1

Building and Breaking the Chain of Disseminated Control

By Garret Brent

This paper serves to construct the concept of the chain of disseminated control, and show how the chain is interrupted by

alternative media

[I]s it better to 'think', without having a critical awareness, in a disjointed and episodic

way, to take part in a conception of the world mechanically imposed by the external

environment, [...] or is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own

conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain,

choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the

world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the

moulding of one's personality? (Gramsci & Forgacs, 2000, p. 325)

A human can be likened to a constructible toy, one that builds itself according to an instruction

manual. This manual, in the language of a given society, outlines the ways by and in which this toy

may acceptably build itself in order to look and operate as similarly as possible to the diagram on the

front cover. The authors of the manual delineate several different ways of construction, so that the

toy can think that it has a choice, which may please it enough to render it complacent while it calmly

builds itself as best it can. Very rarely is a toy able to conceive a way to construct itself other than by

using those options defined by the manual. If a toy is unable to build itself according to the

instruction manual, or refuses to do so, it is often either sent in to the repair shop, thrown in the

garbage, or is hidden from sight so as not to offend. Some toys, however, at some point in their

construction, manage to find different manuals altogether, or even begin to write their own manual.

These alternative manuals are almost always in the same language and format as the original,

factory-issued manual, but they outline different sets of instructions for a toy to choose from, and

provide different model diagrams towards which a toy can work. As with most products, however,

there is a copyright on the toy, and a manual that is not specifically issued by the particular toy

company is frowned upon, and rejected as an improper and inferior method of self-construction.

Other toys who successfully use the factory-issue manual to construct themselves are made to

believe that those toys which have used alternative manuals are inferior to them, and may do damage

to the ‘normal’ way of life. By this way, the factory-standard toys come to fear the ‘alternative’ toys,

and ostracise them by relegating them to the position of ‘lesser’ or ‘other’.

The way the ‘toys’ interact and negotiate with the ‘factory-issue manual’ by choosing which

specific outline of instructions provided to follow is what Foucault called biopower, and it is what

Gramsci before him termed hegemony, though the concepts are not identical. This factory-issue

2

manual; the manner in which it is authored and distributed; the ways in which it is considered to be

the only correct way to self-construct; and how alternative manuals serve to undermine these

manners and ways, is the focus of this article. Using Gramsci and Foucault’s theorisations on

structural/ideological power, as well as Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model, with Eric

Louw’s Selling Political Policies and Beliefs as the main informing piece of literature, this article

seeks to build a model I will coin the ‘chain of disseminated control’. The model attempts to show in

an easily processable way how control (the manual) is constructed (authored) and propagated

(distributed) in a banally cyclical way by the efforts of a governing elite (toy company) in a given

society. The same model will then be edited to illustrate how ‘alternative’ manuals can serve to

intercept this banal chain of (self-) control, and subvert individuals from it. Gramsci wrote that “To

criticize one's own conception of the world means therefore to make it a coherent unity and to raise it

to the level reached by the most advanced thought in the world” (2000, p. 326). This conception of

the world, called ‘ideology’ or ‘worldview’, it is the way by which people come to understand

themselves and everything around them. Most people don’t have the ability to understand the banal

existence of worldviews, unless they acquire knowledge with which they can frame and question the

hegemony they inhabit. There are a few ‘alternative toys’, however, that have managed to find the

information they need to understand the hegemonical forces acting upon and within their bodies.

The basic premise is that governing elites gain political legitimacy and hegemonical power by

using the chain of disseminated control, and that there exists efforts on the margin to subvert that

power in even the slightest manner by providing alternative worldviews. The main purpose of the

article is to conceptualise this chain of disseminated control using the predominantly informing

article, and other theorists on power and ideology to elucidate how societies are made to control

themselves. The secondary purpose is to understand where alternative media intercepts on this chain,

taking power for itself.

