media hegemony research paper

European Identity and the Representation of Islam in the Mainstream Press pp 55–83 Cite as

Mass Media and Hegemonic Knowledge : Gramsci and the Representation of the ‘Other’

• Salomi Boukala 2  
• First Online: 18 July 2018

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This chapter seeks to develop a theoretical framework to enhance Gramsci’s contribution to CDA and media studies. In particular, I first refer to the elliptic relation between CDA and hegemony. Then, I discuss the concept of intellectuals, and the distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals; I reintroduce the concept of hegemony and present those of superstructureand passive revolution. The next section includes discussions on the functions of the mass media, news values and media representations of the ‘Other’. It also refers to the links between CDA and media studies regarding representation of the ‘Other’, and emphasizes the representation of the Muslim ‘Other’ in order to justify why Gramsci’s work is essential to the study of media representations.

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At this point I should mention that Michel Foucault ( 1980 ) also emphasized the concept of power and claims that power does not have directly to do with violence but is similar to a form of control over peoples’ consciences and actions. According to Foucault, what makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it does not only weigh on ‘us’ as a force that says no. It traverses and produces things, induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than a negative instance whose function is repression ( 1980 , pp. 117–120, 141–143). Foucault also noted that the ‘mechanizations’, which can produce discourse and knowledge of what is accepted and what is not, are the state, scientists and intellectuals (ibid.). Hence, the first reading of the two concepts shows that Foucault’s power is close to Gramsci’s hegemony . However, I decided to focus on Gramsci’s hegemony because, from my viewpoint, it is more accomplished in relation to Foucault’s concept of power and Bourdieu’s symbolic power ( 1991 ) insofar as it includes class and resistance dynamics (counter-hegemony), and it seems to be a holistic approach to the modern capitalist state and its institutions.

For example, see: Triandafyllidou et al. ( 2009 ), Wodak ( 2008a , b ), Madianou ( 2005 ), Hall ( 1995 , 1997b , 1982 ), Richardson ( 2007 ), KhosraviNik ( 2015a , b ), Lacey ( 1998 ), Morley and Robins ( 1995 ), Hannerz ( 2004 ), Halliday ( 1999 ), Chomsky ( 2001 , 2002 ), and McQuail ( 2000 ).

A presentation of all the studies on critical discourse analysis of media is not possible in the limited space of this book. However, I would like to mention that this study was inspired by works such as: Richardson ( 2004 , 2007 , 2009 ), KhosraviNik ( 2015a , b ), Macgilchrist ( 2011 ), Sandikcioglu ( 2000 ), Meadows ( 2005 ), Tekin ( 2010 ), Le ( 2002 , 2010 ), Oberhuber et al. ( 2005 ), Krzyzanowski ( 2009 ), and Triandafyllidou et al. ( 2009 ).

Van Dijk had earlier examined a number of media-research studies on migrants and their representation in the British press and deduced that minority groups were not represented as being part of British society, but rather as dangerous ‘outsiders’ ( 1987 , pp. 40–45). Moreover, he assumed that the media play a central role in the reproduction of racism through the symbolic polarization between positive ‘Us’ and negative ‘Them’ ( 1993 , pp. 243–252).

Chomsky ( 2002 ), Fairclough ( 2006 ), and Nacos ( 2005 ).

The term ‘war on terror’ had been used by American President Reagan (1983). President Reagan labeled the states of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America as a ‘cancer’, a ‘source of terrorism’, ‘rogue states’ and introduced the term ‘war on terror’ as part of an effort to pass legislation that was designed to freeze the assets of terrorist groups and marshal government forces against them. President G. W. Bush repeated the term in his addresses to the American people after 9/11 (Chomsky 1999 , 2001 ).

See KhosraviNik ( 2015b ), Triandafyllidou et al. ( 2009 ), Richardson ( 2004 ), Schudson ( 2003 ), Fairclogh ( 1995a ), and Fowler ( 1991 ).

