Media Audiences
Marxist media theorists discuss the media in terms of their role as 'ideological apparatuses'. Explain the key notions behind this research, paying particular attention to the concept of hegemony and the media's role within it. What is 'hegemony', and why is it important to audience studies?
Marxist theorists emphasizes on the role of mass media in reproduction of status quo, however there is no school of thought regarding his theories. He viewed the society where he lives as being a domination class; therefore it was seen as an ideological arena where many class views are fought out, although it happened within the dominance context of certain classes. Marxist argues that mass media is a means of production in the capitalist society since it disseminate the views of the classes which are ruling and defusing the alternative ideas. He concluded by pointing out that the role of the mass media is to produce a false consciousness among the working classes. This leading to extreme stance where people see media products as being monolithic expression that is used to rule the class values, hence ignoring the diversity values that is in media, and possibility of the oppositional among media audiences ( Artz, Macek & Cloud, 2006).
Another characteristic of Marxist theory regarding media is the theory of materialist which argued that social being is determined by their consciousness. According to this observation, he argued that the ideological positions tend to be the functions of the class positions as well as, the dominant ideology surrounding the society of dominant classes. This stance contrasts to idealist which grants the priority to consciousness. Marxist disagreed with the issue given that some people interpret relationship differences of the social being and the consciousness to be one of the determinations which are direct while others still stresses that there is a dialectical relationship (Daniel Chandler, 2012).
Marxism fundamentalist regarding the ideology seems to be a false consciousness since it results from emulations of dominant ideology by the people whose interests are not reflected. From this perception, the mass media tends to disseminate ideology which is dominant to the class that owned and controlled the media....
According to political economy of Marxist adherents, the economic basis of class struggle is concealed by mass media; the ideology only becomes routes to obliterated struggle instead of a struggle site.
Another theorist by the name Althusser came up with argument to reject false consciousness notion, he stresses that, the ideology is a medium through which people experience the world. The irreducibility and the materiality of the ideology are stressed by the Althusserian Marxism where ideology is seen to be a determining force.
Another Marxist theorist of ideology is the Valentin Volosinov theory that has been influential in cultural studies. Volosinov argued that the theory of ideology granted an abstract concept concerning consciousness an existence that is prior to organized forms could be metaphysical. It is generally true that the Marxist theorists agree that the mass media has ideological power, but disagree as to its nature.
The term hegemony has been used to denote predominance of social classes to represent political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'. Hegemony tries posits some contradiction which exist between ideology and the social experience of subordinate which makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle.
Hegemony is important to the audience studies since the mass media Marxism is an explicit theory which exposes myth of free social science. Marxist views draws attention to political and the economic interest in mass media as well as, highlighting the social inequalities in media representations. Hegemony helps in situating the media texts which are within a larger social formation.
Q2. Ross and Nightingale argue 'audience research is a vehicle for monitoring the impact of both the Mediatization of human senses and the industrialization of the productive capacity of the media'. Using examples, briefly discuss the term Mediatization.
The term Mediatization has been used severally to understand the concept of media to culture and society. Mediatization has been used in various contexts in characterizing the media…