Theoretical and Conceptual Understanding

Chapter 9 of Louw’s book The Media and Political Process, in summary, examines how

governments build consent for their policies and political systems by producing and disseminating

favourable worldviews into the masses through the use of the chain (2005). Ruling elites fund and

otherwise guide intellectuals in creating acceptable packages of discourses and practices, which are

disseminated to and naturalised in the public by the circulation intelligentsia. The individuals in the

public are not passive recipients, however – in terms of Gramsci, people actively participate with the

hegemonical system of representational codes: “[Hegemony] presupposes an active and practical

involvement of the hegemonized groups, quite unlike the static, totalizing and passive subordination

3

implied by the dominant ideology concept” (Gramsci & Forgacs, 2000). The trick that governing

elites have to master is getting the people to participate in a certain way that is desirable to them and

the perpetuation of their power over society. This is where the chain of disseminated control comes

in – it is used to guide the interaction of the masses with the dominant hegemony within acceptable

parameters, in such a banal way that the masses are not aware of this guidance, and come to guide

themselves. This is the effect of what Foucault calls biopower: control which takes hold of the

individual body because it functions through surrounding norms rather than top-down laws, because

it is internalized by subjects rather than exercised from above through acts or threats of violence, and

because it is dispersed throughout society rather than located in a single individual or government

body (Taylor, 2011).

The theory was read using five categories with which to sift through dense and elaborate theoretical

work. The first was the media and political process - theory on the propagation of worldviews

constructed by an elite and their intellectuals. The second was a focus on how the intellectuals and

circulation intelligentsia are controlled by power-players through the use of editors, self-

interpellation, threat, etc. Third, support showing the banality of dominant worldviews – i.e.

evidence of disseminated control – was of much value. What happens to worldviews that are not

congruent with the dominant ideology was the fourth category, to provide an analysis of how

dissidence is dealt with by dominant players. Lastly, the question ‘where does the

alternative/subversive media come into power?’ was necessary to understand the second purpose of

the article. Gramsci’s writing on the domination of the proletariat, and the working class struggle for

ideological revolution yielded much information for the first, third, and fourth categories. Often in

his text would Gramsci espouse the means needed by the working class in order to revolt – a

development of working class intellectuals, growth of an understanding of the hegemony governing

the proletariat’s ‘free’ choice, emancipation from the internalised and normalised controls of the

prevailing hegemony in the working class mind, etc (2000).

[I]deologies are anything but arbitrary; they are real historical facts which must be combatted

and their nature as instruments of domination revealed, not for reasons of morality etc., but for

reasons of political struggle: in order to make the governed intellectually independent of the

governing, in order to destroy one hegemony and create another... (Gramsci & Forgacs, 2000,

p. 196)

Foucault’s own study on power relations took a step further than Gramsci’s conception of power as

lopsided interaction between individual and state by theorising that “power is omnipresent, that is,

power can be found in all social interactions” (Lynch, 2011, p. 15). His work yielded the most

4

applicable information through the use of categories two, three, and four. Foucault conceives of

modern power as an interactive network of shifting and changing relations among and between

individuals, groups, institutions and structures; it consists of social, political, economic, and personal

relationships (Taylor, 2011).

What can be taken from both theorists is that power surrounds and pervades each individual

interaction, no longer truly definable as coming from a central hub. With this elucidated, it must be

said that for any who wish to govern, they must ensure that the pervading power relations in a

society favours their own agenda, and this can be accomplished by disseminating ideologies, which

govern the way individuals govern their own behaviour in relation to each other and the society they

inhabit.

Ideologies, worldviews, signification systems – all are interchangeable terms for that invisible force

which directs societal and singular interaction with physical and social settings. Each individual is

born into a context of pre-existing meanings and practices, which are internalised as they imbibe and

incorporate the signs, codes, and practices of their social environment (Louw, 2005). Governing

elites take specific interest in exactly what new subjects are imbibing, in constant efforts to

perpetuate the hegemonical system. Mills et al define the concept of ideology in three important

strains of meaning, the pertinent one being ideologies as the false beliefs that have the intended or

unintended consequence of subordinating one social group by another. (Mills, et al., 2010). Of

greater importance, however, is the manner in which subjects imbed those ideologies, for it is how

individuals self-determine through interaction with the ideologies around them that needs to be

guided if favourable self-constructs are to be achieved. Ideologies can be seen as imposed by the

surrounding culture as mandatory - places and things have appropriate behaviours attached to them

by ideological coding systems, which serve as invisible boundaries channelling individuals as they

construct their identities. The codings (invisible boundaries) become opaque as they grow to be

naturalised – they end up guiding people’s behaviours unconsciously because they have been

embedded into a person’s worldview through the processes of socialization and language acquisition