Here I should mention that there are other theories, such as the encoding/decoding model of Stuart Hall ( 2005 ), that focus on audiences’ defenses against media power. In any case I cannot ignore these theories, but I do need to highlight the fact that in this study I intend to approach mass media discourse as a form of institutional and hegemonic discourse.

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Boukala, S. (2019). Mass Media and Hegemonic Knowledge : Gramsci and the Representation of the ‘Other’. In: European Identity and the Representation of Islam in the Mainstream Press. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93314-6_3

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Media Hegemony: A Failure of Perspective

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DAVID L. ALTHEIDE, Media Hegemony: A Failure of Perspective, Public Opinion Quarterly , Volume 48, Issue 2, SUMMER 1984, Pages 476–490, https://doi.org/10.1086/268844

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Numerous studies of TV news have been published since Gans's (1972) call for more research on the mass media. A central issue underlying much of this research is control and dominance of the news process. This essay analyzes the logical and empirical adequacy of media hegemony as an explanation of ideological dominance. Analysis of recent research shows that some researchers have uncritically adapted the “dominant ideology thesis” of media hegemony to studies of TV news and have overlooked findings which challenge their claims about (1) the socialization and ideology of journalists, (2) whether news reports perpetuate the status quo, and (3) the nature and extent of international news coverage. Despite the shortcomings of the concept of media hegemony, efforts should continue to develop an empirically sound theoretical perspective for locating the news process in a broader societal context.

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US evangelist Billy Graham addresses a crowd of football supporters at Stamford Bridge, London, ... [+] during half-time at the match between Chelsea and Newcastle United. (Photo by Edward Miller/Getty Images)

I previously wrote about the importance of attracting public attention to scientific research . In today’s world, where billions of people are attached to their digital devices watching the very addictive but often useless TikTok content or receiving instant gratification by engaging in meaningless debates about celebrities, scientists need to find creative ways to have their research noticed. Popularizing scientific research helps inspire the younger generations to go into science and provide the general public with a sense of optimism enabling the government to channel more resources into science. People do need inspiration. But very often, even very important scientific breakthroughs requiring many years, hard work, skill, funding, and genuine serendipity go largely unnoticed by the general public.

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Media attention is likely to be very important in the age of generative AI. Many modern generative systems, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral, and Gemini, as well as hundreds of Large Language Models (LLMs) in China, use the data from the same sources referenced in Altmetric to learn. The more times generative systems see the same concept presented in different contexts, the better they learn. So if you want to contribute to the training of AI systems that may thank you for it in the future - Altmetric is the way to go.

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Altmetric openly discloses the weights of the various sources and the scoring algorithm is relatively straightforward. It is easy to learn, and there are multiple online resources providing advice on how to share your research in ways that will be captured by Altmetric. Cambridge University Press published a guideline to Altmetric for the authors on how to popularize their research with Altmetric in mind. Wolters Kluwer put out a guide and the editor of Toxicology and Pathology wrote a comprehensive overview of Altmetric and how to use it. Surprisingly, this overview got an Altmetric Attention Score of only 4 at the time of the writing, but was cited 137 times according to Google Scholar .

Altmetric monitors social networks, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Reddit; all major top-tier mainstream media, mainstream science blogs, policy documents, patents, Wikipedia articles, peer review websites, F1000, Syllabi, X (formerly Twitter), tracked Facebook pages, Reddit, one of the Stack Exchange sites, and Youtube. Unfortunately, several powerful platforms, including LinkedIn, are not currently tracked.

The popularity of the paper depends on many factors. Firstly, it has to be novel, trendy, and newsworthy. You are unlikely to get high Altmetric Score with a boring topic. Secondly, papers coming out of popular labs in top-tier academic institutions and in top journals are likely to attract more attention. Often, the communications officers in these academic institutions work closely with the media to amplify notable research. Celebrity companies, for example, Google DeepMind, consistently get higher coverage.

