Q7 Media Paper 1: Ideology can be defined as a collection of values and beliefs. To what extent do media products target audiences by constructing an ideological view of the world?
You should refer to your newspaper Close Study Products, The i and The Daily Mail.
Chomsky’s explains how mass media works against democracy’s best interests. The corporations and investors controlling the outlets where most people get their news, selectively choose what to cover for reasons having to do with personal agendas and retaining power, rather than what’s best for readers and viewers. The distinctive fact that the media, more specifically newspapers manipulate people’s intake of economic, political and social policies and how it is perfectly constructed for the publics mind.
Stereotypically, there are two ends of a political spectrum, authoritarianism in countries such as China, and libertarianism in countries such as the US. Chomsky states that instead of being communicated too by the government about political opinions and information it is actually the media that we receive these political ideals from and fed by newspapers and their opinions. To gain the general publics consent, in addition to big conglomerates ruling most mass media, heavily decreasing the public sphere by narrowing the beliefs of additional companies and people, since people are being told “facts” from media without comprehending the idea that media will also have a their own political compass.
The daily mail is a prime example of a right wing directed company and in conjunction to Roland Barthes theory on semiotic signs to represent subtly their ideas and political viewpoints. This is extremely obvious to the public what political party they associate themselves with. For example in a newspaper we have studied in class the title ”joyous jubilee” with a snapshot of the queen displaying a smile. In recent history of the daily male positive headlines are a rare sighting, rather slashing comments about the labour party. for example ”the Labour leader has launched bitter personal attacks on the Prime Minister”. In addition the syntagm of signs admiring the queen is a key representation of a company that identifies with the right wing side of the political compass. Someone who identifies with the more left wing opinions who be asking about tax pay towards the event and investigating tactical evidence against the Daily Mail on this headline. This is why the Daily mail are a conservative party supportive newspaper. The daily mail have been granted a 40 percent factual rate which elucidates that over half of their apparent ‘facts’ are fake. This links with Chomsky’s theory of how mass media works against democracy’s best interests. The fact corporations and investors controlling the outlets where most people get their news is worrying as the daily mail being one of the most bought newspapers in the country this means the people are being fed ‘fake news’, therefore spreading propaganda to eventually get people to believe certain political policies and bestow their authoritarian and right winged viewpoints.
Livingstone and Lunt state that the interests of citizens and those of consumers cannot be easily merged, that there is an increasing tendency in recent UK regulation policy to place the interests of consumers above those of citizens, perhaps giving newspapers a role in entertainment and advertising over education for the general public. Curran understands now that the primary democratic role of the media is to act as a watch dog, rich and powerful companies have more control and giant conglomerates own all newspapers and enforce their political compass viewpoint onto their newspapers, Curran states that “Instead of providing conduit for rational critical debate, the media manipulated mass opinion”. This dictates peoples freedom and restricts our opinions.
Chomsky theory of the five filters of the mass media machine that are trying to manufacture consent