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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

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IDEOLOGICAL PRODUCTION IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL MEDIA CAPITALISM

Luísa Godinho

lgodinho23@yahoo.com.br

Assistant Professor at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (Portugal) and researcher in the field of

Political Communication. Her academic interests lie in the fields of discourse, digital

communication and computational approach to the Social Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in

Economic and Social Sciences from the Université de Genève, Switzerland.

Abstract

Acknowledging the recognition of the media as international actors, this article discusses their

role in the process of ideological production in contemporary democracies. The interconnection

between the global media industry and market configuration emerges as the structural link of

this process, which determines the conditions of reproduction and dissemination of ideas and

the construction of the reference frames that allow defining the positioning of voters-

consumers. Following Downs’ theory, this paper examines the conceptual relationship

between social positioning and political positioning, proposing the introduction of a third

variable in Downs’ analysis, media positioning, in order to define and update its postulates.

Finally, the stages, processes and outputs involved in the process of ideological construction

in three different market configurations are identified. The conclusion is that there is a

qualitative change in the action of global media, which have evolved from being informal

actors in the democratic process to formal actors.

Keywords

ideology, fragmentation, press systems, conglomerate, media capitalism

How to cite this article

Godinho, Luísa (2018). "Ideological production in the era of global media capitalism".

JANUS.NET e-journal of International Relations, Vol. 9, Nº. 1, May-October 2018. Consulted

[online] on the date of last consultation, DOI: https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.9.1.2

Article received on September 12, 2017 and accepted for publication on March 6, 2018

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 9, Nº. 1 (May-October 2018), pp. 15-37

Ideological production in the era of global media capitalism

Luísa Godinho

IDEOLOGICAL PRODUCTION IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL MEDIA CAPITALISM

Luísa Godinho

The deep relationship between global media and ideology (Postman, 1990; Flew, 2007;

Croteau & Hoynes, 2012) is a recurring theme in the scientific literature, and today there

is consensus that the media have a political function side by side with actors such as the

parties and institutions of the State (Paletz & Entman, 1980; McNair, 2000, 2003, 2012;

Mancini, 2013; Robertson, 2015).

In this sense, the relationship between these two concepts will depend on the conditions

of each one’s existence, the economic context in which the media operate, which is of

particular importance not only in defining the number and type of agents that structure

the public debate, but also in the selection of the terms of the latter, conditions that

directly impact on pluralism and democracy.

The central position occupied by the media in the life of democracies is well-studied, the

former normally acting as catalysts of the dynamics that take place within the public

sphere (Calhoun, 1992; Hauser, 1999, Sparks 2001, Edgerly et al., 2015), the metaphor

proposed by Habermas to describe the space that allows the circulation of ideas among

the members of a society. It is the symbolic area where the semantic negotiations take

place and culture is disseminated and in which the global media play a central function

as agents defining the terms of this debate and of opinion and deliberation.

This article aims to deepen the understanding of this relationship between global media

and ideology, examining it particularly in recent historical contexts. Can one speak of an

ideological production process? And if so, what is the role of global media? What sub-

processes and what stages are involved in this process? What results do they produce?

These are some of the questions this paper tries to answer by adopting a conceptual

approach and using the descriptive and explanatory methods based on bibliographic

research.

Ideology and media: a theoretical approach

It would be useless to attempt to list the theories that until today have examined the

concept of ideology, so many are the approaches and the voices. One can, however,

identify among the studies of ideology two broad lines of analysis: a line of Marxist

heritage marked by a pejorative view of the phenomenon; and a second line based on a

sociological approach.

The translation of this article was funded by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e

a Tecnologia - as part of OBSERVARE project with the reference UID/CPO/04155/2013, with the aim of

publishing Janus.net. Text translated by Carolina Peralta.

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Ideological production in the era of global media capitalism

Luísa Godinho

This paper follows this second theoretical line, approaching the trend that studies

ideology as a discursive phenomenon, following the legacy of authors like Bourdieu

(Bourdieu, 1977, 2001) and Foucault (Foucault, 1971), who first identified power systems

centred on word and representation, the former seeing the educational system as a basic

form of ideological power, the latter analysing ideology from the viewpoint of the text

and its context and proposing even the replacement of that signifier by the word

discourse.

