“all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

I argue that authors and producers often attempt to impose their own set of cultural and political ideologies on its audience through a certain depiction of right and wrong. In this manner, works of fiction might influence, perhaps even alter, the ideologies of the audience.[3] Accordingly, analyzing the depiction of ideologies in media content can serve as a basis for further research on if and how producers intend to influence their audience.

In his work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno analyzes the nature of the culture industry. People everywhere are constantly being consumed by the culture industry, which is a term for the mass production of cultural goods such as films, magazines, and music. Adorno is concerned that the government uses the cultural industry as a way to deceive the masses and manipulate them into passivity. This idea remains true in today’s society. Young men and women are more interested in the release of the newest Taylor Swift or Adele song than political issues. People have become less intellectual as they are being consumed by the culture industry. It is much easier for a person to let himself be consumed by mass media and to let the media

Gramsci 's approach to ideology proposes that oppressed classes condone the ideas, values and authority of the hegemonic class because they limited motive to establish their own (Strinati, 1995). Gramsci’s contribution to ideology is noted due to the lack of force and focused on intellectual power. However, Gramsci fails to acknowledge that the working class work extremely long labour hours and do not have the opportunity to discuss their oppositional views with a group. Yet, Gramsci’s commentary and introduction to hegemony are particularly pertinent to the development of Marxist ideology as hegemony delivers a way of comprehending the circumstances in which informal educators function and ability to scrutinise and alter this (Burke,

Althusser identifies a second thesis regarding ideology: "Ideology has a material existence" (Althusser 89). In spite of its necessarily imaginary nature, ideology is only manifested through physical action. This materiality introduces the notion of the subject. "The existence of the ideas of [the subject's] belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject" (92). Which is to say that, a subject's intellectual ideas are only manifested through the physical actions that are inherently rooted in the ideology. It is impossible to express thought without action, and it is impossible to act without ideology. Thus, ideology becomes not only the imaginary relationship to reality, but also the physicality of reality. Being both the idea of reality and the material manifestation of such, ideology then becomes indistinguishable from reality, leading to Althusser's use of both terms

Todd Gitlin is a notable author born in New York City. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he received a PhD in sociology and was heavily involved in the Students for a Democratic Society group. Gitlin is now a professor at New York University where he teaches culture, journalism, and sociology. Gitlin’s selection, Supersaturation, or, The Media Torrent and Disposable Feeling, comes from his book Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives (2001). In this selection, Gitlin describes how private lives and domestic spaces have evolved from the seventeenth-century until now. He feels as though our once

In ‘How Netflix is Deepening our Cultural Echo Chambers’, Farhad Manjoo uses the remake of “One Day at a Time” to emphasize the imperative shift of an era focused on streaming that entails a narrow set of refined references. By first exhibiting a remade show on a platform such as Netflix, the re-examination of reality is displayed to be evolving the mainstream identity of millions. From broadcasting, cable then to streaming the secular depiction of being a “vast wasteland” emerges into the view of a “bubbling sea of creativity” that allows for collective groups of individuals to be recognized. Manjoo insinuates that through the shared references viewers attained through television, nothing thereafter will have the direct mass impact of a singular movement of culture that the medium television had at its peak. Although seemingly

Neil Postman’s novel Amusing Ourselves to Death seeks to look at media and how it shapes and defines culture. Postman has been cited as one of the major media theorists and a great philosopher of his time. To understand the book fully it is important to remember where it came from. The idea was born out of a speech Postman gave about the book 1984 and A Brave New World. It takes the ideas behind these novels and looks at them in a contemporary light, where the “Big Brother” is our own television sets. Television is obviously a form of media and it delivers a message. However, that message and media has its own agenda, to above all entertain. Postman believes that television has become the primary media-metaphor and by that definition

“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is a pivotal article in history that changed the way in which many communications scholars viewed media. Both authors were members of the Frankfurt School, a school of thought which looked further into Karl Marx’s theories about capitalism and the issues of mass production. Published in 1944, Adorno and Horkheimer revealed their beliefs that the media, much like the economy, is becoming mass produced, and is therefore turning people in society into media-consuming robots. Industrialization created work lives for people in which they would work on only one part of a larger machine. As a result, they felt less involved in the completion of the project as a whole, and therefore felt less pride in their jobs and their lives in general. Instead, these people turned to media and pop culture so that they would feel more fulfillment within their lives. Adorno and Horkheimer believed that these people had a reduced capacity for original thought because media is now force feeding them the ideas of what they can think and feel. This essay will prove that although Adorno and Horkeimer’s points were justified through the eyes of authors George Lipsitz, Lev Manovich, and Susan J. Douglas, there are still exceptions to their theories that they do not account for.

