Gitlin (1979), "Prime-time Ideology"

Gitlin (1979) argues that contemporary American mass media are one cohesive cultural system that promotes the reproduction of social relations. For Gitlin (1979), the study of texts must precede any study of how those texts impact the audience; before we study what a program does, Gitlin (1979) argues, we must examine what a program is.

1. Ideology is relayed through various features of American television. In turn, television programs register larger ideological structures and changes.

Importantly, Gitlin (1979) points out that ideology is not invented by the mass media. Instead, as Gitlin (1979) argues, the mass media repackages and channels ideologies that circulate though social elite circles, media industries, and social movements in general. As such, Gitlin (1979) argues that the most complete studies of media circulated hegemony should take into account both the ideologies involved in producing media and the ways these ideologies reach audiences.

2. Ideologies are structured into television culture in a variety of ways including format and formula, genre, setting and character type, slant, and solution.

3. Hegemony in liberal capitalism produces consent by being sensitive to audience desires and tastes.

The system of cultural hegemony is leaky, and never closed. It absorbs opposition into the structure. Hegemony is always changing in order to maintain dominance.