Running head: MEDIA AND SOCIETY Media and Society Name of the Student Name of the University Author note
1MEDIA AND SOCIETY The term power can be defined as the ability of an individual to bind another individual or a group of individual to act on the behalf of the former, a relation that depend upon habits of interpretation. The term authority is often used to represent power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. When it comes to representation, it can be defined as the method by which media that includes television, film as well as books, portray certain types of people or communities. Power is intrinsically linked with representation since the later decides the future impact of power on the society. According to researchers, there exists a strong relationship between power and representation (Fozdar et al., 2015). Each and every state is represented by group of individuals who remains and looks after the benefits and difficulties of the fellow citizens of the nation. In this essay, the relationship between power and representation will be analyzed on the context of the Australian day. In Australia, the Australian Day is celebrated on 26th January in remembrance of the day in 1788 when Captain Arthur Philip, commander of the First Fleet of 11 British Ships that arrived at Sydney Cove to signal the birth of the colony (Walton et al., 2018). However, several controversies about whether the celebration should take place or not have been there. In this essay, the question that “what is the relationship between representation and power?” will be addressed by developing a critical argument about the Australian Day. There are four chief theories of power that includes the elite theory, the pluralist theory, the class theory and the gender theory. The class theory of power is associated with Karl Marx. According to the theory, the society is consist of three classes namely rich and poor. While the class of rich owns all means of production the poor class is comprised of individuals who are economically weak and is exploited and demotivated by the former class socially, politically, and economically (Meaney, 2015). The Class theory states that power always remains in the hand of
2MEDIA AND SOCIETY a specific class of the society by usage of which the class maintains its dominance over the society. When it comes to the elite theory of power, it holds that in each society power is used by a small group of individuals, the elite, that takes all decisions as well as rules in the society. In each society, the power is really in the hands of the elite. The pluralist theory of power on the other hand rejects both the class theory as well as the elite theory. According to this theory, power, in society, is neither practice by a class or nor by elites but by several different groups. In each and every society there are several groups of individual each of which represents the major interest or at least some interest. The gender theory of power is however, completely different from the above mentioned theory. According to this theory, the power in a society always remains in the hands of men who are responsible for dominating a group of women in the society. According to researcher, the various opinions aboutpoweris the result of representation of the same (Ariely, 2017). For instance, in nations like Arab, where several cases of gender domination is visible, power is represented by men. When it comes to hegemony, it is the power which is used by socially powerful individual to convince less powerful individuals that a certain decision has been taken to serve their best interest while the truth is that the decision has been taken in order to serve the best interest of the power full class. According to Ariely, (2017) the representation carried out by the Australian media carries the power to enhance the awareness of the citizen. The action taken by Triple J by shifting the Hottest hundred poll from 26th January to 27th makes it obvious that the whole purpose is to demonstrate sympathy to the indigenous population. The national day celebration of Australia has drawn much criticism since according to several citizen of Australia the day bears no pride for the nation since it an invasion day. According to Donoghue & Tranter, (2015) this day hurts
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