Reading Power, Watching Media, Becoming Educated: A Cultural Studies Reflection
Introduction: A Field That Refuses to Sit Still
This blog task is assigned by Prof. Dilip Barad on analysing the various spheres of media, power, and their relation to cultural studies and is based on the his blog.
Prof. Dilip Barad's blog post "Cultural Studies: Media, Power and Truly Educated Person" opens with a deceptively simple problem: Cultural Studies is nearly impossible to define. Its definition of culture swings between two poles—
| Matthew Arnold | Raymond Williams |
|---|---|
| "Perfecting what was best thought and said" | "Everyday life as really lived by one and all, including common-men" |
This unresolved tension is not a weakness but the very engine of the field. Prof. Barad then adds two more complications:
- Cultural Studies transcends disciplines — it refuses the distinction between high and low culture, which makes its students "politically incorrect" and uncomfortable within a politically correct academia.
- Media is the tool through which power controls perceptions — and Cultural Studies is incomplete without studying power and media together.
In this blog, I reflect on how media and power intersect in shaping modern culture, why critical media literacy must become a core component of education, and what it means to be a "truly educated person" in a media-saturated world.
1. Media and Power: Manufacturing Consent
The Five Filters of Propaganda
The most useful framework Prof. Barad offers is Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's "propaganda model", summarized as five filters:
| Filter | What It Does |
|---|---|
| 1. Media Ownership | Owners' business interests shape coverage |
| 2. Advertising | Advertisers influence what gets reported |
| 3. Media Elite | Elites define what counts as news |
| 4. Flak | Organized complaints punish dissent |
| 5. The Common Enemy | A shared threat unites audiences in fear |
Prof. Barad notes that Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent offers "a surgical analysis of the ways corporate mass media 'manufactures consent' for a status quo the majority of people do not actually want."
Testing the Filters: An Indian Example
Consider the simplest example: ownership. In India, a handful of conglomerates control a vast share of television news and print media. When the owner of a news network also has interests in infrastructure, mining, or telecom, the network's coverage of regulatory policy is unlikely to be adversarial.
The advertising filter operates similarly. Media houses dependent on advertising revenue rarely produce sustained critiques of their largest advertisers — whether consumer goods companies or political parties purchasing campaign airtime. The "flak" filter explains what happens when they do: coordinated complaints, legal notices, and accusations of bias. The "common enemy" filter explains the persistent construction of external and internal threats — a neighboring country, a minority community, a foreign conspiracy — that unite audiences in fear rather than solidarity.
The Partisanship Problem
Prof. Barad also embeds a video on partisanship: "Can someone's political identity actually affect their ability to process information?" The answer, as Jay Van Bavel explains, is yes. Group identity can override factual reasoning.
I have observed this repeatedly on WhatsApp, where a forwarded message is often believed not because it is sourced, but because it confirms what the group already wants to be true.
The Sixth Filter: Algorithms
Prof. Barad reminds us that Cultural Studies draws on Marshall McLuhan, Theodor Adorno, and Jean Baudrillard — thinkers whose criticism of culture "has fallen out of favor in a 140-character world." That phrase itself is an argument.
If we cannot sustain attention long enough to read Chomsky, we are unlikely to question the filters that shape our news. I would add a point Prof. Barad implies rather than states: power today operates not only by controlling what we see but by controlling what we feel and share. The recommendation algorithm is, in this sense, a sixth filter.
2. The Truly Educated Person: Beyond Degrees and Coverage
Chomsky's Definition
The heart of Prof. Barad's post lies in the videos on what it means to be truly educated. Chomsky's definition, as summarized by Prof. Barad, is striking:
"The core principle and requirement of a fulfilled human being is the ability to inquire and create constructively, independently, without external controls."
Further:
"It's not important what we cover in the class; it's important what you discover."
And to be truly educated means to be resourceful, to be able to "formulate serious questions" and "question standard doctrine, if that's appropriate" — to "find your own way."
How This Challenges Traditional Education
| Traditional Education | Chomsky's Model (via Prof. Barad) |
|---|---|
| Organized around coverage: syllabi, prescribed texts, exams testing recall | Organized around discovery, which cannot be fully standardized |
| Rewards acceptance of authority | Rewards questioning of authority |
| Education as a finite achievement — a degree, a certificate | Education as an ongoing disposition — the capacity to keep inquiring |
Media Literacy as a Defining Quality
To this I would add media literacy as a defining quality of the truly educated person today.
Media literacy means asking:
- Who owns this outlet?
