Introduction
The modern state has used state violence as a governance, power dynamics, and social control tool to maintain control and uphold its interests. Althusser explains how the state apparatus facilitates state power in a capitalist society. The effect of state power is referred to as state violence, demonstrating the state’s function as a facilitator of class dominance and a means of promoting the ruling classes’ interests (Althusser 2014, 70). State violence is often employed as a means of social control and repression, highlighting the asymmetrical power dynamics between the state and its citizens and justifying its use through legal frameworks and national security narratives (Althusser 2014, 70). Many factors invisibilize modern state violence, the prominent one for this essay being the media’s representation.
This essay will critically analyze how media is misused in advancing modern state violence and its invisibilization by firstly explaining the relationship between the modern state and violence, secondly, describing the media’s power and the state’s misuse of this power to imprint a narrative in public; and thirdly substantiate the argument further by providing examples of past times when the media invisibilized the state’s neglectful nature towards the public.
State Power Dynamics
As described by Louis Althusser, modern state power is intelligible as a function of state power and revolves around the possession, seizure, or conservation of state power by a particular class or power bloc (Althusser 2014, 70). Such monopolistic behaviour is founded on the belief that legitimate power exists in the country. Through this, they can enforce laws using force and maintain public order and peace. Legally binding rules, constitutions, and traditions also make this balanced act of exercising violence permissible under exceptional circumstances (Althusser 2014, 80). The government sets up agencies like the police, army, and judiciary whose primary purpose is maintaining authority over society while ensuring lawfulness and security among citizens (Althusser 2014, 75). Using legal force within defined boundaries, it uses these institutions to put down opposition against an oppressive regime or even control population numbers. One consequence is that it can exploit such instruments when confronted with instability and insecurity in its territorial integrity; how to do so amidst violence becomes essential for a monopoly on violence held by states but one that portrays peace-making behaviour among people.
The modern state is inoperative until it serves the interests of the ruling class’s wealth, privilege, and power and not of the proletariats. This disparity causes the creation of a class structure in society, especially in capitalist societies (Althusser 2014, 93). The institutions of state discussed above work in such a way to uphold the interests of the ruling class; for instance, the policies for industrialists would be more relaxed than policies for the bourgeoisie. The state often uses violence whenever any protest is held to challenge its economic or political dominance to safeguard the ruling class’s interests (Althusser 2014, 93). Most of the dissent comes from proletariats and bourgeoisies, and such people face the state’s oppressive violence, which bolsters class inequality and much power struggle. Althusser discussed that institutions and groups that propagate beliefs and ideals in favour of the social structure upheld by the ruling class are known as ideological state apparatuses (Althusser 2014, 75). They mould people’s attitudes, actions, and beliefs to keep things as they are. On the opposite side, repressive state apparatuses are organizations such as the military, police, and courts that employ force and coercion to enforce the law, suppress dissent, and preserve the state’s exclusive right to use lawful violence (Althusser 2014, 75).
Ideological state apparatuses prepare individuals ideologically to accept the existing power structures, making them more compliant and less likely to challenge authority. The Repressive state apparatuses serve as a backup to Ideological state apparatuses, stepping in when ideological persuasion fails or when there is a protest by the public against the modern state. The interplay of ideological embedment through Ideological state apparatuses and the threat of repressive actions by Repressive state apparatuses creates a diverse system of social control that upholds the dominance of the modern state and ruling class.
Media Control Dynamics
Media holds immense power to shape the public’s perception or divert attention from prominent issues in the country, contributing towards the invisibilization of state violence. To understand it better, media power has four paradigms – Consensus, chaos, control, and contradiction (Freedman 2014, 274). We will use the control paradigm to further the essay’s main argument. The control paradigm explains the influence of economic determinacy and power dynamics on media content and distribution. It proposes that the ruling class can extend their control of financial resources, leading to predictable outcomes such as media bias and propaganda. The control paradigm also helps us to examine media ownership structures, highlighting how concentrated ownership by a few powerful entities can shape media content, agendas, and narratives (Freedman 2014, 281). This raises concerns about the potential for media owners to prioritize profit motives over public interest and democratic values. The control paradigm helps us to critique the democratic deficit arising from unaccountable media ownership and state coordination, highlighting how concentration can limit the diversity of voices, oppress dissenting viewpoints, and undermine the media’s role in holding power accountable. Such oppressing viewpoints come mainly from the bourgeois, who do not have the enormous economic and political power to keep the state or media under their rule (Freedman 2014, 283). The influence of such monarchic powers is reflected in editorial decisions, news coverage, and framing of issues. Many scholars have criticized the influence of media ownership, which also affects their freedom of expression in media through editorials in newspapers (Freedman 2014, 276). Such invisibilization puts control in the hands of the ruling class to cover up modern state violence. It increases the power of Repressive state apparatuses to oppress the dissent and media that comes under Ideological state apparatuses, diverts and obscures away the public’s attention.