Screenshot of the Altmetric Attention Score "Flower" showing several tracked sources

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Congratulations, if you read this article and looked at what sources are tracked by Altmetric. Most likely, you got the basics and will be able to get a “balanced flower” by making a press release, tweeting the DOI of the paper on X, posting a video overview of your paper on Youtube, announcing on Reddit (I still need to learn how to do this).

To understand how Altmetric works, I emailed a few questions to Miguel Garcia, Director of Product and Data Analytics Hub at Digital Science and my first question was wether the Altmetric algorithm is open source. “The Altmetric Attention Score's calculation is not open source but we try to provide as much information as possible around how we calculate it here, and are currently considering what steps we might take to make our algorithms more transparent.” He also provided a link to how the Altmetric Attention Score is calculated.

Many professionals use LinkedIn as the primary social media resource and I was wondering why Altmetric stopped tracking it. Bad news - technical reasons prevent tracking DOIs on LinkedIn. Good news - they are actively seeking ways to appropriately track mentions on LinkedIn and we may see some news toward the end of the year.

My other big question was how does Altmetric count tweets and retweets on X. What if there are many posts from the same account? Miguel’s response was: “Re-tweets count less than original tweets. In addition to that, modifiers are applied to the type of account that is tweeting in order to reduce the weight of the tweet in situations where we find signals of bias or promiscuity (for example a journal publisher only tweeting their own articles). Besides that, we have conditions around the maximum number of retweets in order to limit the maximum impact they would have.”

So tweeting the article many times will not help you. But if other scientists tweet you paper with a DOI - these tweets will get counted. So tweet others as you would like to be tweeted.

2. Make a Press Release and Distribute to Science-focused Media

If your paper is significant, for example, you elucidated novel disease biology, discovered a new drug, developed a new fancy algorithm, designed a new material, or developed a new application for a quantum computer, it is worthwhile investing some time and resources in writing a press release. If you are working for an academic institution, most likely they have a communications office that will help you. If you do not have this luxury, you will need to learn how to write a press release. Plenty of free online guides cover the basics of press release writing. And press releases are one area where ChatGPT and other generative tools do surprisingly well. Upload your paper and ask it to write a press release, check for errors or exaggerations, edit, and you are ready to go. Just make sure to include the DOI and the URL of your paper. A proper business press release on BusinessWire or PRNewswire may cost several thousand dollars. In my opinion, these resources are dramatically overcharging while providing little service. I don't remember a case where a journalist picked up our news based on a commercial press release. But these releases are often reposted by other online press release distributors and the boost to Altmetric may be considerable. The default news release distribution service for research news is EurekAlert. This resource may sometimes result in journalistic coverage as many reporters are using it for science news. There are many free resources you can use if you do not have any budget.

Once the press release is issued, share it with the media. Share the resulting news coverage via your social networks and contacts. Many journalists track the popularity of their news articles and giving them several thousand extra views from professional audience and increasing their social following increases the chances that they will cover the next important research paper.

3. Make a Blog Post

Writing a blog post can be longer and more comprehensive than the press release. Make sure to add fancy diagrams and graphical explainers. You can share the blog post with the journalists at the same time as the press release. Your blog may serve as a source of inspiration for third party news coverage. Make sure to reference the DOI and URL of your paper.

If your paper is in one of the Nature journals, consider writing a “Behind the Paper" blog post on Nature Bioengineering Community. Surprisingly, these blogs are rarely picked up by Altmetric but may serve as a source of inspiration for the journalists and social media influencers. Plus, it is a resource by the Nature Publishing Group.

4. Tweet and Ask Your Team Members to Tweet

Each post on X gives you a quarter of an Altmetric point. If your paper goes viral on X, your Altmetric score can be considerable. Plus, once journalists notice that it went viral, they will be more likely to cover the story, further increasing the score.

