Media Concepts Essay: Ideology, Theories, and Media Analysis

This essay examines the significance of ideology in media studies, exploring how media acts as a bridge between the public and reported events. It traces the historical shifts in media paradigms, from Marxist to critical theories, and highlights the media's responsibility to provide ethical and unbiased news. The essay emphasizes ideology as a core concept for understanding media, reflecting values and beliefs that influence society. It discusses how media texts convey specific ideologies, often without the audience's awareness, and the importance of questioning dominant ideologies. The analysis covers challenges in ideological analysis, such as media generalization and the impact of historical contexts. It further explores the development of media genres influenced by differing ideologies and the influence of political changes on media. The essay also examines how media represents various aspects of society, including race, gender, and sexuality, using the film 'Twelve Years a Slave' as a case study to illustrate the complexities of racism and its portrayal. It concludes by highlighting the diverse ideologies within media studies and the expectation for unbiased and honest reporting.

Running head: MEDIA CONCEPTS
MEDIA CONCEPTS
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1MEDIA CONCEPTS
The aim of this essay is to discuss the prominence of ideology in the field of media
studies. This is due to the fact that media acts as a connector between the people and the situation
about which the reporting is being done. Historically the role of ideology in the media studies
has been determined by the shifts of paradigm from Marxist to the pluralist, from pluralists to the
critical theories and from there to neo-Marxists and finally the neo Marxists to critical paradigm.
The historical and political contexts of the society have been determining the paradigm shifts
which are recorded by the media ad directly show those to the people. As the common people are
extremely dependent upon the news representation of the media, therefore the media also has
some responsibility to share ethical news to the people so that there is no place for
misconceptions and misunderstanding. Through the contents, representation of the incident and
unbiased choice of channels the concepts are clearly reached the target people.
Ideology is a primary concept of media studies for understanding as this underpins many
other aspects of media studies (Kelley 2019). This is a world view, attitudes, and beliefs, a
systems of values which the individuals, group as well as society hold to be important or true.
These aspects of the ideology are shared by the culture or the society about how they would
function in a proper way. Media texts reflect specific values and ideologies though the readers or
audience are not aware of this fact (Bright 2018). This is a successful carrier of the ideology as
this reaches a Hugh audience. This allows the people to consider a well as question dominant
ideologies to look for implications for different ideologies along with value systems. While
studying media therefore looking for the dominant ideologies present and question the values
and world views represented and which groups as well as their associated world be have not been
represented. (Feldman et al. 2017).

2MEDIA CONCEPTS
In many cases the media has been seen to follow one particular ideology in the sharing
their opinion which reflect their point of thoughts. Ideology usually helps to explain how the
unjust and unequal social relations are maintained, hence showing a particular incident from
different points of view is important so that the people can see those factors and analyses them
according to their understanding.
Media has become a powerful weapon in the eliminating social ills that create division
among people and eliminate common bonding or relations (Northup 2016). This is the reason
why the media studies follow different theories and concepts to enlarge the social issues before
the readers and through proper ideology the problems are detailed to be analyzed. In this case,
the ideology of false consciousness, ideology as set of social practices and the ideology
involving fantasies and beliefs are utilized in many a ways by the media students (Golding and
Murdock 2018). One of the most difficulties of the ideological analysis is that there is no
presence of singularity in the mass media. This is the reason why the media studies remain very
much careful with the fact of generalization of the ideological content of the media. As there are
some specific medium and specific contents are shared in the media, the threat of over
generalization can be seen. Another challenge that the media studies face in this respect is that
the media contents are shaped in some articular historical contexts for responding to the process
of framing cultural waves of the present time.
To Thurlow (2017), the Mass-mediated imageries have never been static as these keep on
changing in the forms as well as in the content that are noticeable by the readers or for that
matter the audience. The ideological analysis hence are to be paying attention to each and every
changes in the media images. These are sometimes quite subtle and often dramatic of allowing
for media’s dynamic nature. These ideological differences of the media have led to the

