Gramsci and journalism

political action, cultural project, and sociological program

Abstract

Wide and fragmented, this Gramscian thought about journalism has been neglected within his theoretical work. In this article, we revisit the whole of its writings on the subject, based on the Prison Notebooks and in previous texts published in newspapers since the years 1910’s. The idea of journalism as part of the modernity project of human emancipation had with Gramsci a notable and pioneering Marxist interpretation, as he developed a praxis of the press, but also a body of reflections about it. Not detachable from his political action, Gramsci’s ideas about journalism have a sociological viewpoint which looks at the incorporation of popular public by the market press as a historical process.