Postman (1987) claims that television is an evil that destroys the purpose and complexities of public discourse. He argues that important issues are oversimplified and drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Chaffee and Metzger (2001) confirm this assumption by remarking the evolution of print and radio into television and television into new media. Establishing the similarities between Postman’s chief complaints about the television medium and the new media then rearing its ugly head. Chaffee and Metzger indicate the shift in the denotations of mass, media, and communication. With technological advancements, it is impossible to ignore the new media and its impact on modern culture.

Four theorists are the contributing authors of the active research theory. These authors evolved the role audience play and their ability to actively engage with communication medians. The idea of deconstructionism was the focus of the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault during the 1960’s. Later in the twentieth century theorist Raymond Bauer developed The Obstinate Audience. In the early 1980’s a theorist by the name of Stuart Hall challenged the traditional theories of an audience role in the media and developed his encoding/decoding theory. Each contributed to the current understanding of the active role audiences engage in when information is presented.

Adorno and Horkheimer suggest ideology as the reason dominant culture industries are able to sustain themselves. They argue that “The culture industry tends to make itself the embodiment of authoritative pronouncements, and thus the irrefutable prophet of the prevailing order” (Adorno and Horkheimer 17). Thus, we can think of these “authoritative pronouncements” as methods Hollywood employs to sustain its dominance. By proclaiming a certain set of ideas which convinces the public that no other authority or ideas exist otherwise, Hollywood mystifies and obfuscates all other traces of thought. It normalizes its manipulation of the public by ostracizing other values and ideas outside the predominant notions of standardization and mass production.

As poststructuralism would have it, human consciousness is constructed discursively. Our subjectivity is constructed by the shifting discourses of power which endlessly speak through us, situating us here and there in particular positions and relations. In these terms we are not the authors of ourselves. We do not construct our identities, we have it written for us; the subject cannot be sovereign over the construction of selfhood. Instead the subject is decentered, in that its consciousness is always being constructed from positions outside of itself. It follows then that the individual is not a transparent representation of the self but an effect of discourse. Spivak argues that surprisingly for these figures, when Foucault and Deleuze talks about oppressed groups such as the working classes they fall back into precisely these uncritical notions of ‘sovereign subjects’ by restoring to them a fully centred consciousness. In addition they also assume that the writing of intellectuals such as themselves can serve as a transparent medium through which the voices of the oppressed can be represented. The intellectual is cast as a reliable mediator for the voices of the oppressed, a mothpiece through which the oppressed can clearly speak.

Economism, or vulgar Marxism, is a key feature in explaining the media’s role according to Marx. This is also referred to as the base/superstructure model. In economism, “the economic base of society is seen as determining everything else in the superstructure, including social, political, and intellectual consciousness.” (Marxist Media Theory 1) This maintains that the media is used as the base of society. Society is referred to as the superstructure. Clearly, media shapes society even today. Since consumers rely on the media for information and entertainment, (ex. Television and radio new, magazines, newspapers, Internet), they are shaped by whatever forms of media they chose to be an audience to. The media manipulates everything from popular fashion to the food people consume.

Mass media plays an important role in the society by providing entertainment, information and acting as the government’s overseer. Several scholars have developed philosophies that help people understand how mass media fulfills its roles in the society. For example, Horkheimer and Adorno have constructed theories that explain the functions and impacts of mass media in the society across the globe (Mosco, 2008). The central theme in all mass communication models entails the meaning of media contents, which include the images and texts and their influence on the target audience. The perception of the target audience concerning the text and images in the media are what form the basis of these theories. This essay discusses two hypothetical frameworks: the political economy and cultural studies theories, including their similarities and differences, and how they help in understanding the relationship between the media and society.