(Louw, 2005). A worldview is not simply a belief or attitude held by a person. It is the entire

meaning of a person, the filter through which they come to understand themselves and everything

around them. Governments manage the worldviews that govern peoples’ personal interactions with

the hegemony by using the mainstream media and public educational systems to build political

legitimacy for the invisible boundaries they create.

“Building consent and legitimacy among the masses involves getting as many of ‘the dominated’ as

possible to accept as ‘natural’ the ‘leadership’ and ‘worldviews’ of the dominant group” (Louw,

2005, p. 195). Political legitimacy is present within a government that is accepted by the people it

5

governs. This acceptance, however, is not necessarily freely given by the masses, and is the subject

of much ideological coercion, in the form of the chain of disseminated control. People choose how to

interact with the system, but that choice is very rarely entirely informed and free.

The Chain of Disseminated Control, Conceptualised

The chain of disseminated control is the mechanism used by power players in a society to establish

and perpetuate the political legitimacy of their brand of hegemony.

The Toy Company

To begin to construct the chain briefly summarised above, it is necessary to examine the first link –

that is, the ruling elite, the government, power players, or else other terminology for the sect of a

society that exercises control over the prevailing hegemonical order. Ruling groups, through the use

of intellectuals, build and entrench their control by using mainstream media institutions and public

education structures to deploy worldviews (Louw, 2005). If ruling groups can get the majority of the

masses to inculcate themselves into these worldviews, then their rule and policies become acceptable

to the governed (Louw, 2005). “Political machines do not make worldviews, but are instrumental in

deciding which worldviews (packages of discourses and practices) become hegemonic by promoting

some ideas over others” writes Louw (2005, p. 198), in agreement with Gramsci’s assertion that

“One should stress the importance and significance which, in the modem world, political parties have

in the elaboration and diffusion of conceptions of the world” (Gramsci & Forgacs, 2000, p. 335).

This process must necessarily commence from the moment an individual subject begins to be acted

upon, and begins to act consciously upon him-/herself, so that it may become natural, ‘born-in-

captivity’. The most comfortable situation for a political player is when parents begin to raise their

children in ‘captivity’, and any conception of the world other than the ‘zoo’ simply cannot be

formulated. (Louw, 2005, p. 207)

The Authors

The second link on the chain are the intellectuals, academics, and otherwise ‘experts’ who provide

the right information to the dominant class. “One of the most important characteristics of any group

that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to assimilate and to conquer 'ideologically' the

traditional intellectuals” (Gramsci & Forgacs, 2000, p. 304). As the governing group does not

construct its own packages of discourse and practice, they must necessarily guide those better suited

in the ways of ideological construction to do so in favour of them. Those who staff key meaning-

making sites are worldview agenda-setters because they influence the pool of signs and codes from

which the next wave of worldviews will be constructed (Louw, 2005). Ruling elites out of necessity

6

pay considerable attention to this agenda-setting function (Louw, 2005). Intellectuals create meaning,

and if they are to create meaning favourable to the ruling elite, they must be inculcated into the

dominant system, or otherwise controlled by it. “Ruling elites may not determine what intellectuals

produce but they set the parameters guiding intellectual pursuits” (Louw, 2005, p. 208), and

intellectuals who choose to remain outside the trending academic pursuits of the time face

marginalisation. Most intellectuals opt to join the academic industry producing knowledge deemed

appropriate for their ruling hegemonies requirements, because the margin tends to be a cold,

unrewarding place (Louw, 2005). However, it is not usually a conscious decision made by an intellectual

to serve, but is rather driven by career opportunities which effectively interpellate those intellectuals into

mainstream pursuits (Louw, 2005) – an example of how hegemonies provide a set list of options so embedded

into society that they are difficult to see beyond, even for intellectuals.

