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CONSUMER SOCIETY:Role of mass media in alienation, Summary of Marxism

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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
VU
LESSON 26
CONSUMER SOCIETY
Role of mass media in alienation
Mass media plays a crucial role. They provide momentary gratifications for the alienated spirit, they
distract the alienated individual from his or her misery and with the institution of advertising, and they
stimulate desire, leading people to work harder and harder. There is a kind of vicious cycle here. If as
Marx argues, work in capitalist societies alienates people, then the more people work, the more they
become alienated. In order to find some means of escaping their alienation they engage in various forms
of consumption, all of which cost money, so that they are forced to work increasingly hard to escape
from the effects of their work. Advertising acts at the chief means of motivation people to work hard.
Consumer Society
As we have discussed advertising is an essential institution in advanced capitalist societies because it is
necessary to motivate people to work hard so they can accumulate money, which they can use to buy
things. But in addition people must be driven to consume, must be made crazy to consume, for it is
consumption that maintains the economic system. Thus the alienation generated by a capitalist system is
functional, for the anxieties and miseries generated by such a system tend to be assuaged by impulsive
consumption. There is nothing that advertising will not do muse or co-opt to achieve its goals. If it has
to debase sexuality, co-opt the women's rights movement, merchandise cancer (via cigarettes), seduce
children, terrorize the masses, or employ any other tactics it will. One thing that advertising does is
divert people's attention from social and political concerns and steer that attention toward selfish and
private concerns. Thus the immediate mission is to sell goods, the long range mission is to maintain the
class system. In order to sell goods, advertising has to change attitudes, lifestyles, customs, habits, and
preferences while at the same time, maintaining the economic system that benefits from these changes.
According to a German Marxist, Fritz Haug, that those who control the industries in capitalist societies
have learned to fuse sexuality onto commodities and thus have gained greater control of that aspect of
people's lives that is of most interest to the ruling classes- the purchasing of goods and services. He
argues that advertising industry, the servant of capitalist interests, has learned how to mold and exploit
human sexuality, to alter human need and instinct structures.
So according to him the power of the advertising industry to use the appearance of products as a means
of stimulating desire for them is now a worldwide phenomenon, and have intervened in the imaginations
of people through their cultures. And so people have the illusion that they make their own decisions
about what to purchase and what to do, but according to Haug, these decisions are made for them to a
remarkable degree. Their acts turn out to be almost automatic responses to stimuli generated by
advertisers and the commodities themselves.
The irony is that we are all convinced of our freedom to make our choices, because we believe our
minds are inviolable, when in fact our choices have been imposed on us , in subtle ways, the advertising
industry, this illusion of autonomy makes us all the more susceptible to manipulation and exploitation.
So advertising is part of what Marxist scholars call the mind industry .The main function of the this
mind industry is to not to sell its product but also to sell the existing order, to perpetuate the prevailing
pattern of man's domination by man, no matter who runs the society and by what means. Its task is to
expand and train our consciousness in order to exploit it.
Summary of Marxism
We have discussed that Marx work locates the role of mass media in the context of the operation of the
capitalist economy, and emphasis the relationship between economy and communication and culture.
Marx's view of the connection between the economic organization of society and the process of mass
communication is characterized by a famous passage from his works:-
The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age the ruling ideas: i.e. the class, which is the dominant
material force in society, is at the same time its dominant intellectual force.
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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
VU
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over
the means of mental production.. Insofar as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of
an epoch, they do this in its whole range, hence among other things they regulate the production and
distribution of the ideas of their age; thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.
·
So according to Marx the capitalist class the bourgeoisie ­ the control the `production and
distribution of ideas, because of their control of the means of material production. As a result it
is their ideas their views and accounts of the world and how it works, that dominate the outlook
of capitalist society '
·
These are emphasized through the means of mental production at the expense of other views
and accounts of how the world works.
·
The outcome is that the ideology of the bourgeoisie becomes the dominant ideology of the
society thereby shaping the thinking and action of all other classes in society including the
working class or proletariat.