Try to choose the time of the post, the hashtags, and the images wisely. Since Elon Musk took over X and opened the algorithm it became very transparent and easy to optimize for. Here are the top 10 tips for boosting attention for a post on X. Make sure to include the DOI or the URL of the paper for Altmetric to find the post.

5. Experiment, Learn, Repeat

My highest Altmetric Attention Score core to date was around 1,500 for a paper in Nature Biotechnology published in 2019, where we used a novel method for designing small molecules called Generative Tensorial Reinforcement Learning (GENTRL) to generate new molecules with druglike properties that got synthesized and tested all the way into mice. In 2024, we went further and showed that an AI-generated molecule for an AI-discovered target was tested all the way up to Phase II human trials, but the paper published in Nature Biotechnology, let’s call it the TNIK paper , has achieved a score ofjust over 600 to date. So what has changed and what can we learn from these two papers?

The popularity of the paper depends on many factors. Ones which capture the public imagination or have widespread appeal are of course, much more likely to gain traction online. When we published the GENTRL paper in 2019, Generative AI was in its infancy, and there are pretty much no other companies that I heard of at the intersection of generative AI and drug discovery. We also published multiple articles in this field in the years leading to that paper and many key opinion leaders (KOLs) followed us. That following included a small army of generative AI skeptics who not only contributed to multiple rejections in peer-reviewed journals but also openly criticized this approach in social networks. This criticism also helped boost the Altmetric Score and bring more attention to the study. So first learning from this exercise - negative publicity helps overall publicity. As long as you are certain that your research results are honest - leave room for criticism and even help expose your paper’s weaknesses. Critics are your greatest Altmetric boosters. Since readers and, by extension journalists, react to negative news and drama stronger than to positive news, critical reviews will boost your Altmetric as long as the DOI or URL of the paper is properly referenced.

Secondly, papers coming out of popular labs in top-tier academic institutions and in top journals are likely to attract more attention. Often, the communications officers in these academic institutions work closely with the media to amplify notable research. Celebrity companies, for example, Google DeepMind, always get a higher level of coverage. For example, the AlphaFold paper published in July 2021 in Nature got an Altmetric Attention Score of over 3,500 . Even though I have not seen any drugs out of AlphaFold reaching preclinical candidate status, I predict the popularity of this tool will result in the first Nobel Prize in this area. Therefore, in order to become famous and popularize your research more effectively, it is a good idea to build up the public profile of yourself and your work. For example, Kardashians are famous for being famous .

Be careful with Wikipedia. I made a mistake explaining the importance of Wikipedia to students when lecturing on the future of generative AI, and one or two of them got banned for expanding the articles with paper references. Wikipedia requires that these are added by independent editors rather than the authors of papers themselves, but if some editors do not like it, they will not go deep or investigate - they will assume wrongdoing. So it is better to avoid even talking about Wikipedia. References there should happen naturally and often some of the more popular papers get picked up and referenced by veteran editors.

Experimenting with Altmetric will also help you explore new strategies for popularizing scientific research and develop new strategies for inspiring people to learn or even get into the new exciting field. UNESCO estimates that there was just over 8 million full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers in 2018 globally. Only a fraction of these are in biotechnology - less than 0.01% of the global population. If you motivate a million students to go into biotechnology by popularizing your research, you double this number.

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Abstract: This work introduces an efficient method to scale Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) to infinitely long inputs with bounded memory and computation. A key component in our proposed approach is a new attention technique dubbed Infini-attention. The Infini-attention incorporates a compressive memory into the vanilla attention mechanism and builds in both masked local attention and long-term linear attention mechanisms in a single Transformer block. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on long-context language modeling benchmarks, 1M sequence length passkey context block retrieval and 500K length book summarization tasks with 1B and 8B LLMs. Our approach introduces minimal bounded memory parameters and enables fast streaming inference for LLMs.