The Distribution

“Intellectuals do not communicate directly with the mass publics – leaving this up to the circulation

intelligentsia” (Louw, 2005, p. 203). Louw refers to the circulation intelligentsia as being those

functions in society that have the most direct contact and interaction with large public masses of

people, which the functionaries themselves are a part of, inculcated into the same prevailing

hegemony (2005). These functionaries are the journalists and teachers, who are “effectively in the

business of simplifying ideas produced by intellectuals and translating them into forms that mass

audiences will understand,” writes Louw (2005, p. 203). However, these professions are on the

bottom rung of much larger determining institutions: the mainstream media as a bloc, and the public

education system. Though there is much to be said about the role of the dominant educational

structure, this article is more interested in the part the mainstream/mass media institution plays in

perpetuating the governing hegemonical system by disseminating worldviews favourable to it. This

third link in the chain is perhaps the most important to governing elites precisely for its direct and

pervasive contact with the masses. If intellectuals are the authors of the factory-issue manuals, then

the media are the distributive outlets that physically spread the manual to the toys so that they may

construct themselves. “The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols

to the general populace. It is their function [...] to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and

codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society” state

Herman and Chomsky on the first page of their book on the propaganda model (1988). The

governing elite necessarily need to control the mass media as it is the only direct and prevalent

connection by which the favourable packages of meaning constructed by the intellectuals can be

disseminated en masse for imbibition and internalisation. This necessary control is achieved in the

7

same manner as is used on the masses. “Commonly, the circulation intelligentsia are socialised into

accepting whatever discourses and practices are dominant/fashionable at the time of their university

education” writes Louw (2005, p. 204). They explain that the constraints placed on the mass media by

the ruling elite through the operation of the propaganda model (explained shortly) occurs so naturally that

media news people – who frequently and indeed are trained to operate with complete integrity – are able to

convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news ‘objectively’ (1988). The constraints are so

powerful in their banality, and are so fundamentally built into the system, that alternative bases of news

choices are hardly acceptable (Herman & Chomsky, 1988). Media personnel are so inculcated into the

system that they are not even aware that they censor themselves according to it.

What is the mainstream media exactly? It is necessary to have a firm conception of the institution

itself, so as to understand why it is a machine controlled and wielded by governing elite to propagate,

enforce, and perpetuate the prevailing hegemony. Michael Albert defines a mainstream media

institution by its aims to maximize profit or sell elite audiences to advertisers for its main source of

revenue; as virtually always structured in accord with and to help reinforce society’s defining

hierarchical social relationships; and as generally controlled by and controlling of other major social

institutions, particularly corporations (2013, p. 2). Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model is

perhaps most pertinent in understanding the ways in which the mainstream media is used by power

players to propagate their control. “A propaganda model [...] traces the routes by which money and

power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalise dissent, and allow the government and

dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public” (Herman & Chomsky, 1988).

The propaganda model explains how dissent from the mainstream is given little to no coverage,

while governments and big business gain easy access to the public in order to convey their state-

corporate messages (Cromwell, 2002). They detail five filters through which raw information passes

before it reaches print and distribution, which need not be explained here, but understood in whole as

the systematic manipulation of raw information into acceptable mainstream flow of information by

dominant players.

For a hegemony to remain successful, it must maintain the favour of the institution that is

effectively its voice to the people. The mass media provides the mass public with the filtered

information necessary for the perpetuation of a hegemony, and if the mass media were to begin

providing information that would lead to self-constructions dissident from the favourable mainline, a

ruling class would quickly lose it power.

The Factory-Standard Toys

8

The final link in the chain of disseminated control is the mass public. The masses are provided the

material they need in order to construct themselves in an acceptable way through schools, the media,

and broader society. Marginalisation, exclusion, etc, serve as unspoken threats to keep people inside

acceptable parameters; imprisonment serves as an overt threat, as highlighted in much of Foucault’s

work (Taylor, 2011). A hegemony has achieved dominance when the masses begin to teach their

children how to self-regulate their interactions with the world, raising future intellectuals and

circulation intelligentsia within a particular system of acceptable discourses and practices.

