Analyze The Case Of The Fish

Ans-1) Communication theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan had once said: “We are not sure who discovered the water, but we are pretty sure it wasn’t a fish”. The fish, as we know, is always immersed in water and has no anti-environment to help it judge the element it lives in. It thus becomes the last to discover water. The case of the fish is metaphorical and can be applied in the context of contemporary media landscape where ideas of ideology and hegemony act as filters in shaping news. Human beings are social animals whose views and opinions about the world are influenced by the news they consume. Media's role is to function as a mediator and represent the reality by careful selection and editing. To avoid becoming that fish whose
Durham and Kellner believe that “all cultural texts have distinct biases, interests and embedded values, producing a point of view of the producers” (Kellner and Durham, 2006:xiv). To see how media influences public opinion, let us analyze the case of Malala Yousafzai — the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize co-winner. Malala was 15 when Pakistani Taliban shot her in the head for promoting education, a cause that the fanatic group is blatantly against. She survived and went on to become an international face for education and human rights. In a matter of two years Malala rose from a life of anonymity to the cover of Time magazine. How did this happen? Did media's biased reportage play a role in the phenomenal rise of Malala? Critics believe it did and have accused the western media for representing Malala as “a beacon of liberal values, in an otherwise primitive Muslim world” (HuffPost, 2013). It is a less known fact that Malala’s father is a member of Swat’s Communist Party and has close relations with the Awami National Party (ANP) — a stout critic of the Taliban. Critics claim that the ANP was the main profiteer of the attack on Malala, after her father: “It’s not Malala who is handshaking with every top leader and politician of this world, it’s her father” (Feroz, 2013). Western media did a biased reportage and ignored those parts of Malala's life that did not suit their ideological
In The Prison Notebooks, Gramsci analyzed how fascism, which was opposed by the majority, eventually came to be the ruling force in Italy. According to him ideology was the “social cement” that unified and binded together the dominant social order. Diverse social groups attained hegemony, Gramsci said, through inducing the consent of the majority of subaltern groups. The state helped in uniting these groups, while the institutions of civil society — like the church, schools, and the media — helped in establishing the hegemony. Societies maintained stability through a combination of force and