The development of new/digital media means the audience is more powerful in terms of consumption and production. Discuss the arguments for and against this view.
Recently, there has been a sudden up rise in the developments of new/digital media which has started to affect the way in which the audience responds to the media. Two different views has been suggested against the view that the developments is making the audience more powerful in terms of consumption and production. A Marxist and pluralist view is presented.
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 status 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 audiences appear to passively accept what the Marxist theorist, Gramsci, called a hegemonic view. When one of their chief columnists, Jan Moir, wrote a homophobic article about the death of Stephen Gately in 2009 there were Twitter and Facebook protests but, ultimately, they did not change the editorial direction of the gatekeepers controlling the newspaper.
In a pluralist view, the development of new and digital media means the audience is more powerful especially in terms of consumption and production. Pluralists believe in an active audience who chose what media to consume and they don't have to swallow what the media feeds them. In a sense, they get to conform, accommodate or reject the media that they are shown. New and digital media has given the audience the possibility to do so much hence why it is described as "the most important medium of the twentieth century" (Briggs and Burke). In fact the audience is capable of manipulating the media and producing their opinions on-line. A good example of this is the Arab spring; the democratic uprising that arose independently & spread across the Arab world in 2011. The movement originated in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly took hold in places such as Egypt and Libiya due to the effective use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. Facebook and Twitter were tools people in Egypt used to exchange information globally. The Facebook group helped organize over 100,000 people to protest on Egypt's police day, originally the Facebook page aimed for 50,000 people to protest. The protest overall led to political changes in the several countries, a change to a more democratic political regime. Therefore, the audience was able to cause democratization due to the powerful help of social media.
In contrast Marxists, argue that the audience have an illusion of autonomy and believe they have freedom when they are actually being told what to do. The audience suffer from false consciousness as it is the norm to indirectly follow the status quo. Keen suggests that "rebellion is encapsulated in the internet" as the news industry challenges and dares us to go against them. Since 1979, no government has been elected without the aid of Rupert Murdoch showing that we are influenced to vote what the media presents us. As Lin & Webster suggested in 2002 "Top 5% of all websites accounted for almost 75% of user volume" insisting that most of the audience go for the same media. It is also important to note that 50% of newspapers are controlled by Rupert Murdoch. He encouraged his viewpoint through the newspaper to "vote Cameron".
However, pluralists state that the control of the media is said to be in the hands of an autonomous managerial elite who allow a considerable degree of flexibility to media professionals. A basic symmetry is seen to exist between media institutions and their audiences. It is said that the new/digital media is allowing the "technological blossoming of the cultural of freedom, individual innovation and entrepreneurialism". (Castells, 1996) There are many ways in which the audience can express their opinions such as on-line blogs and forums. There is also an increase in civil journalism where most user generated content is shown on news. People around the world posted more than 100,000 stories on CNNiReport.com last year. Out of that, 10,789 were vetted for CNN, which means they were fact-checked and approved to be broadcast on CNN TV or featured on CNN.com. For the recent attack on Paris, most videos shown on the news were user generated content produces from the audience.
Marxists, on the other hand, believe that mass media are seen as a way of entertaining the workers while drip feeding them ideologies & beliefs. They create stereotypes and dominant ideologies through the media. "57% of 9-19 year-olds had come into contact with pornographic material online." (Tanya Bryon 2008) This can be taken as a feminist Marxist perspective as it reinforces the portrayal of sexualising women. This is why women are still treated differently in different cases. For instance, a newspaper article on the guardian named 'Female technology journalists report abuse is still the name of the game' explained how women hide their gender on-line and 62% said they had experienced sexist abuse, compared with 50% of female journalists who reported similar attacks to the Women’s Media Foundation. It can be therefore said that whatever we watch the media are seen to promote a hegemonic ideology.
A pluralist could argue that the elite people are no longer powerful as they once were which is digital disruption. Nogroponte stated in 1997 that "the monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries," which can be related to the news industry of today. News industries have been suffering a lot lately due to the audience being more involved with new/ digital media. The Sun recently learned this when they realised the paywall that was set up was making things worse people didn't want to pay for news due to the free content they can receive on-line. The Guardian recently published an article titled 'Sun website to scrap paywall'. The article explained how The Sun is poised to make a major U-turn by scrapping its paywall and offering most of its website content for free. Since relaxing its paywall strategy the Sun has increased its average daily browser numbers to about 1 million. The audience was able to change The Sun's methods in a small amount of time. This is why Rupert Murdoch said "the internet has given readers much more power...The world is changing and newspapers have to adapt".
Another point that a Marxist would make is that the elite people control what the audience consume through censorship and through the use of gatekeepers. They only allow content that they view as acceptable to be shown to the audience. As Marxists view capitalist society as being one of class domination, they insist that the audience don't get much a say on the final decision. An example of this would be the Ian Tomlinson case where, despite having proof of what really happened, the police officer got away with it showing that the ruling class has the power over the audience even when facts and proof are being shown. They have the power to decide what is just and unjust and have the power to control situations like these. It is to note that the traditional, hegemonic view of the police in this case, and overall, would be that they are in control and should project their own way of seeing the world so that those who are controlled by it, the public, must accept what they say as the truth.
A pluralist would bring out the point of social networks and the benefits it provides to the audience which in fact makes the audience more aware of the censorship occurring. Due to social networking sites such as Twitter, the audience can receive news from other people who produce this through citizen journalism 24/7 and it would be news that hasn't been censored in certain areas through broadcasting news. Not only does it give the truth to the people but also helps the audience to be helpful to one another instead of relying on the police's help. Going back to the recent Paris attack, many people were able to find out if friends or family were okay due to the hashtags used and a Facebook page which allowed French citizens to confirm if they were fine. James Murdoch described this as a "threat to the plurality and independence of news" as the audience are less and less relying on the news in order to be up-to-date on what's going on around the world.
Alain de Boton takes a Marxist approach on the news industry as he claims "too much information erodes the real priorities". He is suggesting that the audience is overloaded with so much information that they don't know what do with it; in turn this confuses them preventing them from questioning a specific story for too long. If David Cameron was to announce minimum wage is being reduced further it would create havoc however if they next day a bomb went off in London most of the audience's attention would be directed at this meaning they don't have a chance to question those who are of higher authority- it acts as a diversion technique according to Marxists.
To conclude, over the years, we cannot deny that the audience has gained some sort of power through the use of new/digital media especially in terms of production. However, consumption can still be argued as more dominant towards the elite people.
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