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IDEOLOGY

Ideology is the science of ideas. However, for us it has a technical meaning and we are really concerned with ideological power when we use this term.

N/B – A Value is an opinion or attitude that an individual or group holds because of talking about or discussion of a subject. A Conviction is an opinion or attitude that an individual or group holds due to its understanding of its experiences. Convictions need not be generated by experiences that happened to an individual. They could come to the individual from the understood experiences of the group. Convictions are much firmer and less open to change than opinions.

How do ideas have power?

The main way that ideas are understood to have power is by ‘manufacturing consent’. This is an idea mainly developed by Marshall McLuhan and Noam Chomsky out of the thinking of the early C.20^th Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.

Manufacturing Consent is a process that attempts to align the understood interests of the mass population with the actual interests of the elite or ruling group in society. The process is intended to replicate the values, attitudes and convictions that the elite or ruling group expresses (rather than actually holds) in the mass population at the expense of that population developing values, attitudes or convictions of its own.

This replication of values and convictions means that the elite or ruling group can then take any action or implement any policy knowing that the mass population has already consented to it. That consent having been manufactured in them by the conquest of their values and convictions by the elite.

In their book Manufacturing Consent Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman summarise the process thus:

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.

The means of Manufacturing Consent

There are four main means of manufacturing consent.

• Generative Propaganda – that attempts to create new values and convictions in the audience. This is very difficult and is thus a weak form of manufacturing consent.

• Re-enforcing Propaganda - that attempts to strengthen, highlight, or raise awareness of pre-existing values and convictions in the audience. This is easier and thus a stronger form of manufacturing consent.
  

• Common Sense – This is not ‘good sense’ but rather the set of incompletely thought through values and convictions we all hold that come to us from the attitudes and experiences of those around us. The most powerful form of manufacturing consent because it is not normally possible to work out where an individual part of the ‘common sense’ has come from.

• The colonisation of the imagination – wherein the understanding of that which is possible is limited to only a certain ‘acceptable’ range of discussion. This is most common in discussion of political and business life.
  

Theorists

There are two main theorists that we need to deal with; Antonio Gramsci & Louis Althusser.

The main line of thinking on ideological analysis of the media comes from Marxist thinkers. The first wave of theory on ideology was founded around the Base-Superstructure model. This is a deterministic model that suggests that the Base (the means and type of economic production) determines the Superstructure (all culture and society). For a capitalist society, therefore, the capitalist mode of production would determine the superstructure and all culture and society would be a means of oppression of labour (the proletariat or working classes).

This Base-Superstructure model is simple, static, and implies both direct oppression and the passivity of the oppressed. For these reasons and for its determinism it is not very useful as a means of studying ideology.

The two ideas to deal with in this are; Althusser’s ‘Interpellation’ and Gramsci’s ‘Hegemony’. In each case the analysis grows from the realisation that in every society there is a ruling group (an elite), which seeks to maintain and replicate (that is perpetuate into future generations) itself. This ruling group cannot stably sustain its dominance through force, violence, and the threat of such alone. What this ruling group requires it that the dominated (the ruled) consent to the rule of the elite. What the ruling group need is to manufacture in the dominated consent to their rule and its maintenance and replication. It is in manufacturing this consent that Ideology and Representation come into play.

If we take Althusser’s Interpellation first, we know that interpellation works on the basis of getting the dominated to ‘misrecognise’ themselves as the authors of the ideological content of a media-text rather than the targets of it (which in truth they are). This is crucial because if the elite can bring the dominated to the point where the ideology (worldview) of the elite is also the (mistaken) ideology of the dominated then the elite will have succeeded in manufacturing consent to their rule. Representation comes into play in this area because the elite (i.e. the ruling group in a society) will generate/create representations of themselves in media-texts and ‘interpellate’ the dominated to misrecognise themselves in that image – to see themselves, wrongly, as members of the elite.

We can see Interpellation in action in the USA where a majority of people believe they earn just a bit more than the mean average salary. This is, of course, mathematically impossible but it is ideologically inevitable. That a majority of Americans have come to believe this is the effect of Interpellation. Representations of the elite have been presented to the dominated and they have been ‘interpellated’ to misrecognise themselves in those images.