The discursive conception of ideology, however, has long been considered insufficient for

the practice of a sociology of knowledge to identify the concrete processes that guarantee

the existence of the life cycle of ideas, their creation, circulation, reproduction and death.

The communication dimension has necessarily assumed a prominent place in the

scientific literature, a dimension that allows us to identify the agents and dynamics that

guarantee the transition of an enunciation from being a mere proposition generated in

any individual context to becoming a theoretical body shared by an extended community,

so that it can be recognized, accepted, criticized, and refuted.

This transition from the individual to the collective phase is guaranteed by the passage

through a communication network that exerts a double effect by amplifying and

transforming the ideas generated.

Notwithstanding the multiplicity of understandings about the consequences of the

communication network on the life cycle of ideas, there seems to be some consensus as

to the existence of these effects, and therefore, as to the power that agents and

communication processes have not only in the selection of enunciations that will acquire

social dimension as well as in the very identity of these propositions.

The recognition of the role that the media occupy in the life cycle of ideas inevitably

refers to the sociological approach to ideology, in the line of authors such as Manheim,

Ricoeur, Seliger, Thompson, Gellner, Gouldner, Roig and Van Dijk, thus refusing the

Hegelian roots, based on the binary reasoning around the opposition between physical

objectivity/universalism. As Roig writes,

"(…) ce qui est aujourd'hui remis en cause est la visée universaliste

et, donc, impérialiste des modèles antérieurs tant hégélien que

scientiste. A la prétention métaphysique d'une unité de la

connaissance succède une diversité des modèles cognitifs admis ou,

si l'on préfère, des paradigmes explicatifs."

Among the sociological approach to ideology, several sub-trends are identified, and the

ideology that is the product of the articulation between language and communication

system, which has Gouldner, Roig and Van Dijk among its main authors, is particularly

suitable for this question.

Gouldner analysed the ideology as a language variation, a text that presents a certain

autonomy in terms of the content and a certain stability in terms of support. It is a

metalanguage that distinguishes itself from the common language by being autonomous

in relation to the social context in which it operates, in this sense presenting some

idem, p. 44

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Luísa Godinho

similarity with the elaborated codes Bernstein talks about, characterized by self-

reflexivity and independence.

Notwithstanding the importance Gouldner recognises in the linguistic dimension of the

phenomenon, the author identifies it primarily as a consequence of the mass

communication system and thus of phenomena such as industrialization and

mediatisation, avoiding all explanations centred on man as the main driver of thought.

In this perspective, the ideological phenomenon, born with the end of traditional society

based on the values of predictability, certainty and immobility, emerges precisely as an

alternative proposal based on a new interpretation of society and on new projects of

social change.

According to the author,

«Ideology thus entailed the emergence of a new mode of political

discourse; discourse that sought action but did not merely seek it

by invoking authority or tradition, or by emotive rhetoric alone. It

was discourse predicated on the idea of grounding political action in

secular and rational theory (...). Ideology separated itself from the

mythical and religious consciousness; it justified the course of action

it proposed by the logic and evidence it summoned on behalf of its

views of the social world, rather than by invoking faith, tradition,

revelation or the authority of the speaker» (Gouldner, 1976: 9).

As a linguistic and communication phenomenon, for Gouldner ideology is also the product

of an evolution in which societies become complex as a result of modernization, creating

new explanatory schemes that guarantee its own self-understanding. According to the

author, it is the specificity of these schemes that justifies the emergence of discourses

based on a particular language and that are disseminated through the available media

system.

Along the same lines, Roig associates the ideological phenomenon with a Manichean

symbolism established through a communication network which, despite its strategic

nature, fulfils two particular functions: it provides a moral framework that allows agents

to place themselves among multiple core political choices, namely on a “left-right scale”

(Roig, 1980: 58) and favours the coalition of leading groups and factions or tendencies

among institutional elites. The very organization of social systems is only possible,

according to the author, through the use of a language articulated with a communication

network.

«(…) ce qu’on appelle idéologie ne doit pas être recherché dans un

contenu sémantique quelconque mais dans un impact sur un réseau

de communication déterminé (...), en bref : un effet de réseau.(...)

