Ideology

An ideology is a set of interlocking assumptions and expectations held by a person, a group or a culture - a set of ideas about how the world works, a system of values. As distinct from a philosophy, an ideology can readily become a programme for action. On the broadest level, it so entirely infuses a culture that its members may not even be aware of sharing certain assumptions about the nature of people and the best way they can live together. An ideology can be so taken for granted that it comes to seem 'natural' the way the world works or ought to work.' (Kawin)

Ideology is a term which refers to the coherent set of beliefs and values which dominate in a culture, and which is particularly held by those who have power. Ideology is concerned with social and power relationships and with the means by which these are made apparent. The media communicate ideology to their audiences. This ideology can be found in the material by looking for covert messages.' (Burton 1990)

The study of ideology can be usefully defined as 'the ways in which meaning (signification) serves to sustain relations of domination' '(Thompson quoted in Stevenson 1995).

Ideology is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Napoleon Bonapart used the term to attack democracy (regarded across Europe, in the early 19th century, as the philosophy of fanatics) blaming ' the doctrines of the ideologues' for all the ills of France. Bonapart's emphasis ( by 'ideology' he meant rigid and doctrinaire principles ) is one still used today by the media. Len Masterman (1985) also notes a pejorative use of the term ideology by Marx and Engels to refer to 'false consciousness' or the misrecognition of material conditions and relationships. An example would be Feudal populations imagining that kings and lords ruled by divine right, as the church and popular culture of the time led them to believe.The other sense of ideology used by Marx is as 'the set of ideas which arise from a given set of material interests.' Lenin uses the term in this sense when he refers to socialism as 'the ideology of the struggle of the working class':

Williams notes that there is here 'clearly no sense of illusion or false consciousness ... There is now 'proletarian ideology' or 'bourgeois ideology' and so on, and ideology in each case is the system of ideas appropriate to that class'. It also becomes possible now to speak of 'dominant ideology', and 'subordinate ideologies'. (Masterman 1985)

The sense here of competing ways of thinking (and behaving), or 'world views', is the closest to the definitions of ideology generally agreed by contemporary critics. According to Burton (1990):

Ideology is a set of beliefs which add up to a particular view of the world and of power relations between people and groups. All sets of beliefs which have labels or titles are ideologies; Buddhism, Communism, Capitalism, Catholicism. These 'ISMS" are often tied to particular cultures, but more than one may exist within a culture.'

That is not to say that a person has to subscribe to an 'ISM' to be subject to ideology. Everyone has some sort of ideology or view of the world - a notion of what, for them, is right and wrong, of how the world is and how it could be made a better place. This view of the world is affected by the country and culture we grow up in, our friends and family, the media, religion, educational institutions and other social forces. Much of what is regarded as 'common sense' is ideological, because ideology is so much a part of the way a person lives that it becomes transparent. A person travelling to a foreign country may experience a sense of the strangeness of that culture, of what is regarded as 'normal' or acceptable being quite different from what they are used to. Where the idea of having two, three or even four wives would be quite normal in much of the Arabic world, for instance, the idea of eating pork, or seeing a woman in a bikini would be shocking. The fact that these views are taken granted in these countries, goes to show how vast populations are subject to the force of ideology.

The media plays a vital role in transmitting ideology. The arguments around how they transmit it, and its effects on a population are, in themselves, profoundly ideological. The two most influential frameworks for considering these arguments with regard to the media are liberalism and Marxism.

Liberal Political Theory

Historically, liberalism has stressed the role of the mass media in promoting the free exchange of ideas. Critics writing from a liberal perspective have, since the 19th century, argued that privately owned media organisations free from state control have been a major factor in promoting individual liberty. In 'Culture and Anarchy' Mathew Arnold writes:

A Liberal believes in liberty and liberty signifies the non intervention of the state.'

Liberal media theory was further developed in the United States from the 1930's. In addition to providing a guarantee for individual liberty, the theory suggested, privately owned and uncensored media promoted political and economic liberty. Liberal theorists claimed that democracies existed because of media freedom. Evidence for this claim could be found in Nazi Germany where the state's grip on the press, television and the cinema was a crucial element of the government's totalitarian control of society.

Classical liberal theory indicates that privately owned media are a vital part of a pluralist state. The freedom to publish and broadcast in an unrestricted market ensures that a wide range of opinions and interests in society are expressed. If a viewpoint is not expressed it is only because it lacks a sufficient following to sustain it in the market place. Some liberal theorists compare the operation of the market to processes of political representation. Media products, they contend, must submit to the equivalent of an election every time they go on sale, whereas politicians seek election only at infrequent intervals.

