Media Hegemony or Polysemy, Media Polyvalence

Hi everyone! I will be presenting on Thursday about media hegemony and polysemy as well as media polyvalence. As an introduction to my topic, here is a brief description of the terms:  

• Media hegemony is the way a dominant ideology is diffused to, and accepted by, subordinate groups. In other words, the way that media can portray a certain idea to the public to make the public take that specific belief as the truth, with little to no room for interpretation.
• “...mass media have a considerable power over people as they “churn out products which keep the audience blandly entertained, but passive, helping to maintain the status quo by encouraging conformity and diminishing the scope of resistance” (p. 228)

• Polysemy counters this belief. Media polysemy is the idea that media is open to a range of different interpretations at different times. This suggests that it is not determined by the media providers but is created individually by each member of the audience. This side argues that “people do not consume media offerings mindlessly but instead actively and creatively engage with them” (p. 228).
• Media polyvalence occurs when audience members share understandings of the denotations of a text but disagree about the importance of these denotations to such a degree that they produce notably different interpretations. This means that viewers generally agree on the meaning or ideas of a given message, but may or may not agree with what the message is actually trying to convey.

You can find the article that I have chosen at this link and I would like you to read pages 9-16: http://wmc.3cdn.net/83bf6082a319460eb1_hsrm680x2.pdf

Here are a few questions to keep in mind while you are reading and to think about in preparation for class:

1. Why do you think the media, specifically news coverage, is still so dominated by men? Do you think this has anything to do with hegemonic, polysemous or polyvalence ideologies?
2. Think of an advertisement or a commercial that you’ve seen, how does that advertisement, or advertising as a whole, relate to these ideals?

*UPDATED SINCE PRESENTATION*

In class, we talked about the different theories in which media is interpreted by an audience and how these theories affect our understandings. We had a discussion about the various usages and examples of these forms, but specifically hegemony, within media. We talked about how these concepts are commonly shown within media and how these can correlate with gendered representations, such as within the article. The article talks about how media is predominantly a male a field, it also discusses how the majority of female journalists report on topics related to the home or cooking while men are assigned much different stories. Why do you think this is and how can this relate to the aforementioned theories of interpretation?

Scholar Bonnie Dow (1996) argues that media is “simultaneously a commodity, an art form, and an important ideological forum for public discourse about social issues and social change”,  thinking about the examples shown in class, or  examples from your own experiences, how important is it for us to recognize media as entertainment as well as an important and accurate representation of current societal landscapes?