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Analysis: Forget About Chips—China Is Coming for Ships

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Forget About Chips—China Is Coming for Ships

Beijing’s grab for hegemony in a critical sector follows a familiar playbook..

• Agathe Demarais

How many of the thousands of ships docking every day at U.S. ports were built in the United States?

The answer may be surprising: U.S. shipyards manufacture fewer than 1 percent of the cargo vessels that ply the global seas. In March, U.S. labor unions decided that Washington had to take bold measures to support domestic shipbuilding and filed a petition to the U.S. trade representative, arguing that the industry’s poor state mostly reflects unfair Chinese practices, including massive subsidies. The unions have a simple proposal: Global shipping firms should pay a fee to dock at U.S. ports if they use Chinese-made vessels. On Wednesday, the Biden administration responded by launching an investigation into Chinese practices in the shipbuilding and maritime logistics sectors.

With around 80 percent of global trade carried by sea and U.S. politicians sensing an opportunity to court blue-collar workers ahead of this year’s elections, an investigation into Chinese shipbuilding practices could well reignite global trade tensions. Yet a closer look at China’s shipyards may also prove to be a useful exercise for Western policymakers: Beijing’s shipbuilding strategy has long been a perfect illustration of China’s playbook for the sectors that it has identified as critical in its Made In China 2025 industrial blueprint, including semiconductors, clean technology, and electric vehicles.

Here are five ways in which Beijing’s shipbuilding sector shows how China intends to gain global economic dominance in key industrial fields.

1. China is playing the long game. Shipbuilding may not often make the headlines, but the industry is far from a small one: Globally, shipyards sell around $150 billion worth of vessels every year, roughly double the market for wind turbines.

China’s shipbuilding strategy follows a familiar playbook, whereby Beijing aims to flood the world with cheap products, drive foreign competition out of business, and gain global dominance. Money is no object—while Western firms work with just-in-time, revenue-seeking frameworks, their Chinese competitors worry more about building capacity at all costs than being profitable.

China’s shipbuilders also have a financial ace up their sleeve. They benefit from state largesse to an extent that would be unthinkable in capitalist economies. The Chinese government pays 13 to 20 percent of the construction costs of a typical cargo vessel. Low-cost credit also helps: From 2010 to 2018, Chinese state-owned financial institutions granted domestic shipbuilders cheap loans amounting to at least $127 billion .

The results are clear, with Chinese shipyards producing more than half of the world’s ships each year, up from only 12 percent only two decades ago. This sky-high growth looks far from over—China’s shipbuilding output rose by nearly 12 percent in 2023, and the country appears set to produce 70 to 80 percent of all new oil tankers and dry bulk carriers in the coming three years.

2. Beijing’s goal is to build Western-proof supply chains. The Western debate on decoupling and de-risking usually eclipses an inconvenient truth: China is already the world leader in isolating its supply chains . In industries that Beijing sees as critical, the country has long aimed at building Western-proof supply chains that shield China from potential Western sanctions. Considering that shipbuilding is crucial for global commerce, it is not surprising that the sector represents a priority area for Beijing’s de-risking efforts. For the latest evidence, look no further than the Chinese Academy of Engineering, which published a paper in February assessing the vulnerabilities of Chinese shipbuilders to Western sanctions.

In shipbuilding, China’s sanctions-proofing strategy rests on two pillars. The first has to do with self-sufficiency. Chinese firms produce around 55 percent of global steel output, ensuring that domestic shipyards never run out of the commodity. And China’s reach spans across the entire supply chain for shipping gadgetry. Chinese businesses manufacture 96 percent of the world’s dry cargo shipping containers, and a single Chinese firm, ZPMC, claims that it supplies 70 percent of the world’s cargo cranes.

If this was not enough, Beijing has also built an edge in shipbuilding finance; China Exim and the Bank of China count among the most important actors on the global shipping finance scene.