- Who is paying for this content?
- Whose voice is absent?
- What emotion is being activated?
- What would have to be true for this claim to be false?
It means recognizing the difference between information and persuasion, between reporting and opinion, and between a trend and a manufactured trend. Prof. Barad's post, read closely, is essentially arguing that Cultural Studies is a training ground for exactly this habit.
3. Cultural Practices: Representation, Identity, and Resistance
Media as a Participant in Culture
Prof. Barad's post implies that media is where cultural identities are made, contested, and reinforced. If, following Williams, culture is "everyday life as really lived," then media representation is not a mirror of culture but a participant in it.
The Stakes for Marginalized Groups
For marginalized groups, the stakes are especially high. When a community is represented only through crime reporting, or only as a source of cultural festivals and food, it is reduced to a stereotype that then circulates as common sense.
Prof. Barad's invocation of the "common enemy" filter captures this dynamic precisely:
Media as a Tool for Resistance
But Prof. Barad's framework also leaves room for resistance, and this is where Cultural Studies is most hopeful.
Historically, marginalized groups have used media for self-representation — community radio, independent print, and now digital platforms — to contest the dominant image.
Examples:
- Dalit and Bahujan media in India have used social platforms to challenge caste-blind mainstream reporting.
- Feminist collectives have used hashtags to shift public discourse on sexual violence.
This is not to romanticize the internet; the same platforms that enable resistance also enable surveillance and abuse, and the five filters apply to digital media as well. But the point is that media is a terrain of struggle, not a one-way transmission belt. The Cultural Studies insight is that dominant meanings can be not only consumed but negotiated and opposed.
4. Critical Media Consumption: A Personal Reflection
An Honest Inventory
Even before writing this blog I knew how the media and power dynamics operate to some extent. I clear my youtube watch history to avoid et Youtube agorithm dominate and contro what I watch and for how much time. With the recent update, if you clear the youtube watch history the home page of the app will be empaty when you open it again. I find this very helpful as I developed a habit to watch only the videos have saved in the watch later saction or the subscribed channels.
But it has become a trimendious task to refrain one's self from consuming any media. Whatever we watch is tend to left some traces in our mind and we are prone to repeat what we consume. And if we don't apply our intellect and reasoning we wil simply fal for propoganda or carefully constructed lies. It is still hard for me to devoid myself of media power and their recurrent attempts to manipulate the masses.
I have gained much knowledge and ideas while writing and preparing for this blog. Read the origina blog embedded at the start for better understanding and indepth of this idea.
Practical Checks for Critical Consumption
What has changed — and this is the practical value of the exercise — is that I now apply a few simple checks:
| Question | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Who benefits if I believe this? | Identifies hidden interests |
| What is the source, and what is the source's source? | Traces information lineage |
| Is this activating my identity rather than informing my judgment? | Checks partisanship |
| If I share this, what does it make me part of? | Considers consequences |
A critical approach to media consumption contributes to becoming a truly educated person precisely because it refuses external control over one's attention and belief. It is the daily practice of intellectual freedom.
The Limits of This Practice
I should also be honest about the limits of this practice. It is easy to be critical of someone else's media and difficult to be critical of one's own. The five filters operate on me too.
Conclusion: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Prof. Barad's blog post is short, but it performs what it describes. It refuses to let Cultural Studies be a single discipline; it places Foucault and Chomsky in the same conversation; it treats a TED-Ed video and a foundational text as equally legitimate entry points; and it ends not with a definition of the truly educated person but with a set of capacities.
Three Conclusions
- Media and power intersect less through obvious propaganda than through structure — ownership, advertising, elite sourcing, organized pressure, and the manufacture of enemies. Recognizing structure is harder than recognizing bias, and more necessary.
- Critical media literacy must be treated as a foundational educational goal, not an optional elective, because it is the condition under which every other form of knowledge can be evaluated.
- Being truly educated in a media-saturated world means cultivating independence of inquiry as a habit rather than a credential — what Chomsky calls the ability to "find your own way."
Prof. Barad's post leaves us with a question rather than an answer:
Perhaps that is the most useful cultural studies question of all.
Works Cited
Barad, Dilip. "Cultural Studies: Media, Power and Truly Educated Person." Dilip Barad's Blog, 22 March 2017, blog.dilipbarad.com.
Chomsky, Noam, and Edward S. Herman. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books, 1988.
Van Bavel, Jay. "Do Politics Make Us Irrational?" TED-Ed, directed by Patrick Smith, narrated by Addison Anderson.
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