ideological state apparatus Quick reference
A Dictionary of Journalism
...ideological state apparatus ( ISA ) A role played by the mainstream journalism and media industries in supporting the status quo, according to a critical theory associated with the French Marxist Louis Althusser ( 1918–90 ). For Althusser, journalists join the education system and the Church in being the major disseminators and reproducers of the dominant ideology within society, which complements the more coercive role of repressive state apparatuses such as the police, prisons, courts, and armed forces. See also hegemony ; secondary definers...
ideological state apparatus Quick reference
A Dictionary of Media and Communication (3 ed.)
...state apparatus ( ISA ) For Althusser, the social agencies which help to maintain the current social order, not through coercion (as with what some Marxists have called the ‘repressive state apparatus’ of the armed forces and the police), but by engineering consent ( see also legitimation ; manufacture of consent ; propaganda model ). Such agencies include the educational system, the family, religion, the legal system, and the mass media . These function to reproduce the social relations of production , inculcating the values of the state and...