The second pillar of China’s sanctions-proofing efforts is to keep foreigners out of shipbuilding. Beijing’s plans in the field date back to 2001, when the Communist Party leadership restricted foreign investments in the sector. Today, foreign-owned firms manufacture only about 5 percent of Chinese-made ships, shielding the sector from unfriendly interference. In 2006, Beijing also made shipbuilding one of the seven sectors where state-owned firms are required to retain a dominant position over private competitors—even Chinese ones. As a result, state-owned firms manufacture around two-thirds of Chinese-built ships, giving party leadership tight control over shipyard activity.

3. The line between civilian and military applications is blurry. The sectors that China has identified in its Made In China 2025 document share a common feature: They have national security implications . The shipbuilding sector is no exception to this rule. As U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro puts it , “History proves that, in the long run, there has never been a great naval power that wasn’t also a maritime power—a commercial shipbuilding and global shipping power.”

China’s shipbuilding jewel, China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), provides an illustration of such civil-military fusion. In addition to building one-fifth of the world’s cargo vessels, the company is also a major supplier of warships for the Chinese navy.

This situation has two implications. First, those Western firms that work with CSSC may be financing the People’s Liberation Army’s naval buildup; more than 70 percent of the orders at CSSC’s flagship Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard are from foreign shipowners, many of them Western. Second, in case of war—say, over Taiwan—the Chinese leadership would be able to quickly repurpose shipyards to build and repair warships, giving Beijing a naval edge.

4. Shipping involves intelligence and standards. China’s industrial long game is not only about building overcapacity, but also about collecting intelligence and setting technical standards. This may sound familiar: Fears about the ability of Huawei-made telecommunications gear to spy on Western military installations were the reason why the United States and some of its allies banned the company from their 5G markets.

Concerns around China’s plans to collect intelligence in the shipping sector mainly center around Logink , a software that tracks cargo shipments around the world. Beijing’s generous policy of distributing the software for free means that the tool is already in use in many of the world’s biggest ports, including Hamburg, Germany; Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates; Busan, South Korea; and Tokyo-Yokohama. U.S. officials worry that the seemingly innocuous software could help Beijing gain insights into military shipments and gather sensitive commercial information.

As if this was not enough, shipping insiders note that Logink’s success might give China a first-mover advantage to set technical standards for shipping logistics: If the software becomes the gold standard in the field, it will become much harder to replace with a privacy-friendly competitor.

5. Western economies will be hard-pressed to respond to China’s shipbuilding dominance. China’s domination of the shipbuilding sector offers an illustration of two key challenges for Western de-risking plans .

The first has to do with collaboration among like-minded allies. On paper, cooperation among the United States, Europe, Japan, and other democracies is all well and great. In practice, however, such collaboration is tricky: For all the talk of the need for unity, Western countries remain economic competitors. Other than China, the only two major shipbuilding powers left in the world are South Korea and Japan. In theory, building a Western alliance promoting South Korean and Japanese shipyards would make sense, but this will be easier said than done as Western economies all seek to defend what’s left of their domestic industries.

The second challenge entails convincing global shipping firms to stop buying cheap Chinese vessels. In practice, this means persuading executives that they need to do their patriotic duty by buying more expensive ships. Good luck with that.

As the West laments China’s global edge in manufacturing wind turbines, electric vehicles, and cargo ships, rereading Beijing’s Made in China 2025 strategy is a sobering exercise. Back in 2015, when the strategy was released, the Chinese leadership was already clear about its plans to become the world hegemon in these sectors. Looking ahead, the document highlights other areas where China still lags today but likewise aims for global dominance, including aircraft and trains.

In other words, China’s domination in shipbuilding and electric cars may well be the first steps to a Chinese edge in all the major categories of transport equipment. As Beijing told India before the 1962 Himalayan border war and Vietnam before the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War: “Don’t say you were not warned.”

Agathe Demarais is a columnist at Foreign Policy , a senior policy fellow on geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests. Twitter:  @AgatheDemarais

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