Sociology - Mass Media - Essay Example

In analyzing various theories in sociology in regards to media and globalization, an assessment of the role the mass media plays ion the contemporary world is essential. Whether the mass media helps in protecting a fair and democratic society or to justify unfairness in a society where the wealthy and the powerful have the control to model the society in a manner that places their interests before those of the majority community members. Theorists around the world have discussed how the media has exercised cultural dimension through globalization process.

According to the Marxist media theory, the mass media is a means of production. The mass media disseminates the views and ideas of the ruling class and defuses any alternative approaches. He further explains that the class with the means of producing material has control over the means of all production aspects making those who lack control of the means to be subjects of the ideas and agendas introduced and enforced to them (Prychitko, 2008). Gramsci considered hegemony as a predominant of one social class over others not only in economic and political perspective, but also the ability of the higher or dominant class to foster its own view of the world to other people so that the inferior class of society accept it as the true way of livelihood like it happened in the colonial times when Africans were used as slaves (Chandler, 1995).

Gramsci emphasizes on the struggle as he explains that common sense is not rigid, but it can transform gradually. Gramsci believed that a rejection of economies would sail through since it viewed an ideological struggle for a primary force in radical change as ideological hegemony. Media is regarded as a tool of false adjudication to the majority working classes of the society. Leading to perceptions that see the media as monolithic expressions of the higher ruling class that ignores the