Louis Althusser tried to deal with the problem of the passivity of the oppressed in ideological analysis. Althusser was convinced that ideology, rather than being a veil draped over the oppressed, structured peoples lived experience; meaning that ideology played a part in every person’s life from the outset.

Interpellation – Althusser developed the idea of Interpellation, meaning ‘hailing’ or ‘calling’, as a way of explaining how ideological power works. Interpellation implies a process in which a media text ‘hails’ the reader and invites the reader to ‘misrecognise’ themselves in the text and positions the reader as a ‘sovereign autonomous individual’ who cannot be the subject of ideology but must be the author of ideology. Thus the reader actively participates in the ideology of the text.

Turning to Hegemony we must remember that the basis on which it works is that the ruling group (re)present themselves to all the other groups in society as the only group in that society capable of/ willing to organise and run that society so that the needs, wants, and desires of the other groups in society are meet – and that no other group is capable of such government. To this end it is crucial that a majority are of the opinion that they earn ‘slightly more than average’ as this means that they, wrongly, believe they are benefiting from the way in which society is organised rather than being exploited by the way in which society is organised - the very purpose of that social organisation. Representations, of the ruling group by the ruling group aimed at the dominated are crucial to the operation of Hegemony.

Antonio Gramsci lived and worked before Althusser and was concerned with the static nature of the base-superstructure model. His ideas on hegemony were intended to deal with this.

Hegemony – The idea behind hegemony is that not only does the elite impose its will through ideology but also through the presentation of itself as the group best placed and suited to provided for and meet the interests and aspirations of all other social groups, the purpose of this presentation being to establish consent to the rule of the elite as natural (as part of the common sense). This presentation is constantly being re-established and, apparently, re-negotiated as social development occurs. The elites hegemonic presentation will grow to include previously excluded social and status groups (or contract to exclude previously powerful groups) as and when useful to the elite.

LINKS

IDEOLOGY

http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/ideology.htm

http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/ideology.html

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/ideoldet.html

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/marxism.html

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism01.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

ALTHUSSER

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism09.html

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism06.html

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/marxism/modules/althusserideology.html

http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/interpellation.htm

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation

http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/LPOE70NB.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/althusser.html

GRAMSCI

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism10.html

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism11.html

http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/hegemony.html

http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/soc/courses/soc2r3/gramsci/gramheg.htm

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram.htm

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/contributions/gramsci.html

REPRESENTATION : Hegemony

Hegemony is a representational strategy of power; a way of using representations to control other people. In many ways hegemony is the central concept of media studies. This idea is crucial to the key concepts of representation, ideology, narrative, institutions and audience so it is essential that we develop a detailed understanding of the idea.

Let us start with a definition:

Hegemony is a representational strategy of social power that aims to ensure the continued tacit or active support of the majority of the people for the rule of the minority (even though the rule of that minority – the elite – is not in the interests of the majority). This is achieved by representing all groups bar the elite as unfit or unsuitable to hold and wield legitimate power and by representing the elite as the only group capable of ensuring social peace, prosperity, justice, etc.

For example:

The ‘fearful outsider’ is the most commonly encountered representation used by the elite to control the majority and ensure that the majority continue to tacitly support the rule of the elite. Anyone or any group who can be depicted as ‘not one of us’ or ‘outside the boundaries of normal society’ (i.e. as other) is being represented as fearful so that the majority of the population will turn to the elite (who hold and wield all the power in society) for protection. Consider; ‘hoodies’, paedophiles, criminals, ‘chavs’, foreigners, immigrants, every front page of the Daily Mail, indeed any moral panic is a hegemonic success because the elite will be turned to by the people to save them from the source of the panic (see the list above).

More technically we can say that:

Hegemony is the manufacture consent through the manipulation of the common sense.

Terminology

Other – The ‘not us’ from which we derive some sense of who ‘we’ are. This ‘we’ being a common sense notion useful to the manufacture of consent and not the reality of the social group in question; use of ‘we’ and ‘us’ always establishes a ‘them’ who are not us (i.e. it sets out what is normal – us – and what is abnormal – them).