Les rapports entre idéologie et réseau de communication peuvent

être ramenés à des rapports entre moyens et fins. Les fins

concernent les réseaux qu’il faut soit créer (...), soit actualiser

lorsque le réseau est potentiel, soit renforcer comme c’est le cas

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Luísa Godinho

pour la plupart des messages de légitimation, soit maintenir ou

changer en provocant des divisions, des unions (...) soit enfin

supprimer (...). Les moyens mis en œuvre pour obtenir ces divers

résultats recouvrent toute une source d'ambiguité dans la

conceptualisation. (…) L'idéologie caractérisée par la vision

manichéiste qu'elle offre du monde est un de ces nouveaux moyens,

et parmi les plus économiques» (Roig, 1980: 57)

As a communication phenomenon, Roig sees ideology also as an economic device in the

sense that it facilitates individual choices and reduces the degree of uncertainty by

limiting the two alternatives to behaviour, but also as a decisive means for perpetuation

and suppression of the communication network itself.

The discursive approach to ideology has been extended to the field of psychology with

Teun van Dijk’s theoretical proposal, who understands the concept in a multidisciplinary

way, seeing it as a product that is simultaneously social, discursive and cognitive.

According to van Dijk, the social nature of ideology derives from the fact that man, as a

subject of reason, is a social animal that participates in social conflicts by managing the

interests and struggles of groups according to his own reference frameworks. In this

sense, the study of the social organization and manifestations consists above all in the

study of ideology, understood as a precondition of human action, which cannot exist

outside the sphere of meaning.

As for the discursive dimension of the phenomenon, van Dijk places it in the field of

linguistics, understanding it as a discourse produced in the context of a certain strategy

aimed at producing a set of effects.

As a social, linguistic and cognitive phenomenon, ideology is, for this author, «the basis

of the social representations shared by members of a group»

, whose work consists in

an attempt to explain the structures and strategies that relate discourse and social

cognition.

«In most cases, ideologies are self-serving and a function of the

material and symbolic interests of the group. Among these interests,

power over other groups (...) may have a central role and hence

function as a major condition and purpose for the development of

ideologies. Ideologies thus operate both at the overall, global level

of social structure, for instance as the socially shared mental

monitor of social competition, conflict, struggle and inequality, and

at the local level of situated social practices in everyday life.»

Van Dijk's work can, moreover, be interpreted as a true theory of ideology, since the

author is interested in the entire life cycle of ideas, addressing stages such as the

Idem, p. 8

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formation, development and circulation of the phenomenon and placing the elites and

the media at the epicentre of this process, as creative and diffusing agents, respectively.

Configurations of the Global Media System

The discursive-communication nature of the ideological phenomenon presupposes its

articulation with the media system and its functional structure, a condition that makes

ideology and economy to relate directly, since they are historically interconnected. This

relationship, in turn, translates into the interaction between economic model, ideological

production and political structure, the first seeming to exert, as we will show next, a

significant influence on the second and third dimensions.

As Chan-Olmsted and Chang write (Chan-Olmsted e Chang, 2003:214)

“Considering the significant role media corporations play in the

production of culture and the delivery of important news and

information and the fact that corporate structure, strategy

management and behavior ultimately impact the nature and supply

of content (Hollified, 2001), a better understanding of the patterns

and determinants of media diversification strategies would

contribute to the body of knowledge in the potential effects of media

globalization.”

The economic model that has been present since the emergence of what we can call the

media system is the business model, which demonstrated, in the nineteenth century, the

lucrative potential of a new type of investment based on the sale of texts and images

printed on paper and whose production was increasingly optimized thanks to the thriving

technological innovation then witnessed and the new financing systems then created, as

was the case with advertising.

The nineteenth-century atomized business model remained until the middle of the

following century, when a new configuration was established, characterized by the

increasing gathering of media companies into groups, generating a gradual but effective

decrease in the number of economic agents in the media market. (Figure 1)

“In 1983, fifty corporations dominated most of every mass medium

and the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal.

