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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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 as seen in so-called Communist states in China, Russia and so on has
been abhorrent. Also, alternative theories such as postmodernism are seen by many as a
more pragmatic way of studying today's dynamic media.
Ian Nicholls Page 2
Whether one agrees with Marx's political dimension or not, what is clear is that
Marxism presents to us an extremely useful model in which to study the mass media.
Though Marx was writing at a time when the main organs of mass media would've
essentially meant newspapers and books, Marxist analysis can be applied to today's media:
the mass media, a privatized means of production, is there to replicate capitalist ideology
and to promote a 'false conciousness' amongst the working class.
Television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and internet sites are, largely,
owned and controlled by profit-making businesses. Since it is the bourgeoisie who control
the media, it is only natural that it is their ideas get promoted through both things like
advertising (which primarily funds capitalist media but also has a dual role of advancing
consumer culture and fuelling the economy) and the actual media products themselves -
movies, soap opera, tabloid newspapers, consumer magazines and so on.
Advertising is perhaps the fundamental force behind capitalist media: media products
are not in the business of providing readers, viewers, and listeners with information and
entertainment, as is the popular myth. They're in the business of selling audiences to
advertisers (Curran and Seaton, 1997):
"Hence advertisers regard [TV] programmes merely as the means by which
audiences are delivered to them. The sequence of programmes in any evening,
week, or season reflects the quest of commercial customers to ...
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movies, soap opera, tabloid newspapers, consumer magazines and so on.
Advertising is perhaps the fundamental force behind capitalist media: media products
are not in the business of providing readers, viewers, and listeners with information and
entertainment, as is the popular myth. They're in the business of selling audiences to
advertisers (Curran and Seaton, 1997):
"Hence advertisers regard [TV] programmes merely as the means by which
audiences are delivered to them. The sequence of programmes in any evening,
week, or season reflects the quest of commercial customers to get the largest
or most appropriate public they can."
Ian Nicholls Page 3
Ideologies disseminated within actual 'editorial' are apparent: representation of
groups in society, political opinions, and news selection are all things which can be analyzed
in a Marxist way. For example, the Glasgow Media Group - a group of media studies
academics at Glasgow University - have since the 1980s undertaken a comprehensive
content analysis of TV news programmes. The late 1970s strikes were an incident they
particularly focused on: they found that the workers were severely marginalized by the
media, even down to the actual words used to describe them. When workers voiced their
opinion on TV, it was within the noisy environment of strike action, so that they appeared to
be reactionary and over-opinionated. Politicians and management, however, were
interviewed in the placid surroundings of an office or TV studio, thus presenting them as far
more articulate and, by default, more intelligent.
According to Marxist theory, this is the ideological dissemination of false
consciousness in action: the dominant ideology - that of the bourgeois - is one the 'masses'
come to accept and to think of as 'natural'. Workers are assured of their 'place' in the
world, and they should not think about changing thinks. This can be termed "hegemony", an
idea which was developed from Marx by the Italian sociologist Antonio Gramsci.
So long as the means of production of the media are in the hands of a
bourgeois elite and not under the collective ownership and control of the working classes,
then these dominant ideologies will prevail.
However, there has been much criticism of Marxist media theory over the
years, and not just from those who have obvious vested interests in criticizing it (capitalist
media owners).
Ian Nicholls Page 4
The main school of thought which opposes the Marxist world-view is that of
the Pluralists. Pluralist writer John Whale sums up the position thus:
"If the general public seriously wanted to rebuild society
from the top down then the [communist] Morning Star would
sell more copies than it does."
In other words, the mass media simply reflect the demands of the consumer.
The Pluralist position accepts that the media business sells audiences to advertisers, but sees
this as democratic rather than oppressive. If an advertiser wants a mass audience, then
surely the mass media will be meeting the demands of that mass audience in order to deliver
it.
Pluralism in the media means that, given that we have free speech in society,
anyone can set-up a media product disseminating their own views if they want. But, due to
market forces, it is not likely that political opinion or highly specialized subjects will reach a
mass audience because it isn't within the mainstream 'consensus' of society.
