Ideology of television: theoretical framework and a case study

Sahin, Haluk

doi:10.1177/016344377900100204

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In an earlier article focusing on the transfer of television technology, I argued that such transfers involve not only the introduction of a new set of equipment in a new setting, but also the transmission of a set of implicit or explicit instructions regarding the ways the equipment should be used (Sahin, 1979). Such instructions embody certain assumptions, definitions, standards of performance, and professional norms which are essentially socio-historical products.…”

Section: Medium-technique Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Concept of Ideology and Mass Communication Research

Sahin

1980

Journal of Communication Inquiry

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It was Walter Lippmann who, in an almost ritually quoted passage about the division between &dquo;the world outside&dquo; and &dquo;the pictures in our heads,&dquo; drew attention to the &dquo;insertion between man and his environment of a pseudoenvironment&dquo; made of &dquo;representations of the real environment&dquo;-representations which, nonetheless, served as a basis for actual behavior (Lippmann, 1922: 15). Lippmann was concerned about the possibility of lack of correspondence between the two sides of the insertion, between &dquo;the world&dquo; and its &dquo;interior representations,&dquo; not only because of its epistemological import, but also because of its practical ramifications. He feared that such discrepancies could mislead people in their daily lives.However, despite his recognition of potential distortion, he did not raise the question whether such lack of correspondence might follow certain systemic patterns, whether the pseudo-environment might mis-represent the real environment in certain discernible, even predictable ways.Speaking from a democratic liberal point of view, he considered the fictitious representations either natural flaws of human information processing mechanisms-a consequence of living in an environment &dquo;altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance&dquo; (Lippmann, 1922: 16), giving rise to a need for simpler models in order that they can be managed more easily-or outcomes of certain external constraints such as limited access to facts. For Lippmann, these representations (&dquo;the picture of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, relationships&dquo;) were public opinions whose careful analysis &dquo;was the task of political science&dquo; (Lippmann, 1922: 29). Had he raised the question of systematic distortion, he would have run into the problem of ideology, whose study is the task of social sciences in general and, in the case of media-produced representations, mass communications research in particular.

show abstract

Section: Medium-technique Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%