Does your case study suggest that new and digital media has had a positive impact by offering audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies? (48)
Developments in new and digital media (NDM) in the 21st century has lead to NDM having both positive and negative impacts on offering audiences a diverse range of values and ideologies. The surge in user generated content (UGC) in recent years could be argues as both a positive and negative impact of NDM. Moreover, social media amongst other platforms undoubtedly offer audiences a wide range of value and ideologies but the extent to which they have a positive or negative impact will be discussed throughout the essay.
Firstly, some would argue that UGC does have a positive impact as a result of NDM. For example, the Arab spring protests which began in 2011 were heavily documented via social media, facebook in particular. It wasn't news teams reporting on it first but rather ordinary citizens who posted updates to facebook and organised protests on facebook as it was an essential tool to gather momentum.
Furthermore, blogs which attract 18 million people per day are something that a pluralist would argue strengthen the range of values and ideologies. This concept of citizen journalism and allowing people to voice their own opinions. Social media like facebook and twitter make this possible as well as blogger and thousands of other sites. However, citizen journalism can also be just as easily fabricated and is easily shared via social media. For example, during the us election 20 fake news stories largely in favour of Trump were circulated on facebook over 30 million times, and this can be very damaging for democracy. Although, citizen journalism allowed for the prosecution of the police officers involved in the beating of Rodney king in 1994. Without the citizen filming this and reporting it the police officers would never have been tried.Moreover, as citizen journalism grows the amount of professional journalists decreases as pluralist would argue that this means more opinions are being shared but this is hurting professional journalism and possibly democracy as citizen journalists aren't being paid to tell the truth. None the less, the lack of gate keeping and regulators for citizen journalists can be quite damaging for democracy.
However, another Marxist view would suggest that audiences are not empowered with developments in new and digital media and are, according to the theorist Gramsci are dominated by one social class who maintain and enforce hegemonic control. Moreover, Debotton- another theorist would claim that ,’news outlets need their audiences to be frightened in order to get through to us’ this, along with Gramscis theory fully supports the Marxist argument as it is clear that in tabloid news and tv news bad news of pain and destruction is frequent and the balance between this and good news is heavily leaning towards the bad and one would get the feeling that this is what the media institutions want us to see and usually end up creating a moral panic. This would suggest that audiences are not empowered. Furthermore De Botton also said that we have ‘narrow minded news’ meaning the news is bias and as consumers we aren’t empowered to change it and are essentially spoonfed the information that the large media conglomerates want us to see for instance companies like Google and the mail online are earning 100’s of billions over the course of several years, and this supports the Marxist view and indicates that audiences aren’t empowered and also suggests NDM is having a negative impact on peoples beliefs and values.
Moreover, from another viewpoint, as far as News utilization the E-media stage has been a critical help in allowing to the greater part of the start up and 'bungalow Industries' who need to create news content and allow ordinary people to have a wider range of views and values. The web and all the more particularly online networking (Facebook, Instagram) can be depicted as the "Mechanical blooming of the way of life of flexibility, individual development and entrepreneurialism" (Castells, 1996) in light of the fