Althusser's Theory Of Mass Media

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Mass media play a very significant and determinant role in the contemporary world, by broadcasting and communicating information in fast pace and at the same time entertaining vast audiences. Mass media have a tremendous impact on the structure and history of our society due to the fact that they can influence and shape public opinion, determine political agendas, affect socialization and create a relationship between people and government. They consist of television, press, internet, radio and books and they became one of the main sources of popular culture in the modern capitalist society. Media’s role, however, is not only to offer news and entertainment but also to transfer and cultivate a variety of social stereotypes, beliefs and values of the society in order to reproduce the order and the already existing formation of social life. In this paper, I shall examine the notion, the types and some important theories on stereotypes as well as their dependable relation with media. Louis Althusser (a French Marxist philosopher) in his theory of ideological state apparatuses claimed that families, peers, school and religion are the main factors that determine an individual’s role of the ideological state apparatuses. According to Althusser, these are the preeminent institutions that transfer and lead the existing hegemonic ideology of society into the minds of people, in order to be capable of controlling them. This theory can be easily associated and incorporated in mass
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