Cultural Studies, Media, Power, and the Truly Educated Person

 

 Media, Power, and the Truly Educated Mind: Reimagining Education in the Age of Cultural Control

This task is based on Cultural Studies, Media, Power, and the Truly Educated Person and this task was assigned by Dilip Barad sir.

Introduction

In today’s hyperconnected digital world, we no longer live around media we live within it. Every opinion we form, every desire we internalize, and every identity we perform is shaped, to some extent, by the messages that circulate through screens. Dilip Barad’s blog post situates this reality within the framework of Cultural Studies, urging readers to think beyond mere content consumption and reflect instead on how culture itself is produced, mediated, and controlled.

Cultural Studies, as Barad reminds us, is not just the study of culture it is the study of power as it manifests through culture. Media,therefore, becomes the modern terrain where ideology is naturalized and hegemony sustained. But this understanding also implies that education cannot remain a passive process of knowledge transmission; it must become an act of critical awakening. The “truly educated person,” in this sense, is one who reads both the text and the context, who learns to question the politics of representation that shape our worldview.

Drawing on Barad’s reflections and the five foundational videos Eric Liu’s Civic Power , Partisanship and Motivated Reasoning , The Propaganda Model, Foucault vs. Chomsky Debate, and Chomsky on True Education this blog explores the intricate intersections of media, power, and education, offering a critical reflection on what it truly means to be educated in a media-saturated world.

1. Media and Power: The Architecture of Influence

Barad’s blog clearly positions media as both a product and an instrument of power. In contemporary society, media is not merely a mirror reflecting events it is a machine that manufactures consent, identity, and ideology. It determines what counts as “news,” which perspectives deserve amplification, and which are systematically marginalized.

Eric Liu’s “Civic Power” sharpens this understanding by conceptualizing power as “the capacity to make others do what you want.” He identifies six sources of civic power force, wealth, state action, norms, ideas, and numbers and observes that media operates through nearly all of them. Ownership structures convert wealth into narrative control; state alliances turn policy into propaganda; and repetition of norms sustains ideological stability.

This dynamic is echoed in Chomsky and Herman’s “Propaganda Model” (V3), which delineates five filters wnership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and ideology that determine which ideas reach the public sphere. Together, Liu and Chomsky demonstrate how media becomes the circulatory system of modern power: ideas are commodified, dissent is domesticated, and the illusion of choice is maintained.

My Observation:

Scrolling through social media, I notice how trending stories often follow predictable patterns celebrity controversies receive disproportionate visibility, while grassroots injustices remain invisible. The algorithms, far from being neutral, function as digital gatekeepers of ideology. We are made to believe we are freely choosing content, yet our attention is algorithmically engineered.

Barad’s central insight here is profoundly cultural: power today flows through visibility. To control what people see is to control what they believe. Thus, to study media critically is to understand the mechanics of social power itself.

2. The Role of Education: From Obedience to Inquiry

Barad’s discussion of the truly educated person radically redefines the very purpose of education. Conventional education, as we know it, privileges conformity, hierarchy, and memorization—it rewards obedience more than curiosity. But Barad, echoing Noam Chomsky’s philosophy in V5 (“What Is True Education”), argues that genuine education should cultivate independence of mind, creative inquiry, and moral courage.

Chomsky insists that “education is knowing how to find out for yourself.” This approach dismantles the idea of students as passive vessels of information and reimagines them as co-creators of knowledge. Education, therefore, becomes a liberatory process an act of resistance against intellectual domination.

From a Cultural Studies perspective, this notion of “true education” directly challenges ideological state apparatuses, a concept introduced by Louis Althusser, where institutions like schools and media reproduce the dominant ideology. When learners begin to question how knowledge is constructed and circulated, they disrupt the continuity of hegemony.

In today’s media-saturated world, the truly educated person must be equipped not only with linguistic or technological literacy, but with media literacy the capacity to decode representations, question sources, and recognize manipulation.

Challenging Traditional Notions:

While traditional education sought to produce compliant citizens, true education seeks to produce conscious citizens—individuals who, like Chomsky himself, view learning as a tool for emancipation rather than subservience. As Eric Liu would phrase it, this is “power literacy”—not just knowing how to read power, but how to use it ethically.

