Media Hegemony Theory.

 Antinio Gramsci's Media Hegemony:

Gramsci was an Italian Marxist. And he co-founded Italian Marxist party. He discussed this theory in his book called "The Prison Notebook". 

Gramsci tried to find out that why there is no any sign of revolution in capitalist countries, as predicted by Karl Marx? He answered this by introducing the concept of 'hegemony'.

He discussed political and cultural media hegemony in a following way:

1. Political media hegemony: or Media Hegemony theory:  

According to this approach, the mass media are controlled by the dominant class in society which uses it as a vehicle for exerting control over the rest of society. 

Media is a social or ideological institution which try to develop a 'consent' in a society about ruling class or elite among masses. In other words, Media is used to create obedience and dominance (hegemony) of elites through ideology rather than force. Why media does this? The answer is in 3 approaches discussed below. 

There are three types of cultural hegemony. 

1. Leftist apporach. 2. Rightist apporach. 

3. Centre approach. 

1. Cultural hegemony: (the left or marxist approach):

In this case dominant class is capitalism. 

Cultural hegemony is another thing which tries to dominate one's culture over others through media.Capitalist system is endorsed throug media. People get socialized about the system and they consider it the best. Media is ideas manufacturing factory. Therefore, Media is playing very important role to assert the cultural hegemony of the powerful class. Gramsci say that media does this because 'the main business of media is business'. It is said that media tries to indoctrinate people into capitalism. But Gramsci is critical of this. He says media in reality try to anesthetize (behosh) them and do what it wants to do. And while in a state of deep sleep media can bring about any change it wants. The change media intends is to carry them away from a world full of poverty, rapacity and indignity to a realm of undiluted pleasure - a world where laughter sex and excitement are available at the touch of a button; where the good guys always win in the end; where the endings are always happy. In a nutshell, media carry them away from poverty to abundance i.e capitalism.

2. Neoconservative theory (the right approach) :

These people say that abovementioned blames are propounded by the new class of dissatisfied anti-capitalist liberals. But who are they? They are the reporters, screenwriters, directors and producers who actually creates the news and movies we see every day.

3. Cultural Democracy theory. (the Centre):

Media is used to appease the consumers, middle class, who are of most significant people. Furthermore, media are neither controlled by anti-capitalist liberals nor by upper-class capitalist, but instead by great middle class. Precisely because media are commercial, their main intrest is in pleasing their consumers. In other words, mass media, like all forms of popular culture, are popular for reason. They give the populus(the people) what they want. They do this because if they don't, the people will stop reading, hearing or watching, and media will be out of business. This is an audience-centred approach. 

In order to reaffirm or fortify these arguments, this approach ask a basic question as to what are the commercial imperatives of media? 

1. Maximize profit. 

2. Maximize audience size. 

3. Don't bore the audience. 

4. And don't offend them. 

All these four are interconnected and depend on each other. And ultimately support the centre approach.

The media wars:

Gulf war of 1991 was shown as a righteous war by American media. The Time magazine didn't consider it military victory, rather a moral victory as well. But in order to see the reality, john pilger's movie 'the war you don't see' is important. This movie shows the real face of war. In addition to this, TV channels like ABC, PBS, and HBO potrayed a flamboyant picture of coming soliders from the war.