(…) In 1987, the fifty companies had shrunk to twenty-nine. (…) In

1990, the twenty-nine had shrunk to twenty-three. (…) In 1997, the

biggest firms numbered ten and involved the $19 billion Disney-ABC

deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever. (…) (In 2000) AOL

Time Warner’s $350 billion merged corporation (was) more than

1,000 times larger (than the biggest deal of 1983).” (Bagdikian,

2000: 20-21)

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Figure 1 – Number of media companies in the US between 1983 and 2004

Source: author’s own based on data of the Media Reform Information Center

This trend towards business concentration, which began in the 1980s, deepened in the

1990s and has continued to this day. It has generated a market characterized by a

smaller number of economic agents in the form of groups of organizations that dominate

the media offer, a model known as oligopoly that consists in an evolved form of

monopolization in which the involved agents are not companies but groups and the

competition occurs mainly due to factors like quality, the image of the products and the

loyalty of the clients in detriment of the price factor (Chan-Olmsted and Chang, 2003).

The oligopoly generated a concentration of audiences and financing in the hands of a

small number of agents, provoking a situation of not uncommon control of the media

market.

Figure 2 represents this type of market, where the concentration of the audiences in the

media represented by the letters C and D can be observed, the means A, B and E

corresponding to almost residual values.

Figure 2 – Representation of the oligopoly type media market

Source: author’s own

1983 1987 1990 1992 1997 2000 2004

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Luísa Godinho

This oligopoly model of the media industry has become global through the evolution to

another model called conglomerate, a change achieved through the merger of various

oligopolies and which has been strongly criticized for constituting an acceleration of the

process of media and cultural homogenization. It has also been critiqued for being a

very serious threat to democracy, to which the proponents of the model, who are in

favour of the economic approach, have responded by reducing the danger of

monopolization and by creating economies of scale in the competition in the global

market (Mandel-Campbell, 1998; Shearer, 2000).

According to Chan-Olmsted and Chang (Chan-Olmsted and Chang, 2003), three

structural factors lie at the basis of this model transformation: the privatization of the

television sector in many European and Asian countries; the deregulation of media

ownership; the increasing homogenization of lifestyles in a broad set of metropolises;

the saturation of demand in the US media market and the rampant advance of the so-

called new technologies.

The media conglomerate faced its biggest challenge with the massive expansion of the

Internet, a phenomenon that has affirmed itself in the 21st century and that decisively

impacts on the way content is produced, disseminated and consumed. This new economic

practice has increased the number of producers, raising it to an unprecedented scale in

the history of the humanity and generating a paradoxical effect in the consumption

pattern, simultaneously increasing the total volume of media consumers but distributing

them by a multitude of producers who do not cease to emerge. The result of this new

situation can be represented by the so-called long tail, a curve that symbolizes the hyper-

dispersion of consumers by an increasing number of means (figure 3), consequently

reducing the number of consumers by mean and rendering traditional financing and

management models inadequate.

Figure 3 – Representation of the long-tail type media market

Source: author’s own

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Luísa Godinho

The scientific debate around this new configuration of the media market tends to focus

on two distinct but complementary phenomena (Napoli, 2003: 77): on the one hand,

fragmentation; on the other, the autonomy of the audiences. The fragmentation

phenomenon affects the media and the audiences, referring to the “technological

processes that increase the range of content options available to media consumers”. In

turn, the autonomy of the audiences phenomenon is, according to the author, “the extent

to which media audiences increasingly have control over when, where and how they

consume media; and how increasingly they have the power to affect the content they

consume and to become content producers and distributors in their own right”.

Currently, we are witnessing an overlap between the two realities described above. The

media oligopoly remains the dominant economic configuration in capitalist democracies,

despite the deep crisis in which it is plunged due to the unstoppable and accelerated

emergence of new producers in the age of fragmentation (Mancini, 2013; Nelson-Field &

Riebe, 2011).

This overlap is a transitional phase that is believed to end in the hyper-fragmentation of

the media system, a trend whose contours and effects are still difficult to predict, despite

the vast literature dedicated to it. Notwithstanding the difficulty of accurately predicting

what may be the future trend, it seems consensual that there is an increase in cultural

processes, facilitated by low production costs and technological accessibility.

Global ideological and media configurations: convergence

The creation of any ideology inevitably presupposes reflection on its own praxis, a

strategic conception that allows moving from the intellectual theorization stage to the

dissemination and concretization of ideas phase, the interaction with the media being the

decisive factor in those second and third moments.

