The Dominant Ideology Hypothesis

The more I look at the scholarship and journalism (actually, a lot of the former is just a step or so beyond the latter) on the internet and related phenomena, the more I am struck by the real domination of the ideology of marketing. Though often dressed up as “X is going on and we need to understand its impact,” it seems that most folks are just looking at either new ways to commercialize the net or ways to produce information that’s of interest to those who would use the net for marketing. So very little, for example, of what’s written about how young people use Facebook or similar has much if anything to do with really understanding youth and the world — instead, it’s mostly fodder for those who want to know how to sell stuff to youth (whether it be music or a political candidate). I know I haven’t read everything yet and I’m sure that the piece YOU wrote is an exception, but let me sign off with a simple “I am not yet impressed.”

Oh, that title? Marx said something like: “The dominant ideology of any era is the ideology of the dominant group or class.” Yup.

Author: Dan Ryan

I'm currently an Academic Program Director at MinervaProject.com. I've been a professor at University of Toronto, University of Southern California, and Mills College teaching things like human centered design, computational thinking, modeling for policy sciences, and social theory. I'm driven by the desire to figure out how to teach twice as many twice as well twice as easily.

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