3MEDIA CONCEPTS
development of genres in the media like political, economic, cultural, sports, films and many
more. From these the audience can choose their attractions according to their choices (Golding
and Murdock 2018).
The development of different genres due to the difference of the ideologies in the media studies
have connected the world in every aspects. These are the reasons why the people of western
society finds the eastern films to be adventurous and more exotic and eastern people while see
American adventure films can assorted themselves with the personal achievements of the hero,
finding those as the tale about power of rugged hero, as a mythic figure present in the ideologies
in the media associated with the American Dream (Vessey 2016).
Media now a days get more influenced by the political changes worldwide where the
maintaining of unbiasness have become too difficult. The popularity of the mass media like
television and web media. The advertisements and films have acquitted the most influencing part
where consumer culture has been seen. Everything seems to be in sale and this
commercialization of the media is the part of process which demonstrate the media at present is
struggling to survive on the basis of their ideologies (Gershon 2017). The ideological lash is
present everywhere starting from the news to advertisement. In this respect, the most dependable
of all like the critical media even seems to have a propensity to be incorporated into mass. This
has become social reality where the ideologies of the media are constantly being questioned,
nullified, demolished ten again built to match the requirements of the consumerism.
The representation of race, gender, sexuality through media and more important the mass
media is not very difficult because the people have become more acceptable with the odds.
Therefore thee LGBTQ issues if shown in a news or for that matter in a film, in spite of having

4MEDIA CONCEPTS
an orthodox mentality or traditional social views, people finds them interesting and invest. The
issue of race in the film like Twelve Years a Slave. This is as biographical period drama film
adapted from the slave memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup. In the terms of major
characters of both the film as well as the memoir, has got the history right and confronted race
exactly head on. This has been a perfect representation of black resistance that has its legacy in
the post salve era. Both the film as well as memoir, the ideology and concepts of post neo slave
narrative is clarified. This has been shown to be in the genre that meshes all the conventions of
the post modernity with neo slave narratives. This films has taken initiative to observe individual
racism in different contexts. Tibeats practices the individual racism by hanging Solomon which
makes the scene to be drastically emphasizing. Through this films, the struggle of people as the
victims of racism has been showed. Through this media. different layers of racism have been
revealed which questions the ideologies and concepts of the audience at first, hammer their
already possessed knowledge about racism and nullify their so called experience racism in one
shot. The aspect of active racism is detailed in the episode two of the film where Solomon has
been beaten brutally by Burch and Radburn. Later the character of Tibeats reveal the brutality of
the slave culture on the basis of racism at that point of time. The struggle gets more complicated
when this particular character keeps on torturing Solomon the slave every moment. The survival
issues are faced every time that engages the audience with the painful memory of reality and
experience.
Now the ideology of race is perfectly imbibed in this particular film where the
expectation of the human survivals is eliminated for the greed of the capitalist social structure.
The ideology of racism has its origin in the save trade that has been captured perfectly in the film
Twelve Years a Slave. This is an ideology in the Marxist sense which is the reason why this is so

5MEDIA CONCEPTS
very pervasive. Hence the audience as well as the media students need to find the common
thread in all forms of racism by placing those against the capitalist society’s goals as well as
hegemonic strategies. The debates over racism are truly ideological bewilderments that develop
the understanding of the audience in two ways. The capitalist ideology dominates one part of the
audience and the empathy with the slaves are seen on the other part.
Therefore it can be concluded that the media has to be following the ideology according
to the ethical aspects of the situation. There are various difficulties in sharing knowledge or
reports to the audience as the most difficulties of the ideological analysis is that there is no
presence of singularity in the mass media. The ideologies of the media study can be dependent
upon the Marxism, feminism, neo-liberalism and many more. However, all of the societies
expect the media to be unbiased in nature and honest in their approach.

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References:
Bright, J., 2018. Explaining the emergence of political fragmentation on social media: The role
of ideology and extremism. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(1), pp.17-33.
Feldman, L., Hart, P.S., Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E. and Roser-Renouf, C., 2017. Do hostile
media perceptions lead to action? The role of hostile media perceptions, political efficacy, and
ideology in predicting climate change activism. Communication Research, 44(8), pp.1099-1124.
Gershon, I., 2017. Language and the Newness of Media. Annual Review of Anthropology, 46,
pp.15-31.
Golding, P. and Murdock, G., 2018. Ideology and the mass media: the question of determination.
In Routledge Revivals: Ideology and Cultural Production (1979) (pp. 198-224). Routledge.
Kelley, S.M., 2019. Twelve Years a Slave and the ‘Unthinkability’of Enslaved Autobiography.
In Biography and History in Film (pp. 171-189). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Northup, S., 2016. Twelve Years a Slave (Norton Critical Editions). WW Norton & Company.
Thurlow, C., 2017. “Forget about the words”? Tracking the language, media and semiotic
ideologies of digital discourse: The case of sexting. Discourse, context & media, 20, pp.10-19.
Vessey, R., 2016. Language and Canadian media: Representations, ideologies, policies.
Springer.