Essentially, the chain becomes banally cyclical - “If the next generation can be taught to police itself

using PC, a very effective form of discursive closure is achieved” (Louw, 2005, p. 205). When such

a discursive closure has been reached, then people are no longer making fully informed and free

choices on how they interact with the prevailing hegemony, and thereby on how they are acted upon.

The masses become unable to see beyond the ideological construct they have come to be situated

within by a process they had no say in. Individuals are by no means passive entities, and retain the

ability to exercise choice over their own lives and relations – but such choice is not full and

unbounded. It is constrained within the parameters of the prevailing hegemony, and therefore it is not

wholly free, but guided.

The chain of disseminated control is not another type of worldview, but rather, is a simplified,

easy-to-process explanation of the unseen mechanism used to guide the ways in which ordinary

people actively make ‘free’ decisions about how they construct themselves. It is necessarily unseen,

because if a person were to understand the manipulation of his supposedly free choice, he would be

able to counter that coercion, and choose to construct himself in a way that does not serve the end of

the prevailing hegemony. This is why banality is of essence. When something is banal, it is of an

unnoticed state of being; it is ordinary in the sense that it is not consciously remarked upon very

often. It goes overlooked because it is normal, it is present in the room but so commonplace that the

mind begins to gloss over it, simply not registering it on a cognisant level, unless it is brought to

attention.

Victorious elites commission intellectuals to construct worldviews, which are disseminated by the

mainstream media, and internalised by the masses, in order to establish legitimacy. This

internalisation does not occur instantly, it happens over time through the constant reiterative

guidance of the media, teachers, parents, peers, and the self – i.e. through interpellation. Another

word for ‘interpellation’ that is not so theoretically bound is ‘inculcation’, which means “to teach and

impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions” (Merriam-Webster, 2013). When one is

interpellated, the individual is told that they are a particular something for so long, the individual

9

becomes that particular something, it is ingrained into them from before they can remember and so

frequently that they do not know how to be anything else.

Below is a diagram of the chain of disseminated control as constructed by this section:

Diagram 1 by Garret Brent

This chain, however, is not absolute. If it is accepted that people actively interact with the

prevailing hegemony and the biopower exercised in that system, but they do not know that they do

so, they lose their ability to chose freely how they interact, and by this lack of free choice, their

power is curbed and constrained. When the ability to chose freely is given to them – that is when

people can exercise a power unshackled by ignorance and shepherding, and so choose not to interact

with the prevailing hegemony in a way that it dictates. This is where the alternative media finds its

power.

The Power of Alternative Manuals

Alternative media is not outside of the ideologically dominant system. It is comprised of individuals

who look at the system from within, their viewpoint that of dominated, ignored, and oppressed.

10

Some individuals, jaded and discontent, begin to renegotiate the ways in which they interact and

participate within the dominant ideology. They do so by finding and constructing information

considered alternative to the mainline of knowledge and self-creation, and by such consideration

become marginalised, and disregarded. The stories they write - usually about the mainline itself – are

published to the few people who seek to similarly disengage or have already from an unsatisfactory

worldview administration, to be used in renegotiating their own relationship with the prevailing

representational system. This renegotiation entails an awareness of what was once a banally

internalised structure (Gramsci & Forgacs, 2000). With that awareness, comes the understanding of

the power dynamic between individual and ideological apparatus, and that understanding allows the

individual to become consciously active in the dynamic. If power is in every interaction, every

relationship, as Foucault says, then it must be noted that there is power in the alternative media,

however marginalised it may be. This power exists in illuminating the dominant system of meaning

and its actions, and sometimes in doing so, the intrinsic ideology behind these actions. With the

ability to comprehend and reflect on the ideological system he inhabits, an individual can start

making decisions about it, can start speaking about it, and questioning it. Worldviews are not

predetermined or static, and humans are not encoded automatons, trapped inside a prison house of language,

because they are capable of struggling over the encoding possibilities of meaning (Louw, 2005). This struggle

is highly apparent when inspecting the function and power of alternative media, especially radical news media

who attempt to sway the dominant information flow by uncovering and covering stories neglected by

commercial news media in an attempt to provide alternative discourses of ‘truth’.

