instrument, it is undeniable that the ideology and control of economic interests permeate the assumption, orientations and procedure of reporters who are the direct producers of news stories. Journalists can unconsciously facilitate the ideological hegemony by the way they use cultural categories and symbols (Chaney, 1981).

Further, reporters are inclined to choose and report those issues that are favorable to the dominant ideology and the status quo. This selection process hinders social change by diffusing conservative news reports to the public (Golding, 1981). To a large extent, the formation of public opinion is based on the information spread by status quo-oriented news media.

Finally, reporters tend to report those news stories that are supportive of their nation and negative to foreign nations in globalized communication. It is believed that prejudiced news reporting will hinder international social change (Artz, 2012). News media may shape negative stereotypes of foreign countries. Values and ideology are disseminated through international social communication to exert an impact on people in foreign nations.

What is Hegemony Power?

Hegemony comes to English from the Greek word hegemonia which means exposition or explanation. The term was first used in English in the mid 16th century in reference to the control once wielded by the ancient Greek statesl and it was reapplied in later centuries as other nations subsequently rose to power. By the 20th century, it had acquired a second sense referring to the social or cultural influence wielded by a dominant member over other of its kind, sach as the domination withinan  an industry by a business conglomerate over smaller businesses. Hegemony is the political, economical or military predominance or control of one state over other. Hegemony came to denote the ‘social or cultural predominance by one group within a society or milieu’. According to Wikipedia that, ‘in international relations theor, hegemony denotes a situation of 1) great material asymmetry in favour of one state, who has 2) enough military power to systematically defeat any power to systematically defeat any potential contester in the system, 3) Controls the access to raw materials, natural resources, capital and markets 4) has competitive advantages in the production of value added goods. 5) generates an accepted ideology reflecting this status quo; and 6) is functionally differentiated from other states in the system being expected to provide certain public goods such as security or commercial and financial stability. The Marxist theory of cultural hegemony, associsted particularly with Antonic Gramsci, is value system and mores of a society, so that their view becames the words, ‘Gramsci normally uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which a governing power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates.’  Hegemony is the social, cultural, ideological or economic influence exerted by  dominant group.

      Media culture clearly reflects the multiple sides of contemporary debates and problems. It is for this reason that any reading of the media must always be a political reading, for examples, recently one dabates increase that ‘Ram Mandir or Babari masjid’ that time  all the news channel set a program about this topic on hour and hour. They invites many guest on them program. Ram mandir and Babri Masjid dispute: Asaduddin Owaisi and Subramanian Swamy debate the issue. The disputing parties find a matually acceptable solution to this decade lonf dispute and the mojor political leaders and other reacting consciousness. Center stage of national consciousness. Among them were BJP leader Subramanian Swami and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owasi. There we find that the current topic became more political as well as the Social issue. That we find that media like social media like Facebook, Twitter, Whats app. And T.V chennal and News chenal support hegemony of specific power. i would like to give more examples that, recently the Dalit Samaj or Patidar samaj became more increase that time media also became more signification way to representation them issue and media also supported to power.  media culture helps reinforce the hegemony and power specific political, cultural and economic group. The representations in the media are,

Suggestive

Provocative

     

              This means they suggest ideologies that the audience, if not alert iimbibes. Media culture doesnot need to declare its position or ideology openly: it only needs suggest. Showing a film star guzzling coke in a film or using particular brands of clothinf not necessarily a marketing strategy for the product. But what it does is to suggest that stars wear certain kind of the product. We can see our advertisement there were represent the product we is worthless. I would like to gives one example on Colgate toothpaste. First of all we used neem stick for washing or teeth. After the advertisement we started to use colgate. And now aday they advertisement on colgate and say through  actresses that ‘Kya aapke toothpaste me Neem or Namak Hai?’ that means they everytime suggest us that this is good and that is bad. It means actresses decided our daily using what we should to use or what is not. Media culture is Provocative because it sometime asks us to rethink what we know or reinforce what we believe in. thus the portrayal of Pakistan as a ‘terrorist state’  in hindi movies reinforce the political and social images of Pakistan by raising our anger levels at the injustices of Pakistan’s army. For examples bollywood movie like Border,  Maa tuje Slam, Tengucheli etc we find that they increase our anger feeling for Pakistan. Recently before the Sarjikal Stike, Grandmaster Shifuji Shaurya Bhardwaj dissemination video on Pakistan. He speaked amusing word for Pakistan for the medium of media. Cultural Studies of popular media cultural seeks to bring to the surface the ideology and political ideas hidden in mass media entertainment, in the belief that media culture transmits ideologies that reinforce oppressive structure of class, gender sexuality and race through popular representations.

 Media is no doubt a powerful tool that affects not only individuals but other institutions including society and culture, Media  are the insititution that ‘not only reflected and sustained the consensus’ but ‘help produce consensus and manufactured consent’, acting as an important tool to establish hegemomy, hall analysis the media through a hegemonic framework, he starts by saying that public trust media because ideologically they projects independence and impartiality from the political or economic interests of the state. However media existing within a state are obliged to follow the ‘formal protocols of broadcasting’ and depend on the form of state and political system which licenses them. Hence the question of their operation being state driven is very likely. Hall mention media as being an ‘ideological state apparatus’ used to mediate social conflicts. The concluding that news or information selection in mass media might not necessarily be influence by hegemony ideology and that journalists are not always socialized to dominant ideology.