Liberal theorists argue that the media provide forums for public debate about issues of the day, articulating public opinion arising out of these debates, forcing governments to take account of what people think. The mass media play an important role in the wider education of citizens, enabling them to make informed judgements at election time. The various arms of the media, including television, provide a forum for discussion between different groups in society allowing a natural consensus to emerge on issues of importance to the nation. Furthermore because journalists, directors and programme makers are autonomous, they can effectively report on anything they want, including government mistakes or corruption. As such they are champions of the individual against the abuse of executive power and the misdeeds of the powerful.

Those writing within a Determinist or Marxist tradition tend to qualify the 'freedom' granted by liberal theorist to the media by stressing the relationship of the media with the governing class:

The importance and value of this freedom and opportunity of expression is not to be underestimated. Yet the notion of pluralist diversity and competitive equilibrium is, here, as in every other field, rather superficial and misleading. For the agencies of communication and notably the mass media are, in reality, and the expression of dissident views notwithstanding, a crucial element in the legitimation of capitalist society. Freedom of expression is not thereby rendered meaningless. But that freedom has to be set in the real economic and political context of these societies; and in that context the free expression of ideas and opinions mainly means the free expression of ideas and opinions which are helpful to the prevailing system of power and privilege.' (Miliband 1979)

Despite such criticism, the continuing widespread influence of liberal media theory can be seen, for instance, in Alan Peacock's 1986 Broadcasting White paper and in the Conservative government's 1990 Broadcasting Act which, although toned down, took on board many of Peacock's liberal assumptions.

Marxist Political Theory

Marxism has been concerned with examining the mass media as a form of social power in contemporary societies. Marxist theory, unlike liberal theory, focuses on the media in terms of its patterns of ownership, its manipulation by powerful elites (as in public relations) and its ideological role in reproducing the status quo. Critics writing from a Marxist perspective have questioned how freedom of speech is possible within media institutions and cultural industries largely controlled by a tiny, unelected business class and driven by commercial imperatives. The following outlines of Marxist perspectives of ideology and its operation within the mass media are highly summarised versions of complex arguments and concepts outlined in more detail by Stevenson (1995), Strinati (1995) and others. (refer to sources for further reading)

Karl Marx

According to Marx, 'The history of the world is the history of the class struggle.' (The Communist Manifesto 1848)

The obvious question posed by liberals and others against Marxists is why in conditions of free and open political competition the anti-socialist parties have so regularly been voted into power with the popular mandate of the electorate, an electorate made up, on the whole, of the working classes socialists claim to be representing. The answer Marx gave to that question was, in a famous formulation, that:

the ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas' because'..the class, which is the ruling material force in society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it' (Marx from 'The German Ideology' quoted in R.Miliband 1979)

In the capitalist era the bourgeoisie control the means of intellectual production: publishing and all branches of the mass media, educational institutions, political parties and so on. As a result this class - the ruling class - effectively dominates the production, regulation and distribution of ideas. The bourgeoisie secure their position because their ideas are those most widely in circulation and therefore dominate the consciousness of subordinate groups. As a result class inequalities and the continued exploitation of the working class is maintained and justified.

Marx argues that the 'real foundation' or 'base' of society - its relations of production ( which could be primitive, feudal, capitalist or socialist) is what determines, or sets limits to, the superstructure of that society. By 'superstructure' Marx means 'the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philisophical' - in short, the ideological forms of a society. Such ideological forms would include cultural manifestations such as the mass media.

Hence, according to those critics who would subscribe to Marx's analysis, the mass media in a capitalist society would, generally, promote a capitalist view of the world, or, at least, a view of the world that does not threaten capitalism and its exploitative rationale:

There is nothing particularly surprising about the character and role of the mass media in advanced capitalist society. Given the economic and political context in which they function, they cannot fail to be, predominantly, agencies for the dissemination of ideas and values which affirm rather than challenge existing patterns of power and privilege, and thus to be weapons in the arsenal of class domination. The notion that they can, for the most part, be anything else is either a delusion or a mystification. They can and sometimes do, play a 'dysfunctional' role; and the fact that they are allowed to do so is not lightly to be dismissed. but that, quite emphatically, is not and indeed cannot, in the given context, be their main role. they are intended to fulfil a conservative function; and do so.' (Miliband 1979)

Empirical research by Murdoch and Golding and the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (amongst others) has shown, in support of Marx's thesis, that small groups of powerful economic and financial interests dominate the control of mass communication industries. The undisputed fact of increasing concentration of media ownership in recent years make Marx's analysis all the more relevant to contemporary history. As ownership and control of the media continues to pass to an elite, wealth owning clique via multinational concerns and conglomerates - critical perspectives and alternative viewpoints become further marginalised:

Those with most economic power will be able to improve their market position, and ensure that the media products least critical of the class structure will survive, and those most critical will not. This in turn, will make it more difficult for alternative viewpoints, politics and cultures to enter the market because they will lack the necessary economic resources. The pressure of rising costs means that all media have to try to reach as large an audience as possible. They can do this by aiming either at a large mass audience, or at smaller but affluent groups. Equally they cannot afford to lose audiences. It therefore becomes necessary to rely upon tried and tested formulae, rather than trying to be different and experimental.' (Strinati 1995)

