Definition Of Ideology Essay

Many of us are given so much information and to be able to understand the plentiful information that we are given each day, we must simplify them or they will not be remembered. Many of us use stereotypes to classify certain people or any other piece of information that we are given into groups to speed up the process because since they are already in place for us it makes our lives easier. The media does show us what they want to show us therefore sometimes that information is not always valid. I will be discussing how ideologies and stereotypes are very similar, and how propaganda used in the media is different from ideologies. Firstly, I will be discussing how ideologies and stereotypes are very similar. According to the text “Culture, the Media and the ‘Ideological Effect’” by Stuart Hall, the definition of stereotypes given …show more content…
The definition of stereotypes is “Simplified ideas, concepts and premises which provide the frameworks through which we represent, interpret, understand and “make sense” of some aspect of social existence (Hall, 1995: 18)”. The definition of ideologies is very similar to this, however the only difference is that the term “simplified” is not placed at the very beginning of the definition. Ideologies are ideas that are already given as well, but because they are not already simplified, it is up to us to be able to figure them out for ourselves and that allows little room to be wrong. Stereotypes have a bad reputation and according to Richard Dyer, in the text ‘the role of stereotypes’, he said, “The word ‘stereotype’ is today almost always a term of abuse (Dyer, 1993: 10)”. I agree with this quote because we are constantly being reminded that we are generalizing and that stereotyping is wrong, but as I have mentioned