Todd Gitlin Mass Media Summary

Gitlin emphasizes that individuals don’t understand part of their lives. He focuses on individuals and factors that affect them, how low income people not having enough information. If the low income people are involved in interest groups like unions, things will be different. However, low income people are not in unions. They don’t have regular employment. As economy has pushed people out of stable employment, they pushed people out of being in unions. “Media specialize in orchestrating everyday consciousness…their accessibility, their centralized symbolic capacity. To put it simply: the mass media have become core systems for the distribution of ideology” (Gitlin, 2). Media frames are routines of journalism. They shape the publics understanding of situations through legitimate discourse. Gitlin argues that mass media plays important role in our lives. The way that it is packaged is the interest of owners of means of production. The local and national news would create a spokesperson role, that has an agenda and point of view and become unquestioned. Oppositional movement extends reach through
“It is a systematic engineering of mass consent to the established order…Hegemony is, in the end, a process that is entered into by both dominators and dominated” (Gitlin, 10). Todd Gitlin emphasize that his version of hegemony is running through a organization of social activities and institutional procedures. “Hegemony is done by the dominant and collaborated in by the dominated” (Gitlin, 10). Hegemony does not always side with dominance; this has to be reconfigured, objectified, and renewed constantly…so the legitimacy of hegemonic news rests on its claim to objectivity” (Gitlin, 51). This is dependent on the public’s view of legitimacy and should not be looked down upon for its