The Frankfurt School

A logical extension to the Marxist view of the operation of ideology is the notion of 'false needs'. According to this view people have 'real' needs of, for example, food, shelter, education, freedom and creativity. They need to be involved in the decision making processes that effect their lives, their work and the society they are living in. In capitalism these 'true needs' are hidden by the 'false needs' of consumerism. Real freedom - to participate in a genuinely democratic society as a free thinking, creative individual - is replaced by a series of choices between products and 'lifestyles' offered by the market and political parties all representing the interests of the dominant class.

Through the mass media, education and religion the capitalist order encourages conformity and acceptance of the status quo. According to the Frankfurt School for Social Research - founded by a group of left wing academics in Germany shortly before the rise of Nazi party - the media as part of a wider 'culture industry' is highly destructive, for example:

the colour film demolishes the genial old tavern to a greater extent than bombs ever could. ..No homeland can survive being processed by the films which celebrate it, and which thereby turn the unique character on which it thrives into an interchangeable sameness.' (Adorno quoted by Strinati)

In addition to its economic function of promoting consumerism the culture industry is employed to infantalise its audience by developing their consciousness regressively:

It is no coincidence that cynical American film producers are heard to say that their pictures must take into consideration the level of eleven-year-olds. In doing so they would very much like to make adults into eleven-year-olds.' (Adorno quoted by Strinati)

The Frankfurt School suggested, in opposition to Marx, that capitalism was not in crisis, but had, through wealth creation and the control of political institutions and the mass media ensured its own survival. The working class were materially and ideologically bound to capitalism - secured by the success with which the system delivered financial prosperity and consumer goods. This radical break with Marx's identification of an ongoing class struggle is understandable in light of the period (the middle decades of the twentieth century) in which the school was writing. The rise of fascism, the fading or failure of revolutionary movements and the economic boom years of the west that followed the war, appeared to signify an end to working class agitation that had previously characterised capitalism's short history.

Louis Althusser

Ideology: ' represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.'

French structuralist critic Althusser developed a more detailed interpretation of Marx's 'base - superstructure' account of ideology. Althusser, rejecting a crudely economic 'determinist' view of ideology, suggests that the economic base is the superstructural determinant 'in the last instant'. In other words, while the economy remains paramount in setting limits to the superstructure it is not the only determinant. Althusser granted the superstructure and ideological forces operating within it a relative degree of autonomy from the economic infrastructure - going so far as to suggest the possibility of reciprocal action of the superstructure on the base.

In his essay 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses' Althusser suggests that the superstucture secures labour's compliance with the (capitalist) mode of production via repressive and/or ideological means. Repressive State Apparatus (R.S.A.s) are sanctioned to use force in defence of the system and include the police, the courts, prisons and the army. Ideological State Apparatus (I.S.A.s), on the other hand, employing ideological means of subjection, include schools, the church, the family, popular culture and the mass media.The I.S.A.s transmit ideological forms of misrecognition of the real relations of domination. Hence, the mass media, in Althusser's view, perform an ideological role in securing the consent of the population for the continuation of capitalism.

Ideology attempts to smooth away all contradictions and consciousness of class conflicts. However, ideology, according to Althusser is not simply something imposed on subordinate groups by a dominant class or even simply an illusory set of ideas in the mind of the people. Ideology is how people (mis)represent their relation to the real world, a relationship which, while false and illusory has material forms which incorporate to a greater, or lesser extent all members of society. An example would be the (material) practice of voting in an election. According to the perspective offered by Althusser such a practice would reflect an imaginary relation in the mind of the voter between him/herself as a self determining agent and the political realm. In these terms, the reality of an election is a stage managed ritual: a selection between parties offering virtually identical policies for continuing the status quo (the preservation of capitalism). The idea in the voter's mind of participation in democratic decision making is, therefore, an illusory one.

The material force or practice of ideology can also be judged by how schools instil the 'know- how' in children required by the relations of production. Under capitalism this has necessitated at least basic numeracy and literacy in addition to an uncritical respect for authority. Without such an education there can be no effective workforce or profits for the owners of the means of production. All ideology works by recruiting or 'hailing' individuals and placing ('interpellating') them, as subjects within the framework of ideology, helping to shape their particular world view:

For example, a religion will place all individuals who participate in its material practices as subjects, or believers, who are subject to one subject, God. Similarly, the ideology of political democracy will place individuals as subjects in terms of their becoming citizens subject to the sovereignty of parliament. Patriarchal ideology will interpellate individuals as more powerful men or less powerful women. Popular culture in contemporary societies might be argued to function by taking individuals and placing them as workers or as members of social classes.' (Strinati 1995)

Unlike the Frankfurt School however, Althusser is careful to point out that such ideological functions as are performed by schools, religion, the mass media and popular culture will be confronted by and subject to conflict and class struggle.

