A Myth and Ideological Analysis of the News
Few phrases cut quite as deeply as “where’s your common sense?” Not only does it attack self-confidence but also seems to imply that your missing something. Normally in this situation the last thing we think of is what is common sense? The answer to this last question is really the important part and is explained by Schutz as the “stock knowledge” of physical things and fellow citizens, of social collections and artifacts, including cultural objects” that make up our reality (Wasburn: 2002). This “stock knowledge is socially constructed over time and woven into our culture. Gramsci’s term-Hegemony refers to the processes by which stock knowledge is constructed and helps us to understand how this creation of knowledge is used to serve the existing power structure.
When applied to international cultures and relations, Hegemony theory can be broken down into four dimensions that are used to socially construct reality. The first of these is the construction of a way of seeing things that leads us to look favorably on people who are like us and ignore all else. Another dimension of Hegemony is setting boundaries as to acceptable discourse and debate. This is characterized in international media by a lack of alternative perspectives and not criticizing socially accepted institutions. A third dimension is the pretense of power from below, but consent to political authority. This causes for a type of pseudo-involvement that makes the public believe they are really in control. The fourth and final dimension that will be used in this analysis is that contradictions and inconsistencies are ignored.
In the article “New U.S. policy supports more military intervention”, American ideologies are extremely prevalent. The second paragraph starts out with “While U.S. forces have long helped bolster foreign militaries through a variety of assistance programs…” This crafty way of saying that the U.S. government has directly backed military efforts that they see as furthering their cause creates the idea that other countries depend on the U.S. to succeed. It also implies that these U.S. aims are honorable and needed. The only source they use, a Defense Department undersecretary for policy furthered this idea by stating “and I don’t think that there’s anything in our constitution that says that the president should not protect the country unless he gets some non-American participation or approval of that.” By encouraging and trying to justify this kind of American policy as natural and best for the public, it can slowly go from inside the realm of deviance (overuse of military power) to the realm of legitimate controversy and even into the realm of public consensus or common sense. Daniel Hallin writes about a similar situation in which the term “Cold War” was used to “maximize public support for American intervention” in El Salvador. (Hallin: 1987)
What controls how far and at what speed the socially constructed policy will move is also embedded in articles such as this one from the Seattle Times. Toward the end of the article the undersecretary for policy is again quoted as saying that we don’t have the luxury of picking areas, “we have interests all over the world.” This statement along with others makes the assumption that since there are governments all over the world that are unpredictable and have “failed”, we must do the rational thing and transform them into sovereign nations that govern themselves according to our standards. What stays beyond the boundary of legitimate controversy in this article is how we will be judging what nations have failed and what the best course of action would be.
The article is nearly a dictionary example of the pretense of power from below. The entire story relies on a handful of pentagon officials that have been trained for several decades in public relations. The author continuously used terms such as “terrorism”, “cross-border aggression”, “great dangers”, “weak states and ungoverned areas” to describe the eminent danger but harder to understand and more subjective terms to describe U.S. actions- “a variety of assistance programs”, “active deterrence”, and “the United States might intervene”. Right at the end of the article is pseudo-involvement that is a key characteristic in democratic media. Questions are asked. Although answers are not given it’s the perfect way to get the public thinking but not actively engaged.
One of the easiest elements of Hegemony to find in this article is the way contradictions are ignored. One sentence states that the U.S. has respect for the sovereignty of nation states. A few sentences later it goes on to say that “…revised strategy reflects the Bush administration’s priority since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on taking preventative action globally to block potential attacks or limit dangerous situations. In the context that it is written this is a major contradiction masked in fancy rhetoric. This article also is missing the clear reasons for why we would want to jeopardize nation sovereignty and become a sort of father figure to nations who are struggling.
Works Cited:
New U.S. policy supports more military intervention. The Seattle Times. A7. 2005. March 19.
Hallin, D.C. (1987). Hegemony: The American News Media from Vietnam to El Salvador, A Study of Ideological Change and Its Limits. In D Paletz (Ed.) Political Communication Research. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 3-25.
Wasburn, P.C. (2002). We’re Talking about Us: The Social Construction of the United States by America’s Commercial News Media. The Social Construction of International News. Westport, CT: Praerger, 7-22