Page 45 - Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

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28 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
society. This is often interpreted as a mechanical relationship. But as this
was later developed, the fact that one class may monopolize the means of
mental and material production does not guarantee that it can simply
impose its ideas; rather, these ideas are negotiated in a way in which their
rule is accepted.
This stance on ideology was developed by the Italian Marxist
Antonio Gramsci – by way of the concept of hegemony. This refers to an
ideological struggle in which the ruling class compromises with the work-
ing class in return for its leadership in society as a whole. It is a consensual
form of power in which Gramsci identified the mass media as central.
This does not require direct editorial control of media by the capitalist
class; rather, managers, who identify politically and ideologically with the
ruling class, provide ‘the organic intellectuals’ who are at the front line of
hegemonic struggle.
In the Gramscian framework of hegemony, ‘false consciousness’ is a
myth in that people are seen as having ‘“true” conceptions in their heads
of society as it actually presents itself’ (see Alford, 1983: 8) – that is, they
have ‘common-sense’ experience of exchange relations and the division of
labour. Therefore ‘direct’ human experience is the point of origin, the
source of their ‘real’ conceptions, which explains why they acquiesce in
their conditions, as ‘there is no conceivable alternative to the commodity-
form’ (Alford, 1983: 7). Thus, individuals’ ‘common-sense’ experience of
the world tells them not only what exists but also what is possible. In this
framework, ideology is merely a more systematic version of common
sense, which legitimizes doctrines of particular social groups involved in
the organization of the presentation of hegemony. Gramsci problematizes
the doctrine that ideology is only ever an expression of class interests (and
so an individual’s ideological position can be ‘more or less read off’ from
their economic position) as being far more contradictory, and he sees class
relationships as potentially more fragile.
For Gramsci, the dominant classes don’t merely prescribe ideology
for working-class consumption; rather, they have to continually strive to
limit the boundaries of the making of meaning to exclude definitions of
social reality which conflict with their horizon of thought – the struggle for
hegemony is won and lost not just in the media, but in the institutions of
civil society (such as the family, the churches, the education system, but
also in more coercive apparatuses: the law, the police, the army, etc.). 12
Gramsci’s examination of the institutions of civil society was taken
up in the 1960s and 1970s by the French Marxist Louis Althusser, who
reworked the analysis in developing a very strong link between ideology
and the power of the state. Althusser claimed that ideology, and what he
called the ‘ideological state apparatus’, had become much more important
in the twentieth century than the repressive and coercive state appara-
tuses of the nineteenth century. This change could be attributed to the
important addition which Althusser makes to the state apparatus, which
is the apparatus of broadcast.