Noam Chomsky

The American intellectual, critic and linguist Noam Chomsky developed (with Edward Herman) a view of the role of the media based on the Marxist perspectives outlined above. According to Chomsky's 'propaganda model' the media are used as a technique of control: creating the 'necessary illusions' which are in the interests of the ruling class. He divides the population into a political class which is the top 20% of 'relatively educated, reasonably articulate' group who have a role in decision making such as managers, writers, teachers. The political class has to be 'deeply indoctrinated' to fulfil their role effectively. The function of the remaining 80% is, essentially, to follow orders. The Media's function according to Chomsky's model is to reduce the subordinate population's ability to think, thereby reducing this group to apathy.

According to the 'propaganda model', there are elite medias such as the major TV channels and the quality press. They set a general framework of news through selection of topics, distribution of concerns and the placing of emphasis all of which serve the interests of the dominant elite groups in society. Chomsky was a leading figure in the anti - Vietnam War movement in the 1960's arguing that the possibility of a peaceful settlement to the conflict was consistently excluded by the American media, who, he argued bore a heavy responsibilty for the continuation of the war.

Chomsky sets out to prove, using content analysis, how certain stories are under-represented in the media because of powerful industrial interests. In one paired example he showed how atrocities committed by Indonesia in East Timor received only 70 column inches in the New York Times compared to 1175 column inches devoted to Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia. Chomsky argues that while more people were actually slaughtered by the Indonesains in East Timor, the fact that the weaponry was, and continues to be, supplied by American, Britain and Holland meant that it received low news priority.

Antonio Gramsci

The Marxist perspectives, as barely summarised above, tend to give the impression of a somewhat uniform culture doled out by the ruling class to a brainwashed population. The Italian political activist and critic Gramsci developed a more subtle elaboration of Marxist conceptions of ideology. Gramsci's concept of hegemony has come to take a crucial role in critical understanding of popular culture and the mass media. Hegemony is the ideological means whereby the bourgeois class maintain power by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus . The resulting hegemonic consensus, which comes to be regarded by large sections of the population as 'common sense', is built upon compromise and concessions both by the dominant and subordinate groups and acts as a kind of social cement. Subordinate groups accept the leadership of the ruling class while those leaders representing the interests of the bourgoisie grant concessions and limited economic sacrifices (such as welfare provision or wage rises) in return for their support.

For Gramsci 'civil society' is the site where hegemonic control is negotiated while the state is responsible for the use of coercion. As the mass media are a part of civil society it follows that the media should be understood in terms of the concept of hegemony. While hegemony may be regarded as a series of negotiated ideas and accepted values, these ideas and values, for Gramsci, ultimately serves the interests of the ruling class. Nevertheless, hegemonic consensus is something which emerges out of social and class stuggle and therefore its hold over subordinate groups can never be guaranteed.

Stuart Hall

Ideology 'is what is most open, apparent, manifest,' what 'takes place on the surface and in view of all men'. Though, 'what is hidden, repressed or inflected out of sight are its real foundations.' ( Hall quoted in Masterman 1985)

The work of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies (of which he is a founding member) has continued the broadly Marxist analysis of society and the media as developed by Althusser and Gramsci. Hall argues that the mass media is the most important ideological apparatus of contemporary capitalism. Hall's specific contribution to mass communication research has been to examine both the ideological nature or 'encoding' of media messages and the work of audiences in 'decoding' these messages.

In 'Policing the Crisis' (1978) Hall and his colleagues gave an account of a press led moral panic around mugging, drawing on the 'deviancy amplification' concept, and linked it to the breakdown of postwar consensus politics and the growth of an authoritarian state. Hall argues that the term 'mugging' had been introduced from America and was used to exaggerate fears of rising street crime in Britain and stigmatise black deviant behaviour at a time of economic and ideological crisis. The threat of the 'mugger' served to justify and legitimate increased police and court powers. 'Mugging' was a new term for a whole variety of age-old offences which was used to give the impression of a rising tide of street crime.

