Unmasking Hegemony and Learning Democracy: Mass Media, Adult Education, and the Challenge of Teaching for Justice in the Age of Culture Conglomerates

• In Event: Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Democracy, Hegemony, and Totalitarianism: An Educational Study

Abstract

Almost all of the media in the U.S. is owned and its content controlled by five or six multi-national conglomerates with decidedly neoliberal agendas and parallel participations in a myriad of industries including weapons, pharmaceuticals, communications, and food production (Kunz, 2007; Miller, 2007). Moreover, “the power of the media to influence the thoughts and actions of people is at a level unprecedented in human history” (Guy, 2011, p. 363). Guy also understands that mass media have “become systems of informal adult education” and that “the owners of media…possess the capability to manipulate, enforce, and reinforce the messages they prefer for a large-scale audience on a global level” (p. 363). This consolidation of educative power has happened rapidly (see Miller, 2007). Van Zoonen (2004) contends that political positions are formed and political decisions are made based, in part, on their choice of popular media. Critical adult educators, then, must consider what and how our students learn from the public pedagogy and “totalitarian logic” (Marcuse, 1964, p. 14) of mass media that can manipulate adults’ perceptions of reality, participation in democracy, and appreciation of the other. The recent, regressive legislative assault across the country, on civil rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, and immigrant rights is evidence of a cultural shift away from the progressive struggle toward democratic principles that began to gain momentum in the 1960s. With these assaults in mind, this paper will investigate the influence of mass media on social justice movements and education for democracy, both of which are negated by a capitalist hegemony.
Kuhn (1996) argues that paradigm shifts are rarely the work of experienced researchers, the full professors who are so often the sages of our disciplines. Rather, such shifts are the “fundamental inventions” of either the “very young or the very new to the field” (p. 90). With the ever-expanding dominance of mass media in our lives, adult learners are changing; their worldviews are shaped and reinforced by cultural conglomerates promoting individualism, consumption, and Western elitism—disguised as noteworthy news and easy entertainment. In this position paper, I argue that research and practice in the field of adult education must change, as well. It is time for a paradigm shift in a discipline that is increasingly marginalized in the current zeitgeist of corporatization, downsizing, and program cuts. With so much concentrated power to instruct under the dominion of corporate boards, democratic ideas are being supplanted by an ethos of unfettered capitalism and narcissist, self-gratification (see Lasch, 1978). Many of the foundational theories in adult education are grounded in modernist, rational narratives and humanist philosophies of individual potential. This paper is a call to the young and the new in our field to recognize the hegemonic power of mass media and to invent new paradigms of research and practice suitable to the promotion of social justice and democratic ideals on a global level.

Author

• Robin Redmon Wright, The Pennsylvania State University - Harrisburg