UNDERSTANDING HEGEMONY

Hegemony is the concept that media continually reproduces images of a dominant group as superior and powerful. In Western Society, the dominant group is middle class, white males, because the media is predominantly produced by this group type, they therefore tend to represent this middle class, white males as more superior and show the rest of society (working class, LGBT, disabled, female) as less powerful and therefore inferior. The key to hegemony though, is that it is so subtle, so much so that even the white man making the media don't even realise they are doing it, and nobody challenges it. It establishes hierarchies in in society that get reflected back to us in the media and it becomes normal. This theory can be seen as a chance to think about the current status quo and where we are now in terms of how audiences interact with or are influenced by the media.

The magic bullet effect theory and hypodermic needle theory are two behaviourist models that analyse the effect of the media. The magic bullet theory is the idea that the media fires messages into our brains and we are passive consumers of the media who believe everything we are told. Similarly, the hypodermic needle theory is that media messages are injected into our bloodstream. Both these ideas are 'behaviourist' or 'passive audience' theories which show that the media have a direct impact on our behaviour. However, this can be seen as untrue and almost ridiculous because of examples such as Donald Trump. who blamed violent video games for the reason why high school shootings occurred in Florida, instead of acknowledging the real problem of the American gun laws. This tragedy inspired the March for our Lives movement where. thousands of students in Washington marched to call for gun reform. This evidently shows that teenagers especially are not as passive as thought and can see the real issues and fight for what they believe in. 

The uses and gratifications theory (also known as Maslow's needs and motivation theory) suggests that audiences have control over the media they consume and pick and choose the media they want based on  their needs (uses) and desires (gratifications). This is completely different to the magic bullet theory, as here the consumer can go through and choose exactly what they want and reject what they don't like the look of.

Hegemony is continuously being shown in the media. Statistics show that women make up over half the country, yet only 13% of working film directors are women in the UK. BAME people make up 14% of the population but according to Ofcom, only 12% of the employees in this industry are from this background though! Disabled people are very underrepresented, which is a huge issue which is caused due to the stats not telling us about these people's backgrounds. Over half (54%) of top journalists were educated in private schools when only 7% of children in UK actually go to private schools. A further 33% of journalists were at selective grammar schools and only 14% attended comprehensive schools which is where 90% of children are now educated. This shows it is not easy for the average lower class or working class person to get a job in the media, let alone the underprivileged, transgender, ethnic minority groups. When the lives of these groups are just depicted in the news and written into stories or framed by directors, then these representations are likely to be constructed from a middle class white privileged man. However, we could challenge it, in this day and age we don't challenge the ideas fed to children that all doctors and pilots are rich white men and that barbies are white, blonde with blue eyes. If we don't challenge this, then we are consenting to a corrupt system.

Pluralism is the idea that in order to change the way we all think, we need to see many varied representations of people from different social groups, rather than repeated stereotypes we continuously see. This challenges hegemony as it takes out the stereotypes, for example the Legally Black campaign. This campaign was where they allowed black people to replace big white actors in successful movies like Harry Potter and Doctor Who. Pluralism is definitely desirable to people as people aren't used to see ethnic minorities on posters of some of the most successful films created. Therefore, this widens people's views and challenges the stereotype view of media.