In order to take place, the dissemination of ideas implies, in turn, a degree of

acceptability on the part of those who receive them and this will depend on the

construction and participation, by emitters and receivers, in a symbolic space, a reference

domain that allows the sharing of meaning and emotional exchange. This reference

domain, in turn, materializes itself in the form of signs, that is, signs endowed with

meaning that allow the sharing of an imaginary and the construction of identity, which

are essential factors in the construction of social life. It is in the capacity of creation of

this symbolic space that the economic value of the media lies.

In order to characterize the intervention of the media in this process of democratization

of ideas, the concept of participatory disseminator is proposed with regard to the

fulfilment by the former of two structural functions: a transportation function and an

identity creation function.

The media’s transportation function is accomplished on the basis of their integration into

distribution networks that guarantee the placement of ideas in an increasingly wider area,

today global, at an increasingly lower cost and in an increasingly shorter time, embodying

what David Harvey called time-space compression (Harvey, 1990).

The identity creation function concerns the media’s capacity to participate in the

construction of the identity of the actual objects they deal with, a function guaranteed

by a set of selective processes such as agenda-setting and framing, designed to produce

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Luísa Godinho

a certain discursive construction of reality that can be accepted by a broad set of people

with a certain economic-cultural profile, strategically defined as the target audience.

This acceptability, in turn, is explained by the creation of a discourse characterized,

according to Wolton (Wolton, 1991), by being based on images, simplified and

personalized, characteristics that are, however, contrary to the nature of the social

problems that ideology conceptualizes, which are real and not image-based, complex and

not simple, collective and non-personalized.

Notwithstanding this insurmountable contradiction between reality and media language,

it is in these characteristics and in the infinite plethora of linguistic and visual

combinations that embody them that the identity of the media discourse, its economic

value and its cultural power lie.

The relation between economic system, cultural system and ideological production seems

unavoidable, the former creating the material conditions for the development of the

second in a symbolic framework that will allow the generation of the third.

The dominant economic-cultural system in capitalist democracies, previously described

and identified as media capitalism (Nutt & Schwartz, 2008), turbo-capitalism (Luttwak,

1998) and cognitive capitalism (Parikka, 2014), has had a decisive impact on ideological

production in these societies, and it can be said that each media configuration will

correspond to a certain ideological configuration.

This part analyses this correspondence by focusing on the two dominant media

configurations - oligopoly and fragmentation - and pointing out the ideological

configurations that correspond to them. The next part will examine in detail the process

of ideological production in presence, identifying the agents and processes that allowed

the correspondence between media configuration and political configuration to take

place.

Let's start with the media oligopoly.

The close relationship between the media system and the ideological system seems to

have had as consequence, as in the case of the oligopoly market, a similar configuration

in terms of the creation and diffusion of ideas, in the form of a reduced number of

ideologies or even a single dominant ideology.

In dictatorial regimes, the media oligopoly is often detained by the state or by companies

cooperating with it, resulting in almost absolute control over the symbolic production and

hence over the generation and circulation of ideologies. This control happens to a lesser

extent in the so-called liberal democracies, since the ownership of the mass media is

access free, enabling the private sector to participate in ideological production, which in

principle will become pluralist, the degree of this pluralism determining the very nature

of the democratic regime in question.

The media oligopoly thus corresponded to a phase of oligopolization of the political space,

with the affirmation of phenomena close to bipartisanship, concentrating the

governmental power on a scarce number of parties that exercise it alternately. This is

the phenomenon that Anthony Downs had already identified in 1957 (Downs, 1957)

when, in the wake of Hotelling (Hotelling, 1929), he published An Economic Theory of

Democracy, identifying the existence of a centripetal force in democratic regimes caused

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by the parties’ trends to approach the so-called average voter, opting to centralize their

positioning in order to capture more votes.

Figure 4 – Convergence of media, social and political positioning in democratic regimes in oligopoly

type markets

Source: author’s own

This phenomenon is represented in figure 4, where we can observe that the vast majority

of the electorate, represented by the black line, is located at the centre of the ideological

spectrum, attracting political parties wishing to win elections (in this case represented by

the letters C and D) and leaving parties A, B and E off the majority curve. In the same

image, we can also observe the analog configuration of the media positioning,

represented in orange, with the means h and i concentrating the majority of the market,

thus demonstrating the said convergence between the two configurations.

This trend towards the concentration of votes in a small number of political forces located

at the centre of the political spectrum is, in our view, the strategic positioning of the

media oligopoly, which is also centralized, resulting in phenomena close to bipartisanship,

de facto rotativism or, if we prefer, of the so-called alternation.

