Media Hegemony
The concept of hegemony, which first was put forward by Antonio Gramsci (1971), refers to the moral, philosophical, and political leadership of a social group, which is not gained by force but by an active consent of other social groups through taking control of culture and ideology. During this process, the leading social group exerts its impact and gain its legitimacy mainly through social mechanisms such as education, religion, family and the mass media. Based on the definition of hegemony, media hegemony means the dominance of a certain aspects of life and thoughts by penetrating dominant culture and values in social life. In other words, media hegemony served as a crucial shaper of culture, values and ideology of society (Altheide, 1984). 
For example, TV news departments are considered as extensions of a capitalistic economic order (Hall, 1979). The products of the media contain messages that convey the nature of society, the nature of relation of production within the media and the domain of institutions and social process (Golding, 1979). Thus it is crucial to decode media to figure out the latent capitalist ideology within the products of the media, and more importantly to realize the role of the media as tools to produce merchandise in a late capitalist economic order.
Popular culture studies
Diametrically opposed to the aristocratic view would be the theory of culture industry developed by Frankfurt School critical theorists such as Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse. In their view, the masses are precisely dominated by an all-encompassing culture industry obeying only to the logic of consumer capitalism. Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony (see: cultural hegemony), that is, the domination of society by a specific group which stays in power by partially taking care of and partially repressing the claims of other groups, does not work here anymore. The principle of hegemony as a goal to achieve for an oppressed social class loses its meaning. The system has taken over; only the state apparatus dominates.