Ideology critique: the challenge for media studies

Taking our bearings from Stuart Hall’s essay from 1982, ‘The rediscovery of “ideology”: return of the repressed in media studies’, we argue in this discussion piece for the need to pick up the tools of ideology critique once again. Quite simply, the contemporary moment where accelerating inequality is masked by blame of the poor and of migrants demands it. The case is made first through a critique of ideological responses to the economic crisis after 2008. Then in the final section we examine advocacy of ‘social mobility’ in the public sphere, an ideological project if ever there was one.