In this sense, electoral majorities arise from the convergence between three factors:

media positioning, the positioning of the electorate and the positioning of political parties,

the first factor arising as the structural dimension on which the second depends, which,

in turn, will generate the third.

Let us turn to the analysis of the media and ideological configurations in the case of the

fragmented market, whose characteristics were already described earlier.

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Luísa Godinho

Figure 5 – Convergence of political and media spaces in democratic regimes,

in fragmented type markets

In this type of economic configuration, represented in figure 5, media production and

consumption are dispersed by a multitude of new producers/consumers who do not cease

to appear, so it is expected that the circulation of ideas will follow this process, equally

spread by an increasing number of producers. Such a market presents fewer barriers to

ideological dissemination than oligopoly, since access to the means of media production

is virtually straightforward, at most depending only on the level of digital literacy.

Therefore, it seems plausible to speak of an increase in ideological production and

dissemination, notwithstanding the fact that, in the case of a fragmented market, unlike

oligopoly, the impact of disseminated ideas has diminished considerably thanks to the

parallel decline of audiences by means. This reduced impact ideological dissemination, in

turn, should allow an increase in the ideological process and a refreshing of the political

references, although, in institutional terms, it can generate phenomena such as difficulty

in attaining political majorities.

Process of ideological production in the era of global media capitalism:

agents and processes

The ideological production previously addressed in a systemic perspective will now be

understood through a micro-analysis that allows identifying the agents and processes

that integrate it, as well as the steps that it traverses.

However, this process should vary according to the type of market in question, whether

oligopolistic, fragmented or mixed, for which reason the productive process of ideas in

each of these contexts will be analysed.

As we can see in Figure 6, the process of ideological production in an oligopolistic media

system goes through four stages with distinct characteristics: a doctrinal stage; a media

stage; a dissemination stage, and a selection stage.

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The doctrinal stage corresponds to the moment of the germination of ideas and their

systematization and discursive deepening between a more or less restricted group of

agents.

Once the passage to praxis has been decided, it is necessary to widen the field of

reception, the contact with the oligopolized media being decisive in this process. Still,

this passage to the media field depends on a selection process - the agenda-setting -

which we call media filter. In fact, it is the media’s application of the so-called news-

values, conceptual constructions, that allow defining the subjects that will be the target

in the light of the ethical-professional and business objectives.

Figure 6 – Process of ideological production in an oligopolistic media system

Source: author’s own

This media filter is a decisive moment in the life of any ideology, since it determines the

possibility of sending the message to a large number of recipients. The passage in the

media filter facilitates the ideological growth; the non-passage determines restraint and,

not infrequently, the death of the ideology.

Notwithstanding the crucial importance of the media filter, it is only the first regulatory

instrument in the life of an ideology. In case a body of ideas is accepted to integrate the

media agenda, what we call the media stage, a second instrument starts operating, this

time regulating both the prioritization that will be given to it in the face of the news of

its competitors (priming) and the perspective in which it will be approached (framing).

This is what we call a semantic filter, since it operates on the content to be published.

Once disseminated in the form of a media text constructed according to the processes

described above, the ideology finally goes through a third filter capable of leading it to

become praxis. This is what we call the organizational filter, which consists of the

organizational configuration of agents capable of creating the social dynamics that will

not only support the ideas already disseminated by the media but also broaden their base

of support through the creation of a set of communicative strategies inserted in campaign

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actions. The size and motivation of this organizational filter will directly impact on its

effectiveness, i.e. the possibility of changing ideology into political action. We call this

final stage the selection phase.

At the basis of a discursive power like that of Wolton (Wolton, 1991), described above,

the media oligopoly serves as a compressor of the ideological process, acting as a filter

that determines which doctrines may be diffused and which should be silenced or even

killed, consubstantiating what Schlesinger describes as "the exercise of power through

the interpretation of reality" (Schlesinger, 1972).

Thus, it seems logical that the media-cultural fragmentation stage will generate the

fragmentation of the political space with the emergence of new political forces capable,

if not of destroying the political oligopoly, at least of weakening it through the force of

innovation or simply through the competitive effect.