The idea of consensus is one advocated by Functionalist theory. Consensus in any
given society means that most people are generally content with the way the society is run,
otherwise it wouldn't 'function' properly. According to functionalism, most people are
'happy' with capitalist society otherwise they would overthrow it either by voting in anti-
capitalist politicians or by revolution.
Marxists would obviously counter-act this by saying that the hegemonic bourgeois
ideological control that is dominant in capitalism prevents workers from realizing they're
being oppressed.
Ian Nicholls Page 5
A factor which is increasingly damaging Marxism's credibility as a tool for media
analysis is its crude determinism; the idea that the working class are completely passive in
their consumption of the media is one that is widely derided. In fact, modern audiences who
have grown up on a steady diet of various media are increasingly cynical of what they see,
and TV ratings are declining, as is newspaper circulation.
Postmodernist theory is one which has started to take a central role in media studies
over Marxism. It has several advantages: the postmodern ideas arise out of a society where
the media - and particularly electronic media - play an even more important role, more so
than when Marx was writing. Dominic Strinati outlines five characteristics of postmodern
society:
? The breakdown of the distinction between culture and society
? An emphasis on style at the expense of substance and content
? Breakdown of the distinction between high culture (art) and popular culture
? Confusions over time and space
? Decline of 'meta-narratives'
(Strinati, 1992)
In today's world of high-technology, one can view web sites produced in China,
watch TV signals beamed in from Australia, and see a film with an actor in it from fifty years
ago on one channel, only see the same actor being interviewed in colour on another,
Ian Nicholls Page 6
"It has been suggested that TV itself is a postmodern medium since,
in its regular daily and night-time flows of images and information, it
merely splices together bits and pieces from elsewhere, constructing itself on
the basis of collage techniques and surface simulations."
(Strinati, 1992)
Postmodernism has affected advertising and consumer society itself:
"Once upon a time advertisements were supposed to be about telling us how
how good, useful and essential a product was. Now they say less and less
about the product directly and are more concerned with sending up or
parodying advertising itself by citing other ads and by using references drawn
from popular culture."
(Strinati, 1992)
For many, postmodernist theory is more relevant to today's media
scene than Marxism, for Marx could not have possibly envisioned modern electronic media.
As an analysis technique, Marxism can seem old-fashioned and arcane against the dynamism
of postmodern rhetoric. However, Marx in his Communist Manifesto dismissed the idea
of "modern" society as one of "everlasting uncertainty" which capitalism pervaded. To be
modern is to:
"...find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure,
power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and, at the
Ian Nicholls Page 7
same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know,
everything we are."
(Berman, 1983, cited in Murdock, 1993)
Marxism's limitations are based around its crude determinism its lack of faith in
humans as active social actors, rather than simply passive consumers. The idea of 'false
consciousness' suggests that the working class do not themselves mediate what they watch,
read and hear. They do not necessarily interpret it as total fact. More importantly, Marxism
ignores audiences' different uses of the media: some may use it as pure escapism, others as
a means to educate themselves. Marxist theory also concentrates too much on class. Other
divisons in society - gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation - are not discussed.
Undoubtedly, though, the theory has many strengths. Its detailed analysis of
capitalist economics helps us understand the relations between media products and their
audiences, rather than just analyzing media content, which is what opposing theories do.
Marxist media theory's ideas of ideology and hegemony help us to study representation
better, in particular social inequalities as portrayed by the media.
Whilst some may say Marxism is 'outdated', others would point out that in today's
world of mass-conglomeration and near-monopolistic media corporations and the further
concentration of the media into the hands of fewer and fewer organizations, Marxist theory
is more relevant than ever.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chandler, Daniel Marxist Media Theory http://www.aber.ac.uk/
Chomsky, Noam Necessary Illusions 1989 Pluto Press London
Curran, James and Seaton, Jean Power Without Responsibility 5th Ed.,
997 Routledge London
Glasgow University Media Group Bad News 1976 Routledge London
Haralambos, Micheal and Holborn, Martin Sociology Themes and
Perspectives 1990 Harper Collins London
Murdock, Graham Media Culture and Society 1993 London
Strinati, Dominic Sociology Review April 1992 edition London
Whale, John The Politics of the Media 1976 University of Manchester
PLUS LECTURE/SEMINAR NOTES: JOU032 Media Industries
