Ideology

I looked up the word 'ideology' up in my dictionary and the definition is "the body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture." Now what does all that have to do with mass communication in society? Marx and Engels (1970) says, "the dominant ideas of society are the ideas of the dominant class." The class that holds the power attempts to impose its ideas, its version of reality, on the rest of society.

This gives a misrepresentation of a culture. There are sub-cultures that abide within the whole. Giving the perspective of one sub-cuilture cannot represent everyone. The capitalists class, of course, has different ideas, views, needs, and aspirations than the working class. The working class has their own truth. The problem is that the representation the capitalist class offers is universalized and naturalized then offered as the truth for everyone. This is why we have social conflicts.

In the book, it talks about humanistic theory of ideology. It describes the struggle between attempts on the part of subordinated minorities to define a part of their life outside of the control of the dominant majoirty. You see this everytime a "Rags to Riches" story is broadcasted. It's an individual who has moved through the class system from lower to capitalist, and wants the popular class to know about it. But the problem with this is that the capitalist doesn't care, they only care about what representation you can bring to make the whole look good. For example, we glorify athletes who are very skilled at their sport, but give them no credit for the hard work it took to get there. As long as Lebron James keep dazzling crowds with his basketball skills, as long as Kanye West keeps giving us memorable music along with drama so we can keep talking about him, the popular culture doesn't care about anything else.

Social constructionism denies that there is any access to a reality outside of representations that would allow one to measure the truth or falsity of representations. That's not true. It denies it because people are scared to expose the truth because it will give another representaion that will jeopardized the one that was provided before. The consequences would be that more people know about the truth and will re-act in ways the capitalist didn't want. I believe that people tell you what they want, so they may recieve the reactions they want. That is what's wrong with the media today, there are so many versions of one thing, you don't know which one to believe for truth.

Chapter One

After reading the first chapter, there are some things I agree with that I think are very evident in our culture. The first being on pg. 3, "Some of our most powerful, most intensely emotional, and most important moments are intircately bound up with the media." This is true and Grossberg, Wartella, Whitney, and Wise give excamples of things that has happened in and to this country that has largely effected people because of the media. The most recent is the death of Michael Jackson. I was working a Pre-College Camp and we were on a skating field trip when someone recieved a video text message of a news station reporting that Jackson was admitted into the hospital. The owner of the rink, turned on a television inside of the rink's office and some of the staff including myself gathered around the t.v. for the latest news on Jackson's condition. I instantly began to cry when they announced him dead. If not for the text message, I wouldn't have found out about Jackson's death probably until I got home.

On pg. 6 it says there's a difference between media coverage and actual events. Grossberg and the 3 W's gives a good example of this by using the Setember 11th event. A more personal and evident example of this would a news coverage that was done in Milwaukee, WI by Channel 12 News about the a large fight that occured between my high school and another one downtown. The News Coverage reproted that the fight was started by my school and only showed footage of students from my school being arrested. When actually, students from the other school came on our buses picking fights with selective students and more students from the other school was arrested. But due to the covergae, everyone believed that my school started the fight and we lost some of our bus priveliges provided by the city transportation.

Another thing with all this popualr use of technologies, the media use all kinds of channels to spread their news. CNN has a Facebook, Twitter, and a few others, I believe. These internet sites are being used to communicate and reach an audience that has adapted to a new source of attaining information. On pg. 10 it says, "New media technology threatens other, more traditional, forms of popular culture." These traditional technology includes television, magazines, and newspapers, especially, due to the internet. It's becoming a cultural norm to be an active internet user. If you don't believe me, tell someone that you don't have a MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or that you don't watch YouTube; you will get a facial expression of disbelief. That's how largely the technology game has changed and the media has to go with the flow.