First of all, I like this picture illustrating a potential talk between two great thinkers. Even though big G and Foucault never met its nice to imagine what their ramblings would have been like if they had sat down to get to grips with topics such as power and the prison system! Its probably also quite a good classroom activity for students: Create a comic strip of a theorists dinner party. Group A has a conversation between Laura Mulvey and Karl Marx. Group B you have Theodore Adorno and Stuart Hall. etc etc
I will look into Foucault's views of power and identity in a separate post but the objections to a theory of Hegemony can also be found from a wide range of largely pluralist perspectives.
One such point of view i found is that of New Media offering audiences a differing method of reception to that of traditional media such as the Press, TV etc. The active audience approach essentially offers a more optimistic view of the audience as constructors, creators and meaningful participants who negotiate and reflect on the messages they receive.
I read an online journal from an academic named Carrie O'Connell who had written an study called 'Playground
of the proletariat: Passive Revolution, Hegemony
and the Internet'
"One of the key
attributes of new media is the disruption to the traditional top-down system of
information dissemination. Unlike media outlets of years past, today‟s users
are encouraged to reach out in ways that were never imaginable outside of
cyberspace. No longer are groups categorized by hardened terms such as
“political group” or “class,” within the fuzzy and fluid framework of the world
wide web, participants can reach across such hardened boundaries in an effort
to influence each other, free of intimidation (Von de Donk, et al., 2004). The
very nature of anonymity supported by the Internet encourages a blurring of the
lines between social strata that were once rigidly separated by class
boundaries existent in the tangible real world. This blurring of the lines is
exactly the type of consent-building Thomas (2009) illustrates in his view of
Gramscian hegemony as an antithesis to dominance via coercion. Users are able
to engage in the building and spreading of information, therefore they are more
likely to believe it."
This viewpoint on the differences offered by new media does indeed effect the hegemonic system. The propoganda that was no doubt rampant in the time of Gramsci could indeed have a much lesser effect today as a result of the internet and 'prosumer' culture generallu amongst media audiences. The idea that 'coercian' has been replaced with a battle for 'consent' suggests a subtle shift in the way hegemony effects the population rather than a breaking of its relevance.
There are also concerns about the way in which users have adopted new media and which dont necessarily mean that they are engaging with texts in an new, more creative way:
"To Mouffe (2006), new media “perversely allows
people to just live in their own little worlds […] not being exposed anymore to
the conflicting ideas that characterize (sic) the antagonistic public space,”
(as cited in Carpentier & Cammaerts, 2006, p. 968). While this cynical view
of the postmodern participant may be true in some respects (we may naturally
gravitate to that web content which pleases us at the outset), it is naïve to
suggest that all online settings offer arenas defined by self-enclosed
principles. In the case of YouTube, for example, while it is entirely possible
to avoid conflicting or antagonistic points of view, this is not always
guaranteed. Exposure is dependent upon the quality of a user‟s search, which
does not always yield results that align with a predetermined perspective."
(https://www.academia.edu/636459/The_Playground_of_the_Proletariat_Passive_Revolution_Hegemony_and_the_Internet)This discussion at least throws up the dilemma that effects theory in the contemporary setting. That the audience and the ability to effect audiences cannot be taken for granted. Its glaringly obvious to state that 'audiences are not homogenous' however its important to recognise that they are diversified and unique and increasingly so in the internet age. This has serious questions for concepts of hegemony and the struggling adopted positions of perceived social groups. Do social groups exist online? Do they battle for 'consent' and against a 'higher power of ideological authority'? Well.. yes they do!
"To Mouffe (2006),
also inflated in value is new media as an equalizing force between the people
and the dominant hegemony. At the core of her criticism is the notion that new
media, while it opens up even more avenues for communication, has encouraged viewers
to only seek that media which reinforces their previously held opinions."
"As users become
increasingly wary to the point of distrust with media, personal perspective is
often sought out over objective journalism. The rush to blogs that has
characterized the last half of the decade shows a marked departure from the
knee-jerk reaction of NBC in 2003 as the media hegemon respond the information
appetites of users. Many users find that blogs offer superior content to that
of traditional media because they are not shackled to the standards of
diplomacy that restricts traditional media (Johnson & Kaye, 2009). Studies
suggest a positive correlation between user distrust of traditional media and
propensity to seek blogs. Out of a thousand blog users, researchers found that
users preferred channels of information not filtered by the traditional media
(Johnson & Kaye, 2009)"
The example above is an excellent one for my project here as it highlights the newer alternatives to the traditional press and how Audience choice and consumer sovereignty can be increased. We could also imagine then that this shift in audience behaviour from traditional sources to blogs and other forms would also help audiences evade the power of the dominant class. In the battle for 'consent' and the will of the people this freedom of movement and the autonomy in the decision making process of the the individual, to a news source of their own choice, must also be powerful in establishing a feeling of involvement and potentially political will and activation.
"The more engaged the
user is in the process of message creation and dissemination, the more possible
it will be to achieve the consent of that user – as hegemonic forces seek to
do. As Hajnal (2002) explains, with the rise of new media, particularly mobile
devices and portable computers that allow easy access to the Internet, the
ability to reach new levels in audience mobilization, information spreading,
political organization and coalition building are at an all time high (as cited
in Von de Donk, et al., 2004). The positive correlation between user
involvement with the medium and consequent social and political interaction is
therefore apparent. Additionally, a user‟s propensity to be spurred into
political action, whether via an encouragement to donate to a political
campaign or interact with content hosts, is more likely when active engagement
is encouraged (McCombs, et al., 2011)... it is no surprise that new media that require
user engagement are more effective in shaping public opinion than traditional
media counterparts (Von de Donk, et al., 2004). The emergence of interactive
media has also paralleled the pace at which social change occurs (McCombs, et
al., 2011). Thus, it is to be presumed that the more interactive the media
structure, the more likely it is that consent via hegemony is predictable."
It certainly sounds plausible and there are many examples of social news, the rise of Buzz feed and the Huffington post are examples of consumer driven (written?) populist news sources. However there are still huge question marks over the true freedom of the internet.
"In an online
setting, like that of traditional media, users do not encounter organic,
objective material. Rather, they experience media content that has been crafted
by a subjective producer – be that an elite media network like CNN or MSNBC
using the social network as an outlet for reproduction of its content or the
personal producer seeking an outlet of expression. The online platform,
however, differs from its traditional counterpart in that it allows for
feedback to be received from the general public."
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