Newman Chapter 6: Ideology

Question 1

Ideology

Answer 1

• systems of ideas that many members of a society share—specifically ideas with a kind of oppressive power
• these ideas consist of beliefs, opinions, values, and whole ways of seeing and talking about the world and one’s place in it
• ideology connects to a system of ideas that perpetuate and justify prevailing power relations in a society

Question 2

dominant ideology

Answer 2

• “the meaning that we take for granted”– the status quo that has rarely been questioned
• reinforced over and over again, that perpetuate an unjust and unequal society

Question 3

Ideology critique

Answer 3

• when we analyze media texts to understand how they function as ideology, we can call it ideology critique, which is the practice of studying ideology in media
• this is recognition that society is structured and unequal and unjust ways, and media helps to maintain those structures

Question 4

Marx’s concept of false consciousness

Answer 4

• claims that ideology was a form of deception keeping the proletarian class from rising up and seizing control of political and economic power from the ruling
• so many can fail to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation because of the prevalence of ideas that such class divisions are natural, i.e. to be existed
• they are persuaded to consent to participating in the prevailing system of power relations, and that this is an ongoing process

Question 5

Ideological formations

Answer 5

• in analyzing media and identifying ideologies, a researcher never starts from scratch: they are already drawing from expressions of ideology that draw across several sites and forms of media or culture called ideological formations
• an ideological formation links particular forms of economic, legal, and social inequality with systems of ideas that perpetuate them
• ideological formations about gender and sexuality are related to the structure of the patriarchy

Question 6

Gramsci’s hegemony

Answer 6

• a replacement of Marx’s false consciousness, which states that dominance is not through ideological compulsion, but cultural leadership
• it involves a notion that different groups within society struggle over asserting their dominance on the terrain of ideas
• Ex: “hegemonic masculinity” as an identity suggests a dominant construction of gender, one particular type of masculinity that has more power than other gender identities—it requires all other men to position themselves in relation to the hegemonic version of their gender

Question 7

Counter-hegemonic

Answer 7

• challenging dominant ideologies
• not all media is hegemonic, and depicts only dominant ideologies

Question 8

Intersectionality

Answer 8

• a concept of identity that understands that the operations of hegemonic formations (masculinity, whiteness, heterosexism, ableism, nationalism) are all acting at once, and that identity has multiple dimensions
• an individual subject has many identities, and does not cease to occupy one when identifying as another

Question 9

Incorporation

Answer 9

• the process of mainstream media poaching alternative forms and styles, stripping away their critical hard edge, and packaging them as commodities
• the process in which mass culture often adopts the culture at the margins, operating outside of the mainstream (nike adopting hip-hop to seem “cool”)
• especially visible when corporate culture explicitly adopts the rhetoric and language of social or activist movements that oppose dominant practices (greenwashing as ‘go green’, ‘recycle’, etc.)