Freedman explains that the ‘Propaganda Model’ is that media establishments frequently precede stories that uphold the objectives of politically and economically influential groups (Freedman 2014, 281). This model strongly emphasizes how the media shapes public opinions about Repressive state apparatuses, such as acts of state aggression, war, or human rights. It breaches by managing the information flow and presenting news articles in specific ways. The media can minimize the gravity of state violence, defend military incursions, or leave out important information that would contradict the status quo by selectively reporting, framing stories in a biased way, and amplifying official government narratives (Freedman 2014, 281). This manipulating narrative would instill in the public’s mind, which is the ultimate goal of the modern state to conduct state violence covertly.
Media Narrative Influence
To understand the argument better, we will take the instance of The Times of India (TOI), which was involved in selective reporting and misrepresented the 1918 influenza pandemic’s gravity (Varman and Srinivas 2023, 6). During this catastrophic event, which claimed approximately 14 million lives in British India, TOI minimized the pandemic's severity through selective reporting and strategic framing. For instance, the newspaper consistently relegated influenza-related news to less prominent sections, often prioritizing commercial advertisements and non-pandemic news over the mounting death toll (Varman and Srinivas, 2023, 16). This downplayed the catastrophic impact and absolved the colonial administration of accountability for failing to implement preventive measures. TOI’s reports primarily framed deaths as natural or systemic outcomes, obscuring the role of colonial policies, such as prioritizing war efforts over public health, in exacerbating the crisis (Varman and Srinivas, 2023, 6). By portraying the administration as a benevolent sovereign and dismissing the plight of marginalized groups who bore the brunt of the pandemic, the TOI reinforced narratives that aligned with colonial interests. This manipulation of public perception reflects Althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatuses, illustrating how media served as a tool to obscure structural violence and maintain ruling class dominance.
Here, it reflects how Ideological state apparatuses (TOI) were essential in spreading awareness about influenza, but they misused this power. Such a portrayal of an insensitive narrative could have desensitized the public rather than finding out the root cause of such issues and countering the authorities involved in it. It is one of the examples of how Ideological state apparatuses hide RSA’s repressive acts; such an irresponsible act of handling the pandemic reflects the control paradigm of media, where it only works under the control of the modern state and invisibilizes the state’s neglecting nature. Therefore, it can be inferred how TOI may have served the state’s interests by downplaying the pandemic’s impact, potentially to avoid criticism of the government’s response reflecting the ‘Propaganda Model.’ TOI may have prioritized commercial interests over public interest, downplaying the severity of the pandemic to avoid causing panic that could hurt businesses, reflecting the ‘Control Paradigm.’ Therefore, such factors weave with each other, making it easy for ideological state apparatuses to convince or influence the public’s perspective on the modern state’s violence, which is acted out by repressive state apparatuses.
Contemporary Situation of Indian Media
If we use Althusser’s idea of state apparatuses, the current media scenario in India is a concrete embodiment of partnering ideological and repressive state apparatuses for sustaining ruling class hegemony. According to various reports, the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has engaged in increasing consolidation of media outlets since 2014 through both economic corset and ownership concentration, leading to the establishment of a media environment attuned to state narratives (RSF, India) As Althusser would theorize, ideological state-formed apparatuses such as the media function to embed ideologies within bourgeoisie’s consciousness which would favor the ruling classes, for instance, normalizing asymmetrical power dynamics or desensitizing the populace to state violence or diverting their attention from such violent acts. This top-down insistence is reflected in a spin on Freedman’s model, where state-controlled news trumps independent journalism (RSF, India). The effect of this alignment is further consolidated through laws that restrict dissent and freedom of expression, which turn ideological apparatuses into extensions of a repressive state apparatus. Campaigns of online harassment and violence against dissenting journalists illustrate how repression upholds ideological control, precluding counter-narratives that could deny the consolidation of power (RSF, India).
These dynamics lead to media reporting state action with a selective lens, naming it necessary or justified under the guise of national security. Such practices resonate with Althusser’s claim that the relationship between ideological and repressive state apparatuses strengthens the state’s monopoly of violence. A case in point is the Indian media’s “unofficial state of emergency,” a period marked by an alarming degradation of press freedoms and state-devised narratives that do not align with reality, serving as emblematic of a symbiotic relationship between state power and media control, reinforcing systemic social inequities while occluding accountability.
