Marxist theory, and in particular its use in media analysis, is outmoded in a world where a capitalist consumer culture holds sway. Explain why you agree or disagree with this statement.

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Journalism

Media Industries

Marxist theory, and in particular its use in media

analysis, is outmoded in a world where a capitalist

consumer culture holds sway. Explain why you agree

or disagree with this statement.

For Karl Marx, the mass media was simply an instrument of bourgeois control over

the proletariat, a part of the overall superstructure of society, along with religion, the family

and education.

Marxist theory has been very influential since he started writing about developed

capitalist society in the mid-Victorian era. His basic premise - that the oppressed proletariat

(workers) should emancipate themselves and take control of society away from the

bourgeoisie (the ruling classes) - has spawned political movements, academic theories and

hundreds of different interpretations and analyses.

Marxist and 'neo-Marxist' approaches to the study of mass media have been

common in academic circles since the late 1960s, but of late Marxism has been shunned as

'unfashionable', partly due to the rise of the New Right in the 1980s, but mainly because its

practical application