Power In Media/Media And Globalization

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Media And Society Module AD130006D Mariana Guerra SID : 1121936 To what extent and in what ways is the concept of ‘power’ useful in relation to the study of the media? There are two concepts of Power pertinent to the study of media. One by Marx, focused on the struggle and one by Foucault, focused on knowledge, sexuality, truth, discourse and self. The latter usage of the concept of power itself derives from political economy theories. The power exhaled from the monarch, that being, a single source of power which was founded on the threat on a life. This type of power does not need to be exercised by a monarch, it can also be abstract as in the law and the state. This meant that power was a scarce resource and not everyone had it. You were either confined to repression or you had to take the power from someone who had it in the first place. This is the basis of the Marxist theory, the idea of power as a scarce resource. Marx believed that power emanated from the productive forces and that it was still something that one side had and another lacked therefore there was still the need to take it from someone. This still applies however the “class” is no longer a large group but a smaller, oppressed group ( women, ethnic populations, etc.) (Watson, J. Media Communication) . Foucault, in a very different point of view, saw power not as scarce but as plenty, not based on fear of death but on the “plenitude of the possible”. Foucault stated that “power would no longer be dealing with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself; it was the taking charge of life, more than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body.”. He saw power in a much broader way than Marx where power wasn't
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