Essay

The development of new/digital media means the audiences is more powerful in terms of consumption and production.

A Marxist perspective would argue that the so called ‘information revolution” has done little to benefit audiences or to subvert the established power structures in society. Far from being a ‘great leveller’ (krotoski), 2012) as many have claimed it has merely helped to reinforce the statue quo by promoting dominant ideologies. The most popular news website in the UK by a considerable margin is the ‘mail online’, which receives more than 8 million hits every month and is continuing to expand rapidly – with forecasts that it will make £100 million or more in digital revenues in the next three years. Similar to its tabloid print edition, the website takes a conservative, right wing perspective on key issues around gender, sexuality and race and audience s appear to passively accept what the Marxist theorist, Gramsci, called a hegemonic view. When one their chief columnists jane moyer wrote a homophobic about the death of Stephan gately in 2009, there were twitter and facebook protests but ultimately they did not change the editorial direction of the gate keepers controlling the newspaper.

In a pluralists perspective they believe that everyone should be equal they believe that everyone should be equal and should have the freedom of speech. It allows them to have more than one view in society. This backs up Gunevitches as he states that something can be able to ‘conform, accommodate or reject’ giving society choice and then being autonomous through having this freedom people are now able to search and obtain information through the new and digital media source called the internet. As well as gaining information audiences are able to post up their beliefs and views Marxists would agree with a theorist named Andrew keens where ‘a million monkeys typing nonsense’ and causing people to be dumbed down. An example of a society being autonomous is during the Arab spring. Where audiences on social networks were able to communicate and bring down leaders where everyone found out about what was going to happen by others sharing posts and USG (user generated content) this supports the two step flow theory. This is due to one person organizing an event (or a group of people) so others are able to like, share and join.

From a Marxists perspective they believe that new and digital media has not empowered audiences in any way. They do not believe that they have the freedom of speech but are controlled by opinion leaders and major institutions ‘a million monkeys’ – Andrew keens. They’d be in favor of this quote, as Marxists believe that audiences are being dumbed down. For example, buzzfeed has introduced a new form of delivering news of pointless subjects like ’top 10 people who shouldn’t design cakes’.  

Due to new and digital media people have no become more powerful as pluralists argue. Due to the internet and new technology becoming more affordable and becoming easier to use, people can access information at their fingertips. This is empowerment as they are able to consume information either formed by professional people like journalists or either an ordinary person. We call this ordinary person a citizen journalist. Anyone can become a citizen journalist by simply signing up to their own blog which they own and are able to post what they like, weather they want to challenge any person, information or news, they are able to do so. Some of these people that consumer information and produce anything that could be posted online is called a prosumer, due to them producing and consuming at the same time. Pluralists believe that their society have choice and are able to choose what they would like to watch what they would like to believe on whatever they see on the internet. This is the society being autonomous making their own decisions.

A Marxist would however disagree. This is because they believe that audiences do not have a choice and are under control by the big institutions such as google. Google is one of the worlds market leaders in search engines, they are one of the most visited websites in the world. They also own a lot of other segments for example, they produce their own tablets phones, and other websites. Marxists believe in lin and websters theory where ‘ top 5% of all websites accounted for almost 75% of user volume’ meaning they have very big audiences which visit their websites on daily basis. Marxists would argue that in a pluralist society are fooled into thinking that they have choice and are able to do as they wish. For example, a person who opens up a blog would believe that they are not in any way under control by these big institutions, but the fact is that these big institutions own most of the worlds most visited websites. Google owns the blogger website.  There for they can easily influence those who have signed up to their website.

In conclusion I believe that the new and digital media has empowered audiences to a certain extent. We now have citizen journalists for example who can produce their own news and who can have a big audience. We also have more user-generated content which is important as it prevents from big institutions from twisting stories. So I do believe that new and digital media has empowered audiences to a certain extend.