However, getting to this stage will imply passing through an intermediate one

characterized by the accumulation of aspects of the oligopoly stage as well as of the

fragmented type (figure 7). It is a mixed media system in which the oligopoly, identified

here by the letters C and E, still remains, although it now faces competition from a

profusion of new non-oligopolized media agents (here designated by the letters A, B, D

and F) born in the so-called era of convergence or fragmentation. This profusion of new

media generates a cultural process that directly impacts on ideological production by

allowing the hyper circulation of a greater number of ideas (here designated by the letters

a, b, c, d, e, f) among an increasing number of people.

Figure 7 – Process of ideological production in a mixed media system

Source: author’s own

In turn, this new process will lead, depending on the effectiveness of each of the

organizational filters in place, to the emergence, disclosure and affirmation of a greater

number of ideological forces, which may want to move to a power stage through access

FiltroTecnológicoe

Mediático

Filtro deReceção

Filtro Organizacional

a 1

1"– Fase Doutrinal

2"– Fase Mediática

3"– Fase"de"Disseminação"

4"– Fase"de"Seleção

d 4

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Ideological production in the era of global media capitalism

Luísa Godinho

to the political-institutional system by means of free elections. The number of ideologies

selected in this type of mixed market tends to be higher than that of the oligopoly (in the

representation proposed here, the oligopoly allows the selection of three ideologies, while

the mixed market allows four), since the so-called new media ensure the affirmation of

new references and facilitate the dissemination of new ideas.

Finally, the fragmentation stage will come, in which the media oligopoly will have

succumbed to the strength of the so-called hyper-fragmentation of the audiences, leaving

media-cultural production in the hands of individual agents.

Figure 8 – Process of ideological production in a hyper-fragmented media system

Source: author’s own

This last stage is a typical configuration that did not have real correspondence but that

seems to be congruent with the logical evolution of the media systems we have witnessed

in recent decades.

In a stage with these characteristics, represented in figure 8, cultural production is

characterized by niche contents directed to an increasing number of audiences dispersed

by an ever-increasing variety of platforms (here identified by the letters A, B,C,D,E and

F) causing a ideological fragmentation (here identified by letters a, b, c, d, e, f, the largest

number of ideas circulating among the three market types analysed) in a increasing free

access framework but also of increasing uncertainty and instability, generated by the

absence of monopolization. In this sense, the niche-media will tend to generate niche-

ideologies and niche-parties, the latter already characterized by Bimber as "post-

bureaucratic structures" (Bimber, 2003, 2009) anchored in their communicative capacity

that generates social support.

Instead of the previous configurations, in the hyper-fragmented market the previously

called media filter, which consisted in the set of news selection processes developed by

traditional media, is replaced by the technological one, since ideological agents now have

Filtro Tec nológico

Filtro deReceção

Filtro Organizacional

1– Fase Doutrinal

2– Fase Mediática

3– FasedeDisseminação

4– FasedeSeleção

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Ideological production in the era of global media capitalism

Luísa Godinho

access to new media technology platforms and digital networks that allow them to

disseminate ideas.

As for the semantic filter, it will be the fundamental instrument that will guarantee the

acceptability of ideas, consisting of a set of writing techniques that can create interest

and generate audiences, broadening the reception base of ideology.

Notwithstanding the semantic centrality of the ideological production process in the

hyper-fragmented market, it seems congruent that, even at this stage, a minimum of

organizational strength is needed to transform any ideological agent into power, for which

reason maintaining the so-called organizational filter is proposed, although it has residual

importance compared to the others.

Finally, among the three scenarios analysed, this type of media configuration should

allow the passage to the selection stage of the largest number of ideological forces

(comparatively, six oligopoly forces, four in the mixed market and three in the hyper-

fragmented passed to the selection stage), since it is characterized by an even larger and

freer media system.

Conclusion

This article aimed to reflect on the phenomenon of ideological production in the present

time, examining at it as a result of a strategic process catalysed by global media capable

of simultaneously responding to financial profitability and ideological-cultural affirmation

objectives.

In this sense, the interconnection between market configuration, cultural industry and

ideological production plays a central role in current capitalist democracies. This

interconnection has roots in the history of the press itself and its deep relation with the

domains of politics and economy.

