Page 33 - Culture Society and the Media

THEORETICAL APPROACHES 23
position. There are, of course, some unresolved problems in this approach, not
least of which is the unevenness of the theoretical synthesis achieved. Hence,
while the media are represented as a ‘key terrain where consent is won or lost’,
they are also in other formulations conceived of as signifying a crisis which has
already occurred, both in economic and political terms (Hall et al., 1978).
The conceptual difficulties and problems registered in Policing the Crisis are,
however, paradoxically part of its positive advance, in the sense that the thesis
put forward, although emerging from a culturalist perspective, involves thinking
through categories which cannot be neatly placed solely in the culturalist
tradition. Moreover, the writers of Policing the Crisis make very clear their
theoretical concerns. It may well be that this theoretical concern constitutes the
most important shift in this and other recent research on the mass media. The
most obvious heritage of structuralism, the argument that thought does not
reflect reality but works upon and appropriates it, involves a commitment to
theoretical reflection which marks all three of the approaches discussed here and
the interchanges between them.
The theoretical perspectives on the mass media contained within Marxism
share a general agreement that the power of the media is ideological but there are
distinct differences in the conceptualization of ideology, ranging from the focus
on the internal articulation of the signifying systems of the media within
structuralist analysis, through to the focus on the determination of ideology in
‘political economy’ perspectives and to a culturalist view of the media as a
powerful shaper of public consciousness and popular consent. Although
disagreements about the role of the media as an ideological force within these
approaches may be similar in their intensity to earlier debates on the nature of the
power of the media, these are in no sense simple repetitions of earlier debates.
The theoretical ground has shifted. Increasingly, work on the media has focused
on a related series of issues: the establishment of the autonomy, or relative
autonomy of the media and its specific effectiveness; tracing the articulation
between the media and other ideological practices; and attempting to rethink the
complex unity which such practices constitute together. The way in which
questions in these areas have been posed does vary in relation to diferent Marxist
and other perspectives, but it is in relation to these issues within Marxism that
intellectual work on the nature of media power proceeds at present.

REFERENCES
Althusser, L. (1969) For Marx, London, Allen Lane.
Althusser, L. (1971) Lenin and Philosophy and other essays, London, New Left Books.
Althusser, L. (1976) Essays in Self Criticism, London, New Left Books.
Becker, L., McCombs, M. and McLeod, J. (1975) ‘The development of political
cognitions’, in Chaffee, S. (ed.) Political Communication: Issues and strategies for
research, Beverley Hills, Sage.