It is necessary to comprehend exactly what the alternative media is, if its function in society is to be

properly understood. The word “‘alternative’ is of more general application” (Atton, 2002, p. 9) – it

is necessarily an umbrella label for numerous different types of media that do not flow with the

mainstream, advertising-funded media. Alternative media cannot be seen only as news outlets, nor

only as media that seek to challenge the dominant and mainstream social order of its time. Here, the

term ‘radical’ media is better suited, as Atton attests, because 'radical' encourages a definition that is

concerned with social change, often of a revolutionary kind (2002). “Alternative media [...] are

crucially about offering the means for democratic communication to people who are normally

excluded from media production. They are to do with organizing media along lines that enable

participation and reflexivity” (Atton, 2002, p. 4)(my emphasis). Lifestyle publications catered solely

to gay men, and zines created and read within the global goth community are examples of alternative

media outlets that do not necessarily present radical or subversive information, but rather,

information about one’s own marginalised community. In essence, alternative is a term for media

that seeks to enable the construction of identity based on worldviews different from the elitist and

11

mass ideology of the prevailing hegemony one inhabits. These media provide otherwise material and

diverse truths, which enable people to disconnect themselves from the singular mainstream and to

plug into beliefs and philosophies of ‘unusual’ kinds better suited to their own lifestyles, in an

autonomous and individual manner. Michael Albert states that such media organizations self-identify

as alternative (2013). Further, he details that alternative media institutions: do not have as their aim

the maximization of profits; do not primarily sell audiences to advertisers; are structured to subvert

society's defining hierarchical social relationships; and are structurally profoundly different from and

independent of other major social institutions (2013). For Tim O'Sullivan, a media outlet is deemed

‘alternative’ when: ‘radical' social change is voiced by the outlet as a primary aim; established and

institutionalised politics are openly rejected and/or challenged; and the outlet advocates change in

society, or at least calls for a critical reassessment of traditional values (1994). These definitions

serve to inform the preferred focus of this article with alternative news media. The alternative news

media consists of outlets that report on, cover, and/or comment on issues and occurrences that go

discounted or ignored by the agenda of mainstream media. Grassroots citizen journalism and

investigation, digital media such as blogs, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, online radio talk shows,

YouTube channels, and so on, are used as platforms of counter-voice, to expose news that goes

unnoticed or even covered up by mainstream news outlets, and to speak openly about the prevailing

hegemony. These radical alternative news media thereby seek to subvert the dominant flow of

discourse.

With an understanding of what alternative media is, its function in society – however marginal that

may be – is easy to perceive. The chain of disseminated control is the machinery by which people are

made and kept ignorant of the broader scope of worldviews available and possible in life. The

alternative media attempts to alleviate that ignorance, by throwing a spanner into the cogs of the

machine and allowing people to use the spanner to re-master their ideological self-construction.

Alternative media have the ability to intercept the chain of disseminated control at certain points, and

thereby undermine the legitimacy of the prevailing hegemony. “[A]lternative media can offer ideologies,

representations, and discourses that vary from those originating in the mainstream media” (Guedes

Bailey, et al., 2008, p. 18), and this is where it most notably breaks the chain – by intercepting that

link between mass media institutions and the mass public. In doing so, even in the smallest of ways,

the alternative media creates its own power – the power of free expression and information, putting it

just there for those people who choose to use it – who choose to wake up.

“A worldview provides a fulcrum around which to construct a map for guiding a life. It mixes belief with

lived experiences – a mix of discourse and practice” (Louw, 2005, p. 206). Alternative media provides new

and counter-worldviews by opening channels to different options and information, so that people who have

12

tuned out of the mainstream can construct their own ideologies based on media catered to them, their minority

group, their community, etc. This gives them a democratic and informed voice, and a personal construction of

discourse and practice that is not necessarily influenced by the dominant ideologies of mainstream media.

“Ideology is not imposed on us – we actively participate in interpellating ourselves, through engaging with

our cultural environment. The language we internalise provides us with the material from which to construct

our ‘visions’ of the world, and of our relationship to this world” (Louw, 2005, p. 196). The alternative media

tries to expose this fact of life – that people cooperate in their own interpellation into the prevailing hegemony

– and offer avenues of escaping those ideologies. Below is a diagram illustrating precisely where the

alternative media intercepts the chain of disseminated control.