The contemporary Indian media exemplifies Althusser’s concept of Ideological state apparatuses functioning in tandem with repressive state apparatuses to sustain the dominance of the ruling class. The Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2023, present a stark illustration of this dynamic, where the state has empowered itself to unilaterally declare online content as “fake” or “misleading,” compelling intermediaries to remove such material under threat of legal liability (Access Now et al. 2023). Framed as a measure to combat misinformation, these rules operate ideologically as an Ideological state apparatus to shape public perception while simultaneously acting as an RSA through coercive enforcement mechanisms. This duality reinforces state hegemony by curbing dissent, narrowing the space for independent journalism, and embedding state-aligned narratives in public consciousness. The government’s control over what constitutes “truth” on digital platforms consolidates its ideological apparatus while suppressing the possibility of counter-narratives.
This ideological repression extends to the concentration of media ownership, which aligns with Althusser’s argument about Ideological state apparatuses being co-opted by the ruling class. The acquisition of NDTV by a corporate magnate closely associated with the ruling regime illustrates how economic and political power converge to erode press independence (Reporters Without Borders, 2023). Once critical of state policies, media outlets increasingly reflect pro-government narratives under such ownership, further blurring the line between Ideological and Repressive state apparatuses. By aligning economic resources and state power, these acquisitions ensure that dissenting voices are marginalized, reinforcing ideological control through editorial bias and the propagation of state-sanctioned narratives. This structural shift highlights how the media transitions from being a forum for diverse perspectives to a tool for entrenching state dominance, reflecting Althusser’s theory of Ideological state apparatuses functioning to uphold the ruling class’s interests. When ideological persuasion through media fails, the state’s reliance on Repressive state apparatuses becomes evident, as seen in the punitive actions against critical outlets like the BBC (Reporters Without Borders 2023). Following the release of a documentary critical of the Prime Minister, the Indian government employed tax raids as an RSA tactic to intimidate dissenters. Such coercive measures underscore the media’s precarious position as both a target and an instrument of state control.
The overlap between ideological control and repressive enforcement ensures that dissent is quelled not only through narrative manipulation but also through outright intimidation and legal harassment. These mechanisms illustrate the feedback loop between Ideological state apparatuses and repressive state apparatuses, where ideological compliance is enforced by repression, ensuring the media’s subservience to state interests. These dynamics resonate with the broader framework of media’s role in invisibilizing state violence. As Ideological state apparatuses, media outlets prioritize the narratives of the ruling class while suppressing counter-narratives, desensitizing the public to the erosion of democratic norms. The chilling effect of surveillance, censorship, and hostile legal frameworks further ensures that dissent remains peripheral, illustrating the interplay of ideological indoctrination and coercive enforcement. As theorized by Althusser, this convergence constructs a system where the media functions less as a check on power and more as an extension, amplifying systemic inequalities and obscuring state violence under the guise of maintaining order.
Conclusion
Therefore, I argue that the state’s power over the regime and diverse forms of media directly impacts state violence invisibilization by applying Althusser’s sociological notion of ideological and repressive state apparatuses. Modern states conduct violence to appease the ruling class’s interests and, with the help of the media, act as an ideological cover to normalize and obscure such violent acts. The authors confirm that the media control paradigm and propaganda model point to a media system aligned with those facing no accountability or dissent. The example of The Times of India’s coverage of the 1918 influenza pandemic and India’s current media ecosystem illustrates how ideological apparatuses act to prop up repressive action, constructing systemic inequalities. The complementarity between state and media constructs a feedback loop, which manipulates public consciousness and reinforces asymmetries in power structures, thus choking counter-narratives. This underscores the need for greater media accountability and pluralism to challenge state-aligned narratives and uphold democratic values.
By Shailraj Jhalnia
Shailraj Jhalnia is a second-year B.A. LL.B student at NLSIU, Bangalore, with a keen interest in Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Family Law.
References
Althusser, Louis. On the reproduction of capitalism: Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Verso Books, 2014.
Freedman, Des. “Paradigms of Media Power.” Communication, Culture and Critique 8, no. 2 (June 1, 2015): 273–289. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12081.
Varman, Rohit, and Nidhi Srinivas. “Theorizing Necroptics: Invisibilization of Violence and Death-Worlds.” Organization (2023): https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084231189188.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF). India | RSF. Accessed December 5, 2024. https://rsf.org/en/country/india.
Access Now et al. 2023. India: New amendment to the Information Technology Rules that threatens press freedoms must be withdrawn. Accessed December 9, 2024. https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/withdraw-india-it-rules/.
Reporters Without Borders. 2023. With raids, arrests, and hostile takeovers, India's press freedom continues to decline. Accessed December 9, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/03/1167041720/india-press-freedom-journalists-modi-bbc-documentary.
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