the checks and balances function of the media. As Gayathry Venkiteswaran stated, “the legislators and bureaucrats of the older regime continue to shape policies, influence agendas, and fill in key positions in oversight mechanisms”.2 Thein Sein’s government did not totally abolish the old authoritarian media model practiced by Than Shwe’s regime. Although Thein Sein’s government should be given credit for lifting pre-printing censorship and being welcoming of the return of exiled media, institutionally the military-backed government also designed the evolution of the new media ecosystem in a way that benefi- ted the process of continuing military supremacy in society. When the National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power, its reformist position was not rigorous enough to reverse the authoritarian legacy. There had been a high degree of ignorance as to the demands of civil society, and little effort was put into media reforms to encourage the democratic participation of the people under the government led by the NLD. All these circumstances helped the military achieve a comfortable takeover of media institutions and make use of existing abusive regulations when they staged a coup in 2021. RESURRECTING OLD FORMS OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS AFTER THE COUP The resilience of dictatorship in Myanmar has always predominantly been sustained by repression. Although the repressive state apparatus is central in building the ruling class’s domination, control of the ISA also helps the military strengthen its capacity to rule the country with tyranny. Louis Althusser stresses that “no class can hold state power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses”.3 The differences between the repressive state apparatus and the ISA can also be distinguished: the repressive state apparatus constitutes a cluster of law enforcement bodies including state bodies such as the Ministry of Home Affairs, the army, the police, the courts, the prisons, and so on, while the ISA is embedded in religion, education, family, media, culture, etc. Everything which influences or is able to influence public opinion, directly or indirectly, belongs to the ISA. In order to influence a society’s ideology, the ruling class makes use of the press as the most dynamic part of the ideological apparatus. Huseyin Sevgi and Serhat Ozgokceler argue that “the media has qualification as significative and leader characteristics in relation to notably political choices, cultures, perceptions, life-styles and economical behaviors”.4 The authoritarian ideological apparatus also enables the state to use the media to expand its powers and reproduce the system that defends its hegemony. As 2 3 4 5 6 7 4 hegemony is gained by force and consent, “manufacturing consent” is the core function of the ideological state apparatus.5 Unfortunately, in authoritarian contexts, the process of manufacturing consent has a lot to do with aiming to achieve hegemony of the ruling class. Marx and Engels argue that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force”.6 Meanwhile, Stuart Hall, discussing Gramsci, explains that by using ISA, ruling classes lay down the rules about how “subordinate classes ‘live’ and make sense of their subordination in such a way as to sustain the dominance of those ruling over them”.7 When transmitting the ideas to the people through ISA such as school and media, the repressive state apparatus make sure ISA work in tandem with the interests of the ruling class. When the NLD took power in 2015, the leadership which inherited the unfinished media reform plan from the previous government came to realize that the effectiveness of ISA is key to staying in power longer. The major changes needed in society, and which might not favour the interests of the ruling class, were those such as: (1) restructuring the state-owned media by transforming it into public service media; (2) reforming the broadcasting sector by creating a level playing field for all media owners; (3) providing space G. Venkiteswaran, “Re-thinking media reform in Southeast Asia: promoting a participatory approach”, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 14 February 2018, available at https://www.boell.de/en/2018/02/08/re-thinking-media-reform-southeast-asia-promoting-participatory-approach-more-democratic. L. Althusser, “Ideology and the State”, Lenin and Philosophy and other essays, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971, p. 146. H. Sevgi and S. Ozgokceler, “Media And Cerattepe in Turkey: Althusser’s Communications Ideological State Apparatus [ISA]–Oriented Assessment”, Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 4, no. 3, p. 14. E. S. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 2010. K. Marx and F. Engels, “Ruling class and ruling ideas”, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 4th ed., edited by J. Storey, Harlow: Pearson, 2009, p. 68. S. Hall, “Culture, the Media and the ‘Ideological Effect’”, Mass Communication and Society, edited by J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Wollacott, London: Edward Arnold, 1977, p. 333.