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

How Critical Literacy Defines the Truly Educated Citizen

Initiative of the Blog

The main aim of this blog is to understand how media, power, and education are connected in shaping modern society. It is inspired by Professor Dilip Barad’s blog on Cultural Studies, which explains how culture is not neutral but influenced by power and media.

This blog encourages readers to think critically about how media affects our thoughts, beliefs, and daily lives. It focuses on three main ideas:

• How media shapes culture and identity.

• What it means to be a truly educated person in today’s media world.

• Why critical media literacy is important for understanding power and truth.

The purpose of this blog is to help students and readers become more aware and thoughtful media users, who question what they see and understand the hidden power behind it.

Introduction

In an age ruled by infinite scrolls and algorithm-driven realities, the term “educated person” has evolved beyond mere academic achievement. True education today lies not in the volume of knowledge one gathers but in the ability to critically analyze the cultural realities produced by the machinery of mass media. As Professor Dilip Barad insightfully argues in his blog on Cultural Studies, culture—understood as “everyday life as really lived by one and all”—is inseparable from the dynamics of power. To be truly educated, therefore, means to become literate in power, media, and the art of self-determination.

The Inseparable Bond: Media and Power in Modern Culture

Professor Barad emphasizes that in the modern world, media is far from a neutral mirror—it is a powerful mechanism that shapes perception and identity through selective representation. This relationship between media and power is deliberate, crafted to preserve dominant interests and maintain social stability.

Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model provides a sharp framework for understanding this process. He argues that mass media’s primary role is to manufacture consent by aligning public opinion with the interests of the political and corporate elite. Elite media outlets construct cultural narratives through selection, omission, and framing—ensuring that the worldview they promote supports existing power structures.

Chomsky identifies five filters that control this process:

1. Media Ownership: Major outlets are owned by powerful conglomerates whose goal is profit, not truth.

2. Advertising: Media caters to advertisers and consumers, shaping content to please both.

3. Sourcing: Journalists rely on official and corporate sources, reinforcing dominant hierarchies.

4. Flak: Any challenge to authority provokes backlash, silencing dissent.

5. The Common Enemy: The media constructs enemies—terrorists, immigrants, or rival nations—to unite the public and distract from systemic flaws.

Through these filters, media subtly confines public discourse within boundaries that favor elite power—creating the illusion of freedom while maintaining control.

Michel Foucault’s theory of power complements this critique. As Barad explains, Foucault saw culture as governed by an “epistemological field”—a set of invisible rules that shape what people can think, say, and do. Individuals, he argued, often become “absent within their own culture,” unknowingly shaped by hidden systems of knowledge. Thus, media is not merely a transmitter of facts; it is a producer of truth itself.

Critical Media Literacy: The Core of True Education

If media operates as an instrument of power, then critical media literacy becomes the foundation of real education. Barad’s reflections suggest that understanding culture means recognizing the structures of power that shape lived experience. Education must therefore move beyond rote learning—it must train students to decode the mechanisms through which meaning is constructed.

Eric Liu captures this beautifully when he says citizens must learn to “read power and write power.”

• Reading power involves analyzing who holds power, how it operates, and why certain narratives dominate.

• Writing power means using that awareness to shape new narratives, organize communities, and resist manipulation.

Cultural Studies, as Barad highlights, nurtures this ability by urging students to question disciplinary boundaries and uncover the hidden ideologies behind institutions such as media, education, and law. Foucault strengthens this idea by calling the exposure of these hidden systems the “real political task”—a way to reclaim one’s agency.

As an engaged media consumer, I often notice Chomsky’s propaganda filters in real time. For example, during economic crises, news coverage frequently shifts toward sensational or divisive stories—invoking the “common enemy” filter to divert attention from policy failures. Recognizing this manipulation transforms passive viewing into critical awareness—the heart of media literacy.

Defining the Truly Educated Person

In light of Barad’s insights, the “truly educated person” emerges as one who combines intellectual autonomy with ethical awareness. Drawing from Enlightenment ideals, Chomsky defines genuine education as the cultivation of inquiry and independence rather than indoctrination. True education liberates rather than confines.

In today’s media-saturated age, the truly educated person embodies three essential traits:

1. Discovery Over Coverage: They see education as the pursuit of discovery, not the memorization of syllabus content. As Barad suggests, learning begins when one questions the dominant narratives shaping thought.

2. Critical Inquiry: They possess the courage to challenge “standard doctrine,” refusing passive acceptance of what is presented as truth.

3. Intellectual Independence: They think and act freely, engaging in what Chomsky calls “the open-ended quest for knowledge.”

Education, then, must not serve the interests of the market or the state—it must empower individuals to recognize how culture, language, and ideology construct reality. In this sense, media literacy is not simply an academic skill; it is a moral obligation.

Chomsky reminds us that the most dangerous indoctrination often targets the educated classes, who unknowingly serve as instruments of elite power. Thus, the truly educated person must consciously choose between becoming a technocrat serving power or a citizen practicing critical thought.

Conclusion: Education as Resistance 

To be truly educated in the 21st century is to be critically aware—to recognize that every headline, image, and post carries ideological weight. Media and power together shape cultural consciousness, but through critical literacy, individuals can reclaim agency over how they perceive and respond to that reality.

As Barad concludes, Cultural Studies teaches us not what to think, but how to think about what we think—an awakening to the hidden frameworks that guide our beliefs. The educated citizen is therefore not a passive consumer of culture but an active interpreter and creator of meaning.

Ultimately, education today is an act of resistance—a rebellion against intellectual manipulation. To be educated is to read power, write power, and transform media’s tools of control into instruments of truth and justice. The truly educated citizen lives beyond the screen, not as a consumer but as a conscious participant in shaping a freer and more truthful world.