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Media’s vie for Hegemony!


We are living in an era of multi-platform world, now media is more than an instrument of corporatocracy. One can propagate its own set of beliefs or ideas through a variety of mediums available like YouTube, face book, twitter and many other social interactive sites to create an impact on majority of audience using these mediums to receive and disseminate information. However, war of ideologies is continued unimpeded at new battle fields, to become dominant.
Hegemony of media is varying if not fading in its nature in present era of multi-dominant ideas. As Kerlinger[i] and Luhman[ii] describe this fact as ‘multiple realities’ and ‘fluidity of meaning’ which then combine to make a broader picture, a dominant one, widely believed without any resistance. Now Hegemony is transferring to groups of similar minded people as there is great flux of ideas one replacing other, sometime every other day. However, mass media too regaining Hegemony by using these new technologies.
The concept developed as ‘cultural hegemony’ by an Italian political thinker and Communist party leader Antonio Gramsci[iii] who being a Marxist dare to differ from ideas of Karl Marx in his coded jail note book.
Gramsci talk lot about ideology (dominant ideology).  In media context “an ideology is a belief system that is constructed and then embedded in the public consciousness by the media”. In that era of late eighteen and early nineteen the mass media was generally the newspapers so he and before him Karl take media as media texts which represent the world usually in order to support a dominant ideology, such as patriotism, masculinity and race dominant ideologies.
It all begins with Karl Marx most influential writings in response of extreme poverty and exploitation by capitalist regime after the Industrial Revolution. In his two most famous book Das Kapital (1867)[iv] and Communist Manifesto (1848)[v] he speak about class struggles and politico-economical consequences of capitalist societies.
He argued that in capitalist the Ruling class or the bourgeoisie dominates and exploits the working class or proletariat to satisfy their interests. There he talk about dominance (Hegemony) of ideology, values and beliefs which persuade working class to accept the power of ruling elites.
The ideas of Marx when applied to media suggest that construct ideas to  persuade the working class to accept capitalism or ruling ideology as common sense or natural and inevitable, without questioning that ideology.
Karl emphasizes on relationships based on social class but Gramsci’s hegemony also applied to the power relations found in gender, sexuality and race.
Antonio raised the question why working class being exploited and manipulated do not dare to rise up or revolt against capitalist ruling class who keep on suppressing them. He said it is because of hegemony, as ruling class dominate working or ally classes by influencing the culture of a society in a way that their view look like as being “common sense” or just “the way things are”.  He said that ruling class cannot possibly rule only by force and rely on the ‘consent’ of the working class. More precisely he used the term ‘Ruling by Consent’ referring to convincing working class that the dominant ideology is the only ideology.
John Pilger in his two remarkable documentaries ‘New Rulers of World’[vi] and  ‘The War You Don’t See’[vii] used the same term “Ruling by consent” which tells us about how governments and big corporations like IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisations manipulate the facts and dictate to not to print or broadcast anything that ran contrary to their interests. This was not always by force as Gramsci told in his writing.
Noam Chomsky in his book Hegemony and Survival[viii], also found in Osama bin Laden compound, wrote about notion of Hegemony. He said as US was preparing its forces for a ‘pre-emptive war’ against Iraq, some of its institutions were building consent of people on its popular ideology to make it dominant. He also mentioned the use of mass media to ‘manufacturing consent’ so that information is being ‘filtered’ through the media so that they can influence minds of audience. Chomsky does not suggest that this is done deliberately or conspiratorially however a study by Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG)[ix] advocates that although media content does support the interests of capitalist system or dominant class but it is unintended by-product of the social backgrounds of journalists and broadcasters and is not conscious capitalist attempt or conspiracy.
Cynics believed that audiences are not always passive or easily manipulated. Although sometime they affectees do not know they are being manipulated and sometimes they show a strong oppositions to ideologies being presented. Also social situations of readers, viewers and listeners may lead them to adopt different stances. However, recent war campaigns by US and UK clearly showed that media filtered facts to help War ideologies as inevitable, which is a hint for great Hegemony still possessed by media.





[i] Foundation of Behavioural Research by Fred N. Kerlinger

[ii] Theory of Society by Niklas Luhman

[iii] Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci

[iv] Das Kapital (1867) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

[v] Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx

[viii] Hegemony and Survival by Noam Chomsky page 8-12

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