Diagram 2 by Garret Brent

From the diagram above, it is visible where the alternative media wages its battle against the banal

control mechanism of the governing elite. Alternative media provides different information to the

mainstream, which can serve to break the cycle of banal self-control, to undercut it from the second

13

or even the first link of the chain, and in so doing, destabilise the political legitimacy of the

victorious government.

An Example

The following is a very brief analysis of an alternative media journal article (see Appendix A) about

a social movement known commonly as the anti-GMO (genetically modified organism) movement,

which protests the engineering of plants to be resistant to harmful herbicides with multifarious

damaging effects, pushed by the agenda of large biotech companies who produce these GMOs and

their herbicides. The analysis of the journal article’s purpose is more important than the content – we

are interested in how the information is portrayed, why it is portrayed, what it is, the stance it takes,

etc. The article provides list of statistics on the expenditure of large biotech companies on lobbying

their agenda in parliament, and on political campaign imbursements, so as to see the politicians

favourable to their agenda elected. The tone of the article is expository, for example: “Lobbying

expenditures for food and agricultural biotechnology more than doubled between 1999 and 2009”. It is

motivated against these biotech companies and their political expenditure: “[O]ne could argue that Monsanto

is dedicated to genetically engineering Washington DC to express laws and regulations that favor its

interests”. Indignation at the less-than-just patronages between government and transnational corporations is

apparent throughout the article, though it does not make much opinionated comment. The article’s indignation

and radical quality rests in the act of publication of such information, providing a discourse on how unjust the

multi-billion dollar lobbying efforts of the biotech companies on the government are. This journal article

exposes injustices in the upper level dealings of a society to the individuals those injustices affect, so that they

may chose not to be so affected, and/or to join a social movement calling for a stop to those injustices. The

journal article takes a stance against genetically modified organisms and the biotech companies by portraying

information that forms an image of these companies in contradiction of the image they spend millions to try

and create. With this sort of informational outlet, an individual can find reason to start becoming active

against the injustices portrayed in the article – and therein can be seen the power of alternative media. It

moves individuals to interact freely and adversarially with the dominant system.

Conclusions

This article has served its main purpose to construct a mechanism used by a governing elite to

establish and maintain political legitimacy by inculcating the mass public into a hegemony of its

desire. The chain of disseminated control works like a line of production and consumption – the toy

company provides the toys with standard manuals, which they use to build themselves. This is how a

government establishes its political legitimacy, by permeating through public society the packages of

discourses and practices created by intellectuals using the circulation intelligentsia, to get it to

control itself in a fashion that favours the elite, in such a way that it does not even know it has lost

14

truly free choice. The second purpose of this article was to understand the alternative/radical media,

and how it returns that free choice to a rare few who seek actively to disengage from the prevailing

hegemony and its chain by using the diverse information provided. The alternative media intercepts

the mechanism of the chain at key points, taking power for itself by liberating minds and giving

individuals a voice of their own making. Therein lies the clout of media different from the

mainstream, seen in the example given, and it uses that power, however insignificantly, to question

the prevailing hegemony. Herman and Chomsky said that “there will always be some cultural-political

programming trying to come into being or surviving on the periphery of the mainstream” (Herman &

Chomsky, 1988, p. 18). The counter-voice of awakened people will never die away, as long as the

prevailing hegemony continues to chain people and make them believe that they are happy that way,

in the name of political legitimacy.

[5696 words]

Bibliography

Albert, M., 2013. What Makes Alternative Media Alternative, s.l.: ZMagazine.

Atton, C., 2002. Alternative Media. London: Sage.

Gramsci, A. & Forgacs, D., 2000. The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. New York:

New York University Press.

Guedes Bailey, O., Cammaerts, B. & Carpentier, N., 2008. Understanding Alternative Media.

Berkshire, England: Open University Press.

Herman, E. S. & Chomsky, N., 1988. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Pantheon Books.

Louw, E., 2005. Selling Political Policies and Beliefs. In: The Media and Political Process. London:

Sage Publications, pp. 194-209.