Manufacture Consent – No elite can rule through force alone and forever. A ruling group needs the consent of the majority to maintain and replicate (i.e. hand it on to their children) their rule. The consent, however, is not sought from the majority – they could decide the wrong thing after all – nor left up to them rather it is manufactured by the elite through the processes of hegemony. It is a consent that is not freely given nor is it fully informed (quite the opposite) rather it is carefully built up for us by the elite; it is a consent we give with out knowing and without option.

Common Sense – The realm of uncritical assumptions and acceptance of what is normal and abnormal as defined by the elite or as Gramsci put it:

“Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.”

Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from cultural writings. London (Lawrence & Wishart) 1985, 421

Moral Panic – A moral panic is a collective outburst against a perceived threat to the ethical underpinning of the community. Often this threat has been outsiders to the community – Jews and Roma have suffered terribly at the hands of moral panics – but anyone or group who can be seen as outsiders (on grounds of their identity or actions) can also be constructed as a threat and thus cause a moral panic.

Links

Hegemony

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism10.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram.htm

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/contributions/gramsci.html

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm

http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/soc/courses/soc2r3/gramsci/gramheg.htm

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol6.htm

http://rykalskireadsthemedia.blogspot.com/search/label/Hegemony

http://www.bisa.ac.uk/bisanews/0205/bisa0205_2.htm

Common Sense

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/csme/meas/papers/coben.html

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=308

Moral Panic

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/fdevdet.html

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/mugging.html

http://www.mediaknowall.com/violence/moralpanicnotes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed_20030430.shtml

Leading the Team

Hegemony is a representational strategy of power; it involves the uses of representations to control people (to manufacture the consent of the ruled to the rule of the rulers) and a fine set of examples of such controlling representations can be found in four current crime fiction TV shows.
The basic model of representational hegemony is that all social groups bar the elite are presented as unfit to lead or rule in one way or another. This is based on the elites power over the mechanisms of representation and of their prevention of of self representation by all other social groups. The elite are the only group with the social power necessary to make representations of and for society - the quotidian representations that normal people construct during interpersonal interaction are of insufficient durability and lack mechanisms for dissemination into the wider society.
In the past these extensive and widely distributed social representations have been far more direct and obvious. The stereotype of women as hysterical and therefore emotionally unfit to participate in rule was one such hegemonic representation. It was one part of a wider network of representations of women as subordinate (indeed as property) that denied women participation in the governance of their society and control of themselves. Racist representations that aimed to divide and terrorise were extremely common in all europeanised societies and are still a part of contemporary media discourse. This fostering of fear was and is intended to cut both ways. The racist representation terrorises the 'other' group by inflicting symbolic violence on them and by showing how close to physical violence they are. It also creates an ogre - the monstrous 'other' - with which the 'norm' group can be frightened.
Contemporary social representations are much less direct and overt and it is to one set of these hegemonic representations in crime fiction TV that we now turn. In Waking the Dead, CSI and its siblings CSI:Miami and CSI:NY, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, and NCIS (a study in hegemony and interpellation in it own right & a borderline case as its teams is not as identity diverse as the other example texts) we find the same pattern of representation regarding leadership.
Although the team who constitute the central character group in the show are identity diverse - mixtures of genders and ethnicities on the whole as sexuality is carefully ignored - in each case the leader is the early or actually middle age white male; Boyd in Waking the Dead, Grissom in CSI, H & Mac in the other CSIs, Jack Malone in Without a Trace, and Gibbs in NCIS. In each case the legitimate authority of the white middle aged leader is repeatedly stressed and the subaltern status of all the other personnel on the team is reinforced. The hegemonic utility of this representational system (that is how this set of representations bolster the rule of the elite) lies in the clear delineation of leaders and led and the legitimacy of this division and the insistence that certain groups will all ways be found amongst the led.
In Missing Persons the first story of the current series of Waking the Dead - first broadcast in two parts 14th & 15th April 08 - the principle criminal protagonists were two tough, violent and very resourceful women one of whom was set upon a course of extreme violence until such point as she was faced down by the ever authoritative Boyd. The confrontation between Boyd and the former active service INLA member was a straightforward depiction of the triumph of his legitimate and rational authority over her rage and violence. That is to say it was a straightforward demonstration of who ought to be allowed to lead society and who ought to be controlled by society.
It is worth noting that this leadership representation is not limited to crime fiction the bricolage (see also here) of Sherlock Holmes that is House works on exactly the same basis and reinforces exactly the same representation of society. Finally part of the joy of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes is in the fashion in which they subvert this representational system. Gene Hunt may well be the leader of the team but his leadership is not unquestionably legitimate and his authority is always suspect. Not least because he may well be a figment of the imagination.

