Chapter 5 Synopsis

Chapter 5, Media Ideology, summarizes the concepts of ideology and how these concepts have been applied towards understanding the role of mass media. The chapter begins with Thompson stating that 'ideology is meaning in the service of power'. Present and past societies are unequal in terms of power, including class, gender, and age. Inequalities between men and women, blacks and whites, and elderlys and young people are some examples of how the world we live in is unequal. Currently, America is at war with Iraq and Afghanistan. This conflict has challenged media professionals in determining what the ideological role is in playing a media part.
Ideology is an important, useful and necessary concept dealing with social theories and media analysis. Thompson refers to ideological power in five key terms: legitimation, dissimulation, unification, fragmentation, and reification. Legitimation is achieved by unequal power relationships being created and in everybody's interest. Dissimulation is where relations of domination are hidden. Unification unifies members of a society into one entity. Fragmentation adopts a "divide and rule" approach, and reification is achieved by unequal social structures represented as being natural. Thompson gives the example of dissimulation on TV, where news reports distinguish the poor from the wealthy. Fundraising or telethon television do not ignore poverty and inequality, and focus on the activities of celebrities or heroic actions to help poverty.
The book's interpreation of ideology relates to the neo-Marxist theory but does not focus solely on class relations. Ideology is the ideas that legitimize the power of a dominant social group or class, and involve issues such as racism, heterosexism, and terrorism. The challenge that media students face is the tensions between dominant ideologies that are exposed in a complex media setting. Mass media plays an extremely important role in the production of ideologies--everyday we are faced with inequalities and oppositions that are out of our control. Content analysis identifies the intentions of communicators and describes trends in communication content. In my advertising class we are learning about content analyis and how it is used to study competitors and consumers in order to achieve the best form of media. This relates to idelogies because content analyis researches relationships between men and women, social classes, ethnic groups, and more. Ideological and discursive analysis researches the relationship between media language and audience beliefs of the social world, which leads to communication.
Well renowned media producer, Michael Moore, is famous for his documentaries on ideologies and beliefs within the USA. His most popular films are Bowling for Columbine, Farenheit 9/11, and The Big One--to name a few. Although his films have stirred up a lot of controversy and debate, they are examples of hegemonic ideologies and are a source of a significant amount of profit for media conglomerates. So, although there are many Michael Moore haters out there, he must be doing something right in getting his point across to the U.S.
Four theorists, Karl Marx, The Frankfurt School, Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci, defined ideology in open and closed manners. Marx defines ideology as closed, negative and materialistic. He believes that the ruling classes in capitalist societies control the means of material production as well as the production of ideas. The Frankfurt School also believed in a closed, materialist, and negative definition of ideology. Members included Theodore Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, who saw mass media as a powerful source of propaganda. They saw ideology as negative and were critical and pessmistic of mass media, especially during the time of the Nazi regime. Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci saw a more open and relaxed view of ideology and maintained positive attitudes towards the creation of hegemony and dominance in a modern society.
Thompson's concept of ideology focuses on the meaning of power and how the meaning serves to maintain relations of dominance. He states that not all media texts are ideological--they are ideological only if they can be shown to help perpetuate unequal power relations. His main focus is that we need to focus on the three dimensions of the communication process--production, content and reception. His tripartite approach examines the media's ideological role. We must place a firm emphasis on the meaning and interpretation of media messages in order to understand their dominance. The study of media messages examines the symbols and signs that are hidden and considering how individuals interpret the message into their lives.
The concepts of ideology and discourse play roles in furthering our understanding of the media's role in the reproduction of unqual power and relationships in our society. They are used to analyze how media is developed, presented and depicted by professionals and audiences. It is an approach to how text and talk represent relationships of power and how it is embedded into our everyday language use.
In conclusion, the world that we live in today is divided and unequal. A way of overcoming this problem is by doing ideological analysis to combine production, content and reception. There needs to be a balance between the capacity of audience members who reject or reconstruct dominant ideology and media content shaping the ideological effect in the short and long term. By working together in a complementary way, the concepts of ideology and discourse further our understanding of the mass media's role in unequal power relationships.