Page 115 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

ICT

institutions which are usually taken to be impartial or neutral;
‘representative’ of everyone without apparent reference to class, race
or gender. Such institutions span both public and private spheres –
including the state, the law, the education system, the media and the
family. They are prolific producers of sense, knowledge and meanings.
Aside from their ostensible function, their cultural importance lies in
their role as organisers and producers of individual and social
consciousness. Although they are relatively autonomous from one
another, peopled by different personnel with different professional
skills and ideologies, nevertheless these cultural agencies collectively
form the site on which hegemony can be established and exercised.
It follows that hegemony operates in the realm of consciousness and
representations; its success is most likely when the totality of social,
cultural and individual experience is capable of being made sense of in
terms that are defined, established and put into circulation by the
power bloc. In short, hegemony naturalises what is historically a class
ideology and renders it into common sense. The upshot is that power
can be exercised not as force but as ‘authority’, and ‘cultural’ aspects of
life are de-politicised.
See also: Bardic function, Class, Culture, Ideology, Power

ICT

Information and Communications Technology. An update of
Information Technology (IT).

IDENTIFICATION

A process that involves claiming characteristics attributed to another in
order to make sense of the self. This theory of identification has its
roots in psychology and psychoanalysis, which aim to understand the
notion of the individual. Identification in these paradigms refers to the
process of socialisation.
In media studies, theories of identification often refer to
representations and their cultural consequences. In identifying with
characters, the audience is thought to forgo the constructed nature of
representations, experiencing them as if they were real (Fiske, 1987:
169). This process of identification allows representations to be
understood as part of nature, instead of being experienced as cultural

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