Hall uses the term 'primary definers' to refer to the work of the police, army, courts, the government and other powerful institutions to set an agenda for news reporting - the work of the media or 'secondary definers':

Before the 'mugger' panic had appeared in the press there had been an intensification of police mobilisation against deviant blacks. The result of this strategy was the appearance of black offenders in court which, in turn, provided the setting for the spiralling of press attention.... The definitions of the police in the resulting moral panic are given extra ideological weight in that they are able to establish a high degree of cultural closure. This would not be the case in, say, media reporting of industrial relations where the primary definers would include trade unions as well as employers. as Hall points out, by 'virtue of being criminals, they have forfeited the right to take part in the negotiations of the consensus about crime' (Stevenson 1995)

Hall suggests that 'muggers' were one useful scapegoat for wider social anxiety caused by the breakdown of the traditional political consensus in British politics and accompanying shifting social norms. The radicalisation of marginal social groups such as young people, students, ethnic minorities and the limited progress made by trade unions, feminism and the gay and lesbian movement were just some of the threats posed to establishment values in the 1960's and 70's. Hall suggests that the political Right, represented politically by Mrs Thatcher and the conservative party offered radical, populist, authoritarian leadership - and set about the collossal task of hegemonically redefining the British people throughout the 1980's. Thatcherism appealed to 'common sense' fears over street crime, the Soviet threat, union power, the privatisation of state utilities and a whole range of 'Victorian values'. The enterpreneurial, deregulated but authoritarian state that Thatcherism offered, aided and abetted by an almost exclusively right wing national press, successfully appealed to a range of identities across the class spectrum.

Hall does not suggest a monolithic ideological conformity either on the part of the mass media or the audience under Thatcherism or any other political system. Rather, he identifies dominant discursive strategies 'encoded' within the media texts and a variety of 'decoded' messages identified by the audience. Hall notes three reading strategies by audiences . Firstly, a 'dominant hegemonic reading' which would accept the 'preferred reading' offered by the text. On the day following Robert Maxwell's death TV and press reports of the press baron largely mourned his loss and were uncritical or obnoxiously sycophantic in the case of the paper he had owned, 'The Mirror'. A dominant hegemonic reading would therefore support this view of Maxwell - a powerful, ambitious, charismatic, if slightly rogueish entrepreneur - 'The Man Who Saved the Mirror' in the words of the Mirror's headlines.

A 'negotiated reading' might accept the general thrust of the reports but consider them slightly generous and respectful in light of the accident and possible upset to the family. There may be an awareness of an outsized ego and dictatorial management style obliquely referred to in some of the reports. An 'oppositional reading' would reject the entire framework of the report - insisting against the text that Maxwell was a ruthless egomaniac who destroyed a campaigning tabloid, creating in its stead a feeble parody of a newspaper devoted to his personal aggrandizement. Such a reading, as was made public by the likes of Private Eye would also argue that the man was a thief, a liar and a disgrace to Britain's public life.

Roland Barthes

Ideology, according to Marxists, maintains an appearance of naturalness by effacing itself. Its assertions are erased even as they are presented. They are erased or denied through what the French critic Roland Barthes identifies as 'Myth'. Bourgeois ideology, according to Barthes, denies the existence of a bourgeois class: 'the bourgeoisie has obliterated its name in passing from reality to representation.' (Barthes 1973) Myth for Barthes is a mode of representation, characterised most of all by its naturalness. 'Myth-consumers' take signification for a system of facts - they take myths at face value, as natural, 'what-goes-without-saying'.

In 'Mythologies' - a collection of frequently tongue-in-cheek essays on ordinary objects and cultural practices such as wrestling, stripping, steak and chips, toys - Barthes rails against the confusion of 'Nature and History'. Barthes argues that 'ideological abuse' is hidden in the presentation of objects that are robbed of any sense of history or production:

Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all History. In it history evaporates. It is a kind of ideal servant: it prepares all things, brings them, lays them out, the master arrives, it silently disappears: all that is left is for one to enjoy this beautiful object without wondering where it comes from.' (Barthes 1973)

Barthes is irritated by the way products, beliefs, cultural and political practices, ways of living are presented as natural. They appear in such a way that denies politics and history. In one chapter of 'Mythologies' entitled 'The New Citroen' Barthes wryly observes:

It is obvious that the new Citroen has fallen from the sky in as much as it appears at first sight as a superlative object. We must not forget that an object is the best messenger of a world above that of nature: one can easily see in an object at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter (matter is much more magical than life), and in a word a silence which belongs to the world of fairy tales.'

Myth has erased the human activity, history, skill and effort of the car's production. And in this process of representation, which Barthes describes as a 'haemorrhage' or emptying of reality: nature or 'what-goes-without-saying' floods in. To recover the ideological from the apparently natural requires methodical analysis at different levels: peeling back 'what is taken for granted' to discover the hidden values and assumptions that underpin all objects, texts and practices.

Ideological Analysis

Artefacts are cultural. Their existence is not accidental, any more than their particular qualities are. The shape, size, colour and every other quality of the objects which we see around us are so by design, and represent the result of conscious human choices. Because that chair, that glass or that home is that way rather than any other, it embodies meanings and reveals something of the values of the society in which it finds a place. The purpose of analysing objects is to unmask the choices implicit within them and most fundamentally to reveal them as the outcome of human rather than natural processes.' (Masterman 1985)

The relationship between the signified , the signifier and myth (see following chapter) can be more easily understood by applying three levels of analysis: denotative, connotative and ideological (see chapter 'Semiotics' for further explanation of these terms).