3. Cultural Practices: Media, Representation, and Resistance

Cultural Studies views representation as a battleground where meaning is constructed, contested, and circulated. Media representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality are not innocent they are ideological acts that sustain certain worldviews while erasing others. Dilip Barad’s blog persuasively connects this to how cultural identities are shaped through repeated media images, particularly those of marginalized communities.

Chomsky and Herman’s “Propaganda Model” reinforces this argument: by filtering information through the interests of powerful institutions, media ensures that dominant ideologies remain unchallenged. For example, news outlets may celebrate individual stories of women’s empowerment while ignoring structural patriarchy thereby offering an illusion of progress without addressing systemic inequality.

Foucault’s debate with Chomsky  adds another philosophical dimension. Foucault’s critique of humanism reveals how even concepts like “justice” or “human nature” are historically contingent constructed by systems of power. Thus, media representations are never objective; they are discursive acts that reflect the epistemic conditions of their time.

Example:

In Indian media, marginalized groups such as Dalits, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ individuals are frequently represented through stereotypes either as victims, villains, or tokens. This selective portrayal shapes social attitudes and normalizes exclusion. Yet, as Barad and Foucault both suggest, power is never total; where there is power, there is resistance.

New digital spaces independent journalism, social media activism, and alternative cinema have become counter-public spheres, where marginalized voices reclaim visibility. Hashtags like #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, or #DalitLivesMatter exemplify how media, once an instrument of domination, can also become a weapon of resistance.

In this sense, understanding media means understanding both its repressive and productive functions a dialectic that defines contemporary cultural life.

4. Critical Media Consumption: From Passive Spectator to Active Citizen

To be truly educated today is to become a critical consumer of media someone who not only consumes content but questions the power relations that produce it. As V2 on “Partisanship and Motivated Reasoning” demonstrates, humans are not neutral processors of information. We interpret data in ways that confirm our pre-existing beliefs, a phenomenon rooted in cognitive dissonance.

Recognizing this bias is the first step toward critical consciousness. The educated mind, therefore, is not one that eliminates bias but one that reflects upon it consciously.

Personal Reflection:

When I notice that I am drawn only to media that validates my perspective, I realize that I am participating in my own manipulation. Algorithms curate content that affirms my worldview, enclosing me in what Eli Pariser calls a filter bubble. Breaking this bubble requires deliberate effort—seeking diverse perspectives, cross-verifying information, and listening to voices from the margins.

Critical media literacy, as advocated by Barad, is the antidote to passive consumption. It involves asking fundamental questions:

• Who created this message, and for whose benefit?

• What ideologies underpin its narrative?

• Whose voices are excluded, and why?

When approached in this manner, media becomes a text to read critically, rather than an environment to inhabit unconsciously. This shift transforms audiences into active participants in meaning-making—a vital quality of the truly educated citizen.

5. Intersections: Media, Power, and Education in Cultural Studies

Synthesizing insights from Barad’s blog and the five videos reveals a powerful intersection: media is the new pedagogy of ideology, and education must become the pedagogy of resistance.

• Video - 1 (Eric Liu) teaches us that understanding power is civic literacy.

• Video-2 (Motivated Reasoning) warns us how our biases distort truth.

• Video-3 (Propaganda Model) exposes institutional manipulation of discourse.

• Video-4 (Foucault vs. Chomsky) interrogates the very foundations of truth and justice within power structures.

• Video-5 (Chomsky on Education) reclaims education as an act of liberation and ethical inquiry.

Together, these insights expand Barad’s call for critical consciousness into a cultural ethics of learning. Education, thus, must not only teach what to think or how to think it must teach why we think the way we do.

Conclusion: Toward the Truly Educated Citizen

The intersection of media, power, and education leads to one central revelation: freedom begins with awareness. Media shapes our perceptions, education shapes our capacities, and together they shape the moral landscape of society.

A truly educated person today is one who recognizes that knowledge is not neutral. They understand that every narrative, every representation, every cultural product is situated within a network of power. They learn not just to consume meaning but to question its origin, intention, and consequence.

To be truly educated, then, is not merely to read books, but to read the world to perceive ideology in the everyday, to speak truth against manipulation, and to act ethically in the face of information overload.

As blog beautifully reminds us, education must not be about filling minds, but freeing them. In the digital age, where media has become the architecture of belief, critical literacy is not a skill it is survival.

Thank You !