Ideology

We discussed the topic of Ideology in class last wednesday. After attending that lecture it gave me a better understanding on what ideology is and how it is applied to the media. The mass media can be viewed as the dominant class in society. They shape the way we view society in our culture. For example, if imdb.com (internet movie data base) critiques a movie and gives it bad reviews most people are not going to watch it. This is because people tend to agree to the social majorities opinion because its a typical culture dominant norm to do. We can look at this model demonstrating our society as we are the sheep and government could be labeled the herder. Ideology creates a set of values that we usually are blind to since they are just so common in our culture. For example, answering a question in a classroom you are usually suppose to raise your hand and wait for the professor to call your name to speak. This would be a norm in our culture but could have a different meaning somewhere else since other cultures don't have the same ideal values as America.