Denotative Analysis (Description)

Analysis at a denotatitve level requires a description of what can be seen or heard in a concrete sense. This may involve, in the case of a television sequence, describing in detail: objects, people, clothes, speech, music, setting, camera angle, framing, focus, distortion (due to camera lens), colour, lighting, line, type of cut, pace of editing, movement, gesture and any other aspect of what appears or is heard in the sequence. In fact, as Masterman notes, hard and fast distinctions between denotation and connotation can never be absolute as the 'factual' inevitably involves particular ways of selecting, valuing and understanding experience.

Connotative Analysis (Related Associations)

Many, if not all, of the signs denoted in a text will have connotations. Connotative analysis is generally more ambiguous, or open to interpretation, than denotative analysis. We may agree at a literal level what we have seen or heard but argue over its meaning or associations. A black leather sofa may connote comfort and homeliness to one viewer, sophistication and luxury to another and crass machismo to a third. Low-key lighting (in which there will be shadows) is traditionally associated with mystery, suspense, horror. Tight framing may suggest intensity or entrapment. Rock music may connote youth, excitement, freedom, danger. Interpretation will be subject to historical context, nationality, culture, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and personal and social experience.

Some signs or combination of signs may be more 'closed' or less 'polysemic' (open to interpretation) than others. An 'open' text, by contrast, will have no clear 'preferred reading'. It may invite a variety of readings and connotations may be ambiguous or multi-layered. The Guiness television advertising campaign starring Rutger Hauer was to different audiences either, sophisticated, entertaining, sexy, clever, perplexing, pretentious or nonsensical. Rutger Hauer himself connoted mystery, foreigness, star appeal, masculinity, ambiguity, smoothness, sexuality and with his black coat and blond hair, a physical pint of Guiness ! In fact, meaning is fairly clearly anchored in most advertising. Soap opera is a genre which is thought of as being more consistently open in its range of possible interpretations, due to the competing perspectives and values offered within a serial and its more open narrative structure.

Ideological Analysis

Ideological analysis - in the sense of analysis which is designed to uncover those more or less coherent sets of values and beliefs which are thought to underpin a text - consists of piecing together the text's connotative fragments.' (Masterman 1985)

Stuart Hall, amongst others, has argued that media texts such as television programmes contain dominant ideological discources:

..This is due to the fact that media producers' own professional routines and practice contain certain assumptions and ideas about how programmes should be made (the 'relations of production'). They draw agendas and meanings - definitions of the situation' - from the wider society, which are ideological in nature (the 'framework of knowledge'). Finally, television's own codes and conventions are employed to complete the encoding process, whose effect is to naturalise or make transparent the meaning of the programme for the audience (to deny its own ideological construction).' (O'Sullivan et al 1994)

Ideological analysis will tease out the assumptions, myths and dominant discources that lie behind a text. These might only be partly thought out, or even, wholly unconscious on the part of the producers. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, may not have deliberately created a Kennedy figure in Captain Kirk. However, Kirk's pleas for (racial) tolerance at a time of riots in America or the frontier (imperialist) mission of the USS Enterprise have a fairly inescapable ideological resonance looking at the series in hindsight. Ideological analysis is, therefore, rarely concerned with an author's intentions, but with the way the text is encoded and to a lesser extent how the audience decode them.

Len Masterman gives a brief but perceptive ideological analysis of 'Mastermind':

So, in Mastermind (BBC), for example, the single chair, the pool of light, the clipped, impersonal tones of the questioner, the cutting to ever tighter close-ups of the contestants, all contribute to dominant and oppressive associations of knowledge and learning with interrogation, humiliation and fear of failure. these associations are validated and legitimised by the formal university setting in which the show takes place, and by their connotative links with the importance of factual recall within the show, as well as with the frequently absurd specialisms, and predominantly middle-class backgrounds of the contestants (the odd cabbie or tube driver amongst them simply attesting to the opportunities for upward mobility which approved knowledge can bring with it). An examination of Mastermind's connotative clusters, then, not only leads us directly to its major ideological themes and to its peculiarly de-humanised, hierarchical and oppressive construction of what counts as learning and intelligence. It also assures us, chillingly, that this construction has a great deal of purchase out there in the world of real and prestigious educational instituitions.' (Masterman 1985)

John Fiske concludes an analysis of a scene from 'Hart to Hart' by drawing the audience into the interpretive framework. The role of the viewer, he asserts, is also ideological:

If we adopt the same ideological practice in the decoding as the encoding we are drawn into the position of a white, male, middle-class American (or westerner) of conventional morality. The reading position is the social point at which the mix of televisual, social, and ideological codes comes together to make coherent, unified sense: in making sense of the program in this way we are indulging in an ideological practice ourselves, we are maintaining and legitimating the dominant ideology, and our reward for this is the easy pleasure of the recognition of the familar and of its adequacy. We have already become a 'reading subject' constructed by the text, and, according to Althusser, the construction of subjects in ideology is the major ideological practice in capitalist societies.' (Fiske 1987)

Media Imperialism

Ninety per cent of international news published by the world's press comes from the 'big four' Western news agencies. They are United Press International (UPI), Associated Press (AP), Reuter and Agence France Presse (AFP). Two are American, one is British, one is French. Their output is supplemented by the transnational giants: from Murdoch to Times Warner to CNN. Almost all of these are American. The largest news agency, UPI, gets 80 per cent of its funding from US newspapers. A survey in the mid 1980s found that UPI devoted 71 per cent of its coverage to the United States, 9.6 per cent to Europe, 5.9 per cent to Asia, 3.2 per cent to Latin America, 3 per cent to the Middle East and 1.8 per cent to Africa.

These figures', wrote the Canadian writer Don Rojas in 'Third World Resurgence', give a clear picture of the phenomenon called information imperialism. In the total volume of UPI's information, news about the United states took up more space than that devoted to the whole African continent, where more than 50 countries are situated.' Former Tanzanian president Julius Nyere once noted sarcastically, wrote Rojas, that the inhabitants of developing countries should be allowed to take part in the presidential elections of the United states because they are bombarded with as much information about the candidates as are North American citizens.' (Third World Resurgence Issue 12)

Media imperialism or monopolisation is the transmission of a nation's ideology through the media. Monopolisation of the media has been taking place since the 1920's when many nations complained of the influence of Hollywood over its culture. Since then governments, especially in the West, have seen the importance of the media in conveying their ideology to other nations. This was evident during the cold war, as East and West battled over the radio airwaves to transmit their own ideological messages. By the late 1980's 'The Voice of America', the United States world radio service had an audience of around 120 million listeners transmitted from 66 superpower transmitters. The Soviet Union had 32 such transmitters, France 12 and Britain 8. External radio services were operated by 31 countries enabling them to spread their ideologies over their borders without too much expense.

The fear is that with satellite technology western ideals are being reinforced throughout the third world, leading to the loss of local cultural values. As Lewis (1986) notes, satellites are simply another example of how 'the free flow of communication' works to disadvantage Third World countries. American satellites, for instance, which provide programmes for the domestic market are casting their televisual shadow over many Caribbean nations. A statement from the Caribbean Broadcasting and Publishing Association, voices these concerns by stating:

What is taking place quietly in the living rooms of thousands of Caribbean family units as they sit innocently before their television sets, frightens us. It is a process of deculturalization, which is painless, but also very thorough and long lasting.'

Media imperialism continues to operate in the world today partly due to the high cost of broadcasting, especially as western markets have large advertising revenues and can afford to dump their programmes and films at cut prices on developing nations. Furthermore, many third world journalists and technicians are trained in Europe and America which results in them adopting western practices and media content. As it is these locally based media professionals rarely get a chance to develop the skills they have learned because there is often a chronic shortage of money to spend on even the most basic productions. Dowmunt (1993) illustrates this problem with the example of Zimbabwe's television company ZTV:

ZTV can only afford to produce about twelve hours of indiginous drama a year, albeit incredibly cheaply with the actors also doing day jobs and providing their own costumes. Drama series like 'Ziva Kawakaba' (Know Your Roots) are very popular with the majority black audience, but the advertisers know they are going to get better value for money from imported programmes that appeal to the more affluent white or middle-class black audiences. And ZTV know they can acquire an episode of Miami Vice, say, for the special 'Third World' rate of $500 - a fraction of the already minimal budget of an episode of 'Ziva Kawakaba' '

Television stations in developing countries then, tend to cater to the status requirements of metropolitan middle-class groups whose tastes, aspirations, fashions and lifestyle are more 'westernised' and consumerist. In this way, the development of global communication technologies has gone hand in hand with the growth of capitalism's requirements for new markets.

The threat to independence in the late twentieth century from the new electronics could be greater than was colonialism itself...The new media have the power to penetrate more deeply into a 'receiving' culture than any other previous manifestation of Western technology. The results could be immense havoc, an intensification of the social contradictions within developing societies today.' (Smith, A. 1980)

In effect the concepts of 'media imperialism' and the 'globalisation of culture' are inextricably linked. Global communications are owned and controlled, almost exclusively, by 'First World' (American, European, Australian and Japanese) corporate interests and largely by a handful of American transnational conglomerates. In this sense a worldwide 'McDonalds and Madonna' culture, as promoted by television and the mass media, is seen as powerful and threatening to local identity, creating economic dependence, social pacification and cultural displacement.