This industry-ideology alliance has constituted the structure of ideological production

since the nineteenth century, although today it is at the heart of a deep global systemic

crisis resulting from technological evolution and its massification. This crisis is now giving

way to a new atomization and amateur usage of ideological and cultural production and

consumption based on new discursive techniques, new standards and new values.

Notwithstanding the procedural changes we are witnessing in ideological production, it is

clear that in the process of ideological production, the metamorphosed media industry -

whether it is embedded in an oligopoly-type, fragmented or mixed market - always

appears as a "system of power"(Gans, 1980) based on a set of productive processes such

as agenda setting, framing and prioritization, and discursive techniques such as

nominalization and conceptual metaphors. These editorial processes constitute the

discrete but effective guarantee of maintaining a form of hegemony (Gramsci, 1990;

Lears, 1985; Barbero & Fox, 1993; Artz & Murphy, 2000) of a functional type consisting

of the domination of a class or group through the inculcation of a definite set of ideas

and assumptions which, by force of habit, become natural and common sense. Once

transposed to the realm of common sense, the media-based reference frameworks

undergo a legitimation process, and the ideas and assumptions that do not conform to

them become perceived as deviant and, consequently, repudiated.

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Ideological production in the era of global media capitalism

Luísa Godinho

This functional hegemony of the media and corresponding integration into Downs’ theory

through the phenomenon here called socio-political-media convergence, graphically

represented in figures 4 and 5, constitute the main contribution of this article. Downs'

important identification of the correlation between the positioning of the electorate and

the positioning of political parties in the democracies, the latter following the former,

lacks, in our opinion, an extension to the field of Communication, an extension that

integrates the media positioning variable, thereby deepening the explanatory framework

of the structural dynamics of democratic regimes.

The integration of this last variable allows a significant enrichment of Downs’ model,

introducing the phenomenon of media hegemony in the analysis and, through it,

explaining the processes triggered in the following ways: media hegemony creates the

reference frameworks of the audience-consumer, references which, in turn, will be the

basis of the definition of the positioning of the electorate and, consequently, of the

political parties, thus determining the political selection. It is a sequential process which,

in the case of the oligopoly type market, promotes political stability by facilitating the

formation of majorities, although it limits innovation by expelling, through its dynamics,

the whole body of ideas that do not follow the references promoted by the media and the

true pillars of the ongoing process. The opposite tends to happen in the fragmented

market, since the gatekeeping effect of the media is nullified by technological

accessibility, which creates the conditions for the ideological agents’ direct control of the

dissemination of their own ideological discourse.

This media centrality of the ideological production process, which here emerges as a

structural and permanent factor of capitalist democracies, presents variations depending

on the configuration of the media market being an oligopoly, fragmented or mixed. These

variations affect, in particular, the volume of ideological discourses in circulation, with

the first type of market promoting the bottleneck of the ideological offer in the public

space, the second the spraying and the third a relative expansion.

Notwithstanding this variable process, this article clearly demonstrates the existence of

a political-ideological function occupied by the media systems in what we can call a global

democratic process, a function that began to be performed at informal level, but which

the convergence phenomenon has been formalizing and institutionalizing through the

creation of social movements and political forces organized from media experiences.

These were the cases of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and the so-called "Arab Spring", the

former elected prime minister after a phase of establishing his own media oligopoly, the

second creating a political movement through the dominance of a media sub-system such

as online social networking. Examples of this reconfiguration of political actors are

multiplying with cases like the Pirates in Sweden, who, after about four years of

ideological affirmation on the Internet, acquired electoral legitimacy in 2010, having been

elected to the European Parliament and obtained 8% of the votes in the regional elections

in Berlin; or that of Beppe Grillo and the Movement 5 stelle, which obtained wide social

support through a blog denouncing political corruption in Italy.

There are several examples of the media’s penetration of the political system, something

that goes in the opposite direction to the one that traditionally existed. Scientific research

has been evidencing not only the weakening of the traditional mass bureaucratic parties

but also the emergence of a new global politics anchored in technology and developed

by new agents who emerged due to easy access to technology and control of the

discursive devices that guarantee the loyalty of the attention of the global consumer-

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Luísa Godinho

voter. This profound transformation of some of the democratic agents and processes

means the reconfiguration of global democracy, implying new forms of negotiation and

scrutiny, and, necessarily, the management of increased complexity.

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