Propaganda, Ideology, and Hegemony:

October 16, 2001

D. Kellner

List-serve requirement: one example of ideology and one of propaganda;

Hegemony establishes a certain regime; capitalism and democracy in US; Welfare state liberalism vs. New Right market conservativism;

Example: Big battle in US between ideologies of state and market over past 50+ years;

FDR in 1930s: New Deal and Welfare State

Reagan-Thatcher pro-Market and anti-state conservative hegemony;

Clinton-Gore: compromise

Bush with hardright: market

With terrorism crisis, the State back in playÖ

How does media intervene and function within this to legitimate institutions like state, market, religion, or military; or social relations like patriarchy, sexism, etc?

Role of media in establishing hegemony

Propaganda: discourse that legitimates a specific policy or action like war, or a certain regime like fascism or the Taliban;

Ideology legitimates specific institutions, social relations or a social system; i.e. capitalism, patriarchy, or the church or military

Ideology naturalizes, universalizes, and distorts (false consciousness) but it makes arguments;

i.e. womenís place; subordination of underclass

Propaganda disregards truth completely, there may be some truth claims but it doesnít matter, it creates a manichean world, divided between good and evil, Us and Them

Used by political regimes and always in war

Example of propaganda from dk email:

an interesting propaganda war took place last week; once again al Qaeda representatives came on to threaten americans and to call muslims to jihad, this is obviously bin Laden's propaganda.

Then Bush administration National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice called up all the network TV heads and begged them not to carry these propaganda videos live because they "might carry hidden messages" and incite crime against the american people. This itself is obvious propaganda to legitimate control of information by the Bush administration. Obviously, if bin Laden was sending secret messages via video his operatives would get it through the Internet and not US television. There are, though, good reasons for Networks not to play these tapes live: the translations are usually atrocious as we saw in class; the rants are rambling and boring and better sound-bited and explained. But Rice's argument was pure propaganda rather than rational and is a chilling example of the government trying to control information and images, never before, I'm told, had a U.S. govt official called any networks telling them not to run the propaganda of other countries.

cheers, dk

ideology and propaganda overlap but, I think, can be distinguished although many theories collapse them into each other;

both construct hegemony

DK model of media culture: Hegemony: contested terrain;

Hard to distinguish propaganda from truth

i.e. story on Taliban atrocities from Newsday

source or sources; credibility; plausbility; etc.

Chomsky and Herman Propaganda model

Media= corporate propaganda/ideology

Advertising is capitalist propaganda [Schudsen: capitalist realism]

On this view, journalism, print and broadcasting, is basically propaganda: pro business and American capitalism, pro US foreign policy and anti US "enemies"

Parallel to Adorno and Horkheimerís culture industry model: dominant class owns the media and use for their purposes; entertainment is ideology

Is C&Hís use of propaganda model accurate?

DK: hegemony model

Sometimes their model works, sometimes it doesnít; in situations of war, it works because propaganda is war discourse

C&H Propaganda model focuses on inequalities of wealth and power; owners of media use in their interests;

1. size, ownership and profit orientation of the media; filter out anything that doesnít accord to owners interests; media concentration limits scope of viewpoints and positions; homogenization; add= tabloidizationóOJ, Clinton sex scandals, Condit;
2. advertising as primary source of profit that is itself propaganda; so is much entertainment; advertising interests help control what gets on and what doesnít; refuse to fund controversial programming;
3. the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and experts funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; nightly News sources and CNN talking heads; PBS and Nightline studies by FAIR; military examples
4. "flak" as a means of discipling of the media; criticism of controversial views, sometimes engineered by rightwing organizations or public; firing Daniel Shorr or columnists critical of Bush
5. anti-communism as a national religion and control mechanism; today anti terrorism

Dichotomized and Propaganda campaigns;

Worthy and unworthy victims; serviceability to domestic political interests;

Example: Cambodia: before and after US bombings; East Timor victims invisible while Victims of, say, Saddam Hussein are worthy [if it serves US interests; previously media neglected Saddamís slaughter of the Kurds, including chemical weapons when he was US ally]

criticized for being simplistic and reductive; works for some media analysis and critique, not always, or?

Internet as corrective; variety and diversity of information and points of view; good news sources do not fit C&H propaganda model; i.e. British Guardian; sometimes New York Times is propagandistic sometimes not; publication Lies of Our Times

Questions or comments?