Os meios de comunicação de massa como aparelhos de hegemonia

• Autor(a) principal: Rummert, Sonia Maria
• Data de Publicação: 1986
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/9109
• topic: Educação; Hegemonia; Comunicação de massa

In societies which rely on the capitalist production mode, the mass media play key political and economic roles, since they are supposed to inculcate the ideas this economic model is rooted on. A critical understanding of such roles can be achieved with the help of Antonio Gramsci's theory, since through his concepts of man, ideology, State, hegemony, culture and pedagogical relations the mass media's political role as a tool for keeping the nation's hegemony can be established. In Latin America, specifically, the mass media play a twofold role since its hegemony-creating effects serve both the world capitalism's interests - particularly the U.S.'s - and those of the ruling classes of each country in this continent, all involved in political-economic alliances with the world's ruling nations. According to this perspective, one can understand both the political role of the whole process of implementing and developing the mass media in Brazil - particularly television - and the meaning of this hegemony-creating practice, which became all the more important after the military coup in 1964. It was then that the National Security ideology singled out the mass media - the outlet for the culture industry products - as the fittest vehicle for developing its strategy, the so-called psychological-action strategy, aiming at gaining the whole society's consent to the political regime then in force. The Globo TV Network's case is one of the most illustrative examples of this strategy put in to practice and it can help clarify, through concrete facts, the national and international hegemony-creating mechanisms. These mechanisms can be identified eyerywhere, from the establishment of the aforesaid TV station's coast-to-coast network to the daily production routines of such shows as the 'Jornal Nacional' and the 'Fantástico - o Show da Vida'. This analysis, however, cannot fail to emphasize that this ideology-inculcation process faces several drawbacks that prevent its ultimate success within the inferior classes, which should not be seen as mere passive receivers of the ruling classes messages. The resistance mechanisms of the inferior classes do exist and although they are not adequately recognized yet, one cannot fail to take them into consideration, when what is meant is the understanding of the real meaning of the mass media's roles and scope within society.