Stop Boris! It almost goes without saying

He can't keep his hair out of his eyes.
He can't keep his foot out of his mouth.
He can't keep his **** out of other women.
Just the person to be left in charge of a city as large, powerful, complicated and problematic as London!

This post might not seem to have much to do with reading the media but then hegemony (see the work of Gramsci and Stuart Hall for instance) would be a useful thing to start thinking about Boris with. As would any feminist perspective you could think of (Judith Butler's perhaps).
The approach that most interests me, however, is to consider Boris' participation in our culture of celebrity and what Baudrillard's theories of simulacra & of hyper-reality might tell us about this participation. For Baudrillard simulation - copying - was the key aspect of modern existence because nothing was real and everything was in fact a copy of that which had once been real. The result of this dominance of simulation was the coming into existence of simulacra; simulations that had utterly replaced their now distant and dim originals. Which in turn left us with no access to 'the real' whatsoever. Rather all we can know is the hyper-real; that mediated world of simulacra we can experience through the ubiquitous communication media of our time.
The explosion of the realm of celebrity in our current socio-media world is the perfect example of this. Once celebrity emerged from something else (beauty, notoriety, ability, luck, fortune, etc) and was a property of people. Now celebrity can be manufactured, allocated, and consumed - it is simulated from past models - and has replaced people possessing a particular property with simulacra infused with the simulation of celebrity during the manufacturing process. Celebrities are of course hyper-real as we only know them as media constructs and because of their ubiquity we really do know them. Consider the simularca called 'Jordan' and its counterpart 'Katie Price' and how hyper-real they both are.
Boris then is a simulacra in that he is a simulation of so many duffers and cads from 1950's British cinema (alchemically combined) and our understanding of him is hyper-real in that we know him through the media and only through the media. It may be time to take the red pill, or any other colour, rather than the blue.

Newspapers & Social Theory

One of the key problems with journalists is that they are all far too generalist (due to the combination of time pressures, space limitations and journalistic culture). Typically this whinge falls from the mouths of scientist and medical practitioners (The Guardian's ever readable Bad Science column is one effort to add some scientific rigour to the field of journalism) but it also ought to fall from the mouths of sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and every other academic specialism dealing with human group life.
Clear evidence of this bad sociology can be found in Nick Cohen's latest column for the Obs. Cohen was once the reason to read the Observer and it has been painful to watch the decline that has come over his writing in recent years and this comment piece only continues the trend. Watching Cohen grapple with the hegemonic nature of representation in a fashion proper to an E grade A-level media studies student is just painful. The idea that the projected self-image of the dominant group in society has transmuted to include the non-white, non-male, non-straight members of the elite without effecting any actual social change is not a new or complex one. Hegemony is a representational strategy of social power that mobilises representations of different social groups as illegitimate holders of power (because incapable, irrational, or just evil) so as to legitimise the on going dominance of the current elite and the current system of resource distribution. It is after all the point of the elite to deny access to resources to the majority population (we know them as the poor - i.e. any one earning less than median average wages) by any means necessary and representing the poor as chav-scum-benefit-cheats is a mode for manufacturing consent to the continued rule of the elite.
The key point, and the one that Cohen is trying to get to grips with, is that control over resources has always been the requirement of entry into the elite and that the seeming criteria set forth by the elites projected self-image has got nothing to do with it. That image is just a tool for manufacturing consent, it is the image of the social group that ought legitimately to rule not the boundary marker of that group. It is for this reason that all the Pankhursts (bar Sylvia) went onto be such ferocious rightists and sexual hypocrisy is so potentially damaging for members of the elite. It has always been the case that male homosexual sexual hypocrisy has been a problem for the elite because until very recently in our society such actions penetrated the screen of this projected self-image and showed it to be image and only image.
Cohen would be best suited by going back and reading the works of Gramsci before writing any more columns but on the current evidence hoping he watches The Wizard of Oz and pays attention as Dorothy and her companions disobey the orders of the great and powerful Oz to look at that little man behind the curtain is all we can expect.