Hegemony

Hegemony

• With every new form of media comes a wave of panic about the ‘effects’ it will have on the individual and society.

• It’s the very simple idea that the media fires messages into our brains; that we are passive consumers of the media who believe everything we are told. Similar to this is the Hypodermic Needle theory; that media messages are injected into our bloodstream.

• Both of these ideas are ‘Behaviorist’ or ‘passive audience’ theories – simply put, the media have a direct impact on our behavior. Most of us would probably agree that this idea of media consumers as almost lobotomized zombie-people reacting to or copying what we see in the media is both patronizing and utterly ridiculous; and yet it’s still pulled out from time to time to deflect from more serious issues in society.

• Donald Trump this year insisted that violent video games and films were to blame for the high school shooting in Florida, rather than acknowledge that the problem might be with the America gun laws. 

Activity:

• Hegemony is basically the idea that the media continually reproduces images of a dominant group as superior or powerful. In Western society, the dominant group is middle class white males and because the media are predominantly produced by middle class white males, they tend to represent middle class white males as superior.

• Antonio Gramsci and later on Noam Chomsky.

• Media consolidation is an obvious example of hegemonic control over society. Media consolidation means that fewer individuals control the shares of mass media.
  
  An example of hegemony is the student government leadership in a school. Dominance of one social group over another, such that the ruling group or hegemon acquires some degree of consent from the subordinate, as opposed to dominance purely by force.