Meanings are produced in any interaction between a text and an audience. Both these parties must contribute in a dynamic act.
If the text and audience have shared cultural notions then the interaction will be smooth and effortless (redundancy).
When this union is disturbed then readers may decode texts in oppositional or negotiated ways.
Most texts, like films, magazines, newspapers and TV programmes not only assume shared codes and values but also actively seek to affirm these values by negotiating readings and meanings i.e. they promote a preferred reading.
It is the collaboration between audience and text that shows ideology at work.
Raymond Williams (1977):
If the text and audience have shared cultural notions then the interaction will be smooth and effortless (redundancy).
When this union is disturbed then readers may decode texts in oppositional or negotiated ways.
Most texts, like films, magazines, newspapers and TV programmes not only assume shared codes and values but also actively seek to affirm these values by negotiating readings and meanings i.e. they promote a preferred reading.
It is the collaboration between audience and text that shows ideology at work.
Raymond Williams (1977):
- Ideology is a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group in society.
- It is a system of illusory beliefs, i.e. a false consciousness, which can be contrasted with true knowledge.
- It is the general process of the production and promotion of meaning and ideas in society.
- For ideology to work there must be a set of shared values and myths.
- The only way these codes can become shared is through frequent use in communication i.e. reinforcement.
- These shared values and ideas are called ‘signs’.
- These signs are then used to realise social values in public forms.
- Every time these signs are used we are maintaining cultural ideology.
- We are formed and socialised via these ideologies; i.e. we identify our membership in a culture by accepting and promoting these signs and myths.
- Therefore the audience of a any medium such as a film or magazine becomes the means or vehicle by which an ideology can be maintained; we ourselves become promoters of values.
- Ideology is the means by which the ideas of the ruling classes become accepted in society as the norm.
- Knowledge is class based and works to promote the interests of the higher academic classes.
- Subordinate classes are led to understand themselves via a dominant set of ideas not of their own making.
- A false consciousness or consensus is achieved by the dominant class over a subordinate class.
- In an equal society ideology would be unnecessary.
- Any address to any audience carries ideology.
- This address is called ‘interpellation’.
- In recognising ourselves as addressees and by responding to the communication we participate in our own social ideology.
- All media texts ‘hail’ or ‘address’ particular readers, by buying such publications we promote the prevailing ideology.
- It suggests a false consciousness may be maintained in a non-coercive way.
- This attempts to show ideology as a struggle; i.e. a constant winning and re-winning of the consent of the majority to a system which actually subordinates them.
- Hegemony must exist because the real experience of subordinate groups often contradicts the dominant myth.
- Hegemony allows the dominant ideology to succeed over the ripples of existing ideas.
- These resistances must be overcome and incorporated not eliminated.
- All ideological theories state that communication and meanings have a socio-political agenda.
- Ideology will always favour the dominant user, as they have the power to promote it through dissemination of products and information.
- Elements of resistance exist, but are often incorporated by the dominant user into the mainstream ideology that in effect breaks down any opposition and diffuses it; i.e. feminism has become a fashion statement eg ‘girl power’ is a commodity that has been marketed to young females.
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