Lynch, R. A., 2011. Foucault's theory of power. In: D. Taylor, ed. Michel Foucault: Key Concepts.

Durham: Acumen, pp. 13-26.

Merriam-Webster, 2013. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. [Online]

Available at: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/banality

[Accessed 17 September 2013].

15

O'Sullivan, T., 1994. Alternative Media. In: J. H. D. S. M. M. a. M. F. Tim O'Sullivan, ed. Key

Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, p. 10.

O'Sullivan, T., Dutton, B. & Rayner, P., 1994. Studying the Media: an Introduction. London: Arnold.

Taylor, C., 2011. Biopower. In: D. Taylor, ed. Michel Foucault: Key Concepts. Durham: Acumen,

pp. 41-54.

Taylor, D., 2011. Introduction: Power, freedom, and subjectivity. In: D. Taylor, ed. Michel Foucault.

Durham: Acumen, pp. 1-9.

APPENDIX A

Genetically Engineering Washington Politics

Written by Deniza Gertsberg for the GMO Journal, June 21 2012

http://gmo-journal.com/index.php/2012/06/21/genetically-engineering-washington-politics/

Retrieved from: http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2012/14019-genetically-engineering-washington-

politics on the 08 August 2013

To borrow a phrase from Bill Maher, here's a New Rule: anytime a GMO advocate gushes about the benefits

and safety of genetically engineered products, someone must recite the following statistics from Food &

Water Watch:

1. Since 1999, the 50 largest agricultural and food patent-holding companies and two of the largest

biotechnology and agrochemical trade associations have spent more than $572 million in campaign

contributions and lobbying expenditures.

2. Lobbying expenditures for food and agricultural biotechnology more than doubled between 1999 and 2009,

rising 102.8 percent from $35 million in 1999 to $71 million in 2009.

3. Food and agricultural biotechnology PACs made more than $22 million in campaign contributions since

1999.

4. Food and agriculture biotechnology firms employ more than 300 former congressional and White House

staff members as lobbyists.

5. In addition to in-house lobbyists, the food and agricultural biotechnology firms employed more than 100

lobbying firms in 2010.

Would you like to know about Monsanto's lobbying efforts? Thanks to data gathered by the Center for

16

Responsive Politics, one could argue that Monsanto is dedicated to genetically engineering Washington DC to

express laws and regulations that favor its interests:

1. In the first three months of 2012, Monsanto spent $1.4 million lobbying Washington.

2. Monsanto spent about $6.3 million total in lobbying last year, more than any other agribusiness company

except the tobacco company Altria.

3. Monsanto aggressively uses lobbyists to promote its corporate interests. The company lobbied bills ranging

from the American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2011, which would extend tax credits for companies

doing research, to several bills that would change the way the Department of Homeland Security handles

security at chemical facilities.

4. Regulatory agencies can count on Monsanto to be a frequent guest: the company’s lobbying reports list the

departments and agencies it visited as the agencies were writing rules to implement and enforce Congress'

legislation. Such agencies include the United States Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection

Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and many other executive branch offices. Incidentally, since the

commercialization of GMOs in mid-90s, the "U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved more than 80

genetically engineered crops while denying none."

5. When the 2012 farm bill was going through Congress, Monsanto filed more lobbying reports on it than any

other organization.

6. Monsanto's PAC Monsanto Citizenship Fund has already spent more than $385,000 in this election cycle.

The biggest recipient is the Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee, Frank D. Lucas (R-Okla.), who

received $20,000 from Monsanto’s PAC $10,000 for his campaign committee and $10,000 for his leadership

PAC.

7. Monsanto's PAC also gave $13,500 to Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the top-ranking Democrat on the

House Agricultural Committee, including $3,500 directly to his campaign and additional $10,000 for Valley

PAC associated with his campaign.

8. So far this election cycle, Monsanto's PAC has given $77,500 to 17 members of the House agriculture

committee, or their leadership PACs.

Beyond federal elections, Monsanto runs a Good Governance Fund to manage direct corporate contributions

to state and local candidates. Based on company disclosures, this fund handed out nearly $1.4 million to state

and local candidates across the country between 2007 and 2011.