However, as Stevenson (1995) notes, the charge that the media spearhead ideological and cultural dominance at a global level simply to create new needs and desires for consumer capitalism is an oversimplification. He suggests that 'public interest' programming, of the kind to be found particularly on public service broadcasting stations, as well as journalistic principles of truth, objectivity and balance and the work of more independent 'creative' artists are examples of resistance within the media to the 'colonising influence' of money and power.

Resistance is also provided by audiences of Western forms of media production who frequently 'read' or interpret imported programming in unexpected ways. Fiske quotes a study by Katz and Liebes (1987) that looked at how Russian Jews, newly arrived in Israel, read Dallas as 'capitalism's self-criticism'. As O'Sullivan (1994) remarks drawing together evidence from those few studies that have been conducted on the reception of foreign material by traditional and indigenous cultures:

Audiences on the 'receiving end' of American cultural products like 'Dallas' emerge as active agents, more complex, critical or resistant and certainly less predictable in their cultural responses than has been assumed.'

Furthermore, as Armand and Michelle Mattelart stress, it should not be assumed that because the 'media imperialists' are powerful we need to regard the ex-colonies as weak and suffering from many 'problems' with no solutions (Branston and Stafford 1996). Nevertheless, the highly concentrated ownership of the means of producing and circulating images, news, and representations remains a critical concern both nationally and internationally and it would be foolish to underestimate the effect global media systems have in consolidating western imperial power. As Edward Said points out in his study 'Culture and Imperialism':

..even Saddam Hussein seems to have relied on CNN for his news'

Exercise

Produce an ideological analysis of a television programme of your choice.

Essays

In general, then, the determining context for production is always that of the market. In seeking to maximise this market, products must draw on the most widely legitimating central core values while rejecting the dissenting voice or the incompatible objection to a ruling myth. The need for easily understood, popular, formulated, undisturbing, assimilable fictional material is at once a commercial imperative and an aesthetic recipe.' (Murdoch and Golding quoted in Strinti)

Murdoch and Golding suggest that the ideology of television is the ideology of the market. Is this always the case ?

Murdoch's empire has always shared one thing with the Marxist enterprise. It turns ideas into social and economic experiments...If BSkyB's swoop to seize control of televised soccer marks the climax of News Corporation's long-term plan for a self-reinforcing media system, it is also the culminating event in a social ... and even ideological ... transformation of Britain in the image of a radical philosophy: one which places the media corporation, as a promoter of information to the ordinary consumer, in direct opposition to the established elites'. (Rothwell 1992)

How far can a 'media system' bring about the ideological transformation of a country ?

We have seen in other countries that when commercial competition bites, choice narrows. The most effective means of countering the risks of the globalisation of culture, and declining standards will be by sustaining their publicly-funded broadcasters.' (Birt 1996)

How, and to what extent, can public service broadcasting act as a check against media imperialism ?

Sources

Miliband. R (1979) 'The State in Capitalist Society' Quartet

Burton, G. (1990) 'More Than Meets the Eye' Edward Arnold

O'Sullivan, T et al (1994) 'Studying the Media' Edward Arnold

Barthes, R. (1973) Mythologies Paladin

Kawin (1992) How Movies Work University of California Press

Chomsky, N. 'Manufacturing Consent'

Branston, G and Stafford, R (1996) 'The Media Student's Book' Routledge

Strinati, D (1995) 'Popular Culture' Routledge

Fiske, J (1987) 'Television Culture' Routledge

Stevenson, N (1995) 'Understanding Media Cultures' Sage

Masterman, L (1985) 'Teaching the Media' Routledge

Rothwell, N. 'Britain's Class War in a Satellite Dish' (The Australian May 28 1992) quoted in Pilger, J. (1992) 'Distant Voices' Vintage

Lewis, P.(1986) 'Media and Power' Camden Press

Maltby, R. (ed) (1989) 'Dreams for Sale - Popular Culture in the 20th Century' Equinox Ltd

(Third World Resurgence Issue 12) quoted in Pilger, J. (1992) 'Distant Voices' Vintage

Dowmunt, T. (Ed.) (1993) 'Channels of Resistance' BFI/C4 quoted in O'Sullivan et al. (1994) 'Studying the Media' Edward Arnold

Smith, A. (1980) 'The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World' Oxford University Press quoted by Said, E. (1993) 'Culture and Imperialism' Chatto & Windus

Katz and Liebes (1987) 'On the Critical Ability of Television Viewers' seminar paper presented at University of Tubingen quoted by Fiske, J (1987) 'Television Culture' Routledge

Said, E. (1993) 'Culture and Imperialism' Chatto & Windus

Further Reading

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Hall, S et al (1977) 'On Ideology' Hutchinson

Simon, R. (1986) 'Gramsci's Political Thought' Lawrence and Wishart

Donald, J and Hall, S (eds) (1986) 'Politics and Ideology' OUP