Ideology

What is Ideology?

A system of meanings or ideas that help define and explain the world around us and which an individual or groups holds to be true or important.

Dominant Ideologies

These are ideologies that are repeatedly shown to us by institutions such as the government, the church, education and the media.

Ideologies like these are often what we internalise as normal and begin to not even question. They become our beliefs that we live our day-to-day life around. Dominant ideologies can include ideas about gender roles, the economy and social institutions. 

What the hell is this to do with media?!

Any and all media texts retain certain ideas or beliefs that reflect ideologies which we may not always notice. An example might be the stereotypical way that gay men are presented in the media. This idea is slowly changing though as the ideology is changing to make someone that's gay more 'normal' in society.

Media texts are successful in conveying ideologies as they reach a broad audience through many different mediums. Every media text that someone watches that supports or enhances a certain ideology will further imprint that in their beliefs. Although if someones beliefs are strongly against what the media text is represent then their beliefs won't be changed and in fact they may come to resent that piece of media.

So where is the link to my work?

Thinking about controversial ideologies made myself and my partner realise that we will have to convey ideologies that won't stir trouble with our target audience. We have to make sure the way in which we represent gender (as we have both in our video) is equal and shows no inequality as this would be something that our target audience would frown upon. Although this may seem silly as well due to issues with alcohol and binge drinking up and down the country we have to represent that in a normal and accessible way as our target audience will not want to be preached to about things its inevitable that they're doing. We did this by using alcohol in quite a comical way with the beer cans appearing over him whist he stared at facebook. Our protagonist male is also feeling sad at this point, this signifies that he drank like this because he was upset and not in a normal circumstance.