Hegemonic Ideology

How does the hegemonic class manage to maintain its ideology over time?

Hegemony is readjusted and re-negotiated constantly. Gramsci said that it can never be taken for granted, in fact during the post-revolutionary phase (when the labour class has gained control) the function of hegemonic leadership does not disappear but changes its character.
However, he describes two different modes of social control:

Coercive control: manifested through direct force or its threat (needed by a state when its degree of hegemonic leadership is low or fractured);

Consensual control: which arises when individuals voluntarily assimilate the worldview of the dominant group (=hegemonic leadership).

Feedback

This posting has been created so you can air your views on our argument and give us some feedback.

karl Marx

Research Key texts

The key texts that will be useful for the debate are:

The Sun
Fox News
20th Century Fox
News Corporation
Sky News

Main Argument

The basic outline of our argument is that mass media in the UK still seek to promote hegemony and are responsible for injecting passive audiences with dominant ideologies.

The basis of the argument is that with one force in media being so dominant their values and ideologies must be at least slightly reflected in some of the media texts we see.

A specific example of this is Rupert Murdoch's 40% ownership of the media, this is relevant to the argument as he is the biggest single owner of media texts worldwide.

Some of his media outlets include: Youtube, Sky, The Sun and Myspace.

We propose that even the most media literate of the British population can not avoid the constant reminders of Murdoch's values and ideologies presented through the mass range of media texts he owns.

Our argument also runs along the basis of the Marxist theory that suggest's the growing power of the media allows the values and ideologies injected by the hegemonic forces to become common sense.

Keywords

10 Key words

Hegemony
Hypodermic needle
Dominant socitey
Bourgiouse
Propaganda
Mass media
Mainstream
Cultural beliefs and values
Class
Leadership


Theorists/Theory

Gramsci
Frankfurt school
Karl Marx


Quotes

"The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow." Rupert Murdoch (http://www.woopidoo.com/biography/rupert-murdoch.htm)

The buck stops with me, but I can tick off dozens of very good senior executives that are responsible for hundreds or thousands of people who work for me.

You've got to look for a gap, where competitors in a market have grown lazy and lost contact with the readers or the viewers.