·
This ideological domination is crucial in the maintenance of the inequality between the social
classes. It enables the capitalist class or ruling classes to legitimate the established order by
hiding the social, political and economic disparities of capitalist society.
·
Marx referred to the creation of a false consciousness in the minds the other classes about the
political and social realities of capitalist society.
·
Marx, therefore makes a direct connection between the domination of the economic
organization society and the exercise of ideological control, the control of the ways in which we
think.
·
Ideological domination is the outcome of the relentless logic of the capitalist system.
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Table of Contents:
  1. COMMUNICATION:Nature of communication, Transactional approach, Communication is symbolic:
  2. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (I):Positivistic Perspective, Critical Perspective
  3. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (II):Empirical problems, Conceptual problems
  4. FROM COMMUNICATION TO MASS COMMUNICATION MODELS:Channel
  5. NORMATIVE THEORIES:Authoritarian Theory, Libertarian Theory, Limitations
  6. HUTCHINS COMMISSION ON FREEDOM, CHICAGO SCHOOL & BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THEORY
  7. CIVIC JOURNALISM, DEVELOPMENT MEDIA THEORY & DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPANT THEORY
  8. LIMITATIONS OF THE PRESS THEORY:Concentration and monopoly, Commercialism
  9. MCQUAIL’S FOUR KINDS OF THEORIES:Social scientific theory, Critical theory
  10. PROPAGANDA THEORIES:Origin of Propaganda, Engineering of Consent, Behaviorism
  11. PARADIGM SHIFT & TWO STEP FLOW OF INFORMATION
  12. MIDDLE RANGE THEORIES:Background, Functional Analysis Approach, Elite Pluralism
  13. KLAPPER’S PHENOMENSITIC THEORY:Klapper’s Generalizations, Criticism
  14. DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THEORY:Innovators, Early adopters
  15. CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM:Catharsis Social learning Social cognitive theory
  16. SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEROY:Symbolizing Capacity, MODELLING
  17. MODELING FROM MASS MEDIA:Recent research, Summary, PRIMING EFFECTS
  18. PRIMING EFFECT:Conceptual Roots, Perceived meaning, Percieved justifiability
  19. CULTIVATION OF PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY:History
  20. SYSTEMS THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION PROCESSES:System
  21. EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL & CULTURAL THEORIES OF MASS COMMUNICATION
  22. REVISION:Positivistic perspective, Interpretive Perspective, Inductive approach
  23. CRITICAL THEORIES & ROLE OF MASS COMMUNICATION IN A SOCIETY -THE MEDIATION OF SOCIAL RELATIONS
  24. ROLE OF MASS MEDIA IN SOCIAL ORDER & MARXIST THEORY:Positive View
  25. KEY PRINCIPLES USED IN MARXISM:Materialism, Class Struggle, Superstructure
  26. CONSUMER SOCIETY:Role of mass media in alienation, Summary of Marxism
  27. COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE:Neo Marxism, Characteristics of Culture
  28. HEGEMONY:What exactly is the meaning of "hegemony"?
  29. CULTURE INDUSTRY:Gramscianism on Communications Matters
  30. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY I:Internationalization, Vertical Integration
  31. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY II:Diversification, Instrumental
  32. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY III:Criticism, Power of Advertising
  33. AGENDA SETTING THEORY:A change in thinking, First empirical test
  34. FRAMING & SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Spiral of Silence, Assessing public opinion
  35. SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Fear of isolation, Assessing public opinion, Micro-level
  36. MARSHALL MCLUHAN: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE AND MASSAGE
  37. KNOWLEDGE GAP THEORY:Criticism on Marshal McLuhan
  38. MEDIA SYSTEM DEPENDENCY THEORY:Media System Dependency Theory
  39. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY:Methods
  40. RECEPTION THEORY
  41. FRAMING AND FRAME ANALYSIS:Information Processing Theory, Summing up
  42. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION I:Communication Science, Direct channels
  43. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION II:Communication Maxims, Emotions
  44. GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA:Mediated Communication, Post Modernism
  45. REVISION:Microscopic Theories, Mediation of Social Relations