Media and The Politics of Identity

The politics of identity concerns the question of how we define our-selves and other-selves. Its ideology is a guide on deciding how we see the I and the other. Such a road map is critical when reflecting on the larger question of what a national identity is. Perhaps then, we need note the structure of a national consciousness is always anchored on it besides influencing the operations of the images we call media personalities the world over.

So powerful is identity politics that the whole world is run on it simply because all our interactions are based on how we perceive those we rub shoulders with, i.e. how we identify them – consciously or unconsciously. But on the other hand all our identities are based on dichotomies which are dangerously inseparable, a fact which does not exclude the media institution.

While at this we need to consider every media product (news bulletin, feature, program etc) as an analysis of society and that it’s only better to see such as a text or a work of art at its best.

Let us also appreciate the annoying truth of a poor reading culture of the society we live in, a disadvantage which the media has exploited to the maximum, making sure every time information resources are stack in a consumption basket those with their labels top the scale of preference.

Thus, out of the stiff competition of the later days everyone in media seems to be concerned with scaling up their game so as to get award winning ‘novellas’ if not ‘short stories’ to replace the aroma of what was once the task of local writers.

With this analogy of media products and art, we borrow from Ngugi wa Thiong’o on his idea of the interestedness of art when he said in Writers in Politics that literature (art) is a product of “the conscious acts of men in society,” to mean there can never be objectivity in writing – at least on an absolute scale – even if one is writing for the most democratic institution or is living in the most open society since the days of Adam and Eve.

Every writer, arguably, subjects his readers to accept his ideologies which are carefully crafted to represent the wishes of the group (read class) he belongs to at a given point in time. Note that in all this the media is not spared.

Going back to the dichotomies we realize that the media has a superior identity, justified by another identity which is inferior to it. It happens that this inferior identity is its audience which it manipulates with its ideas, though without any attempt to classify it whatsoever.

So the audience is clamped in a block of passive consumers suffering from the information fatigue syndrome – the unwillingness to probe further in to media content on the part of the consumers (read audience). Because of this the media have the courage to comment on everything including making a caricature of even the most powerful personalities in our societies since as it is when you have reduced someone you can cut their coat according to your pair of scissors and the availability of material.

At the individual level every media personality is an autonomous identity. It takes time to construct a personality to a level of a great opinion shaper. But once that level is reached the personality is transformed into a ‘god’, and becomes expensive for it to be hired and complicated to be fired.

A word from such an identity is powerful and can influence the masses with the speed of a cyclone. This explains why some of the powerful media personalities/identities are on record as having ‘announced’ anarchy in their countries. Callers will always jam phones during their on-air sessions in a bid to identify with them (a case of an inferior image getting power from a superior one). This is done in an attempt by the inferior callers to construct their ego and satisfy an unconscious desire of holding power in their hands if only in one second. It’s the best explanation of a craving for an identity.

In a nut shell politics of identity depicts what we are and what we eventually do as media personalities. It shapes our perception on how we see the world, yet most of the time we see it as automatic that media represents the right to information. We forget that media players are vulnerable to subjectivities, racism, utopianism, essentialism, poetic patriarchy and any other ideology which affects the ordinary man.

When we consume media products we unconsciously become part of those ideologies perpetuated by the media identities, now that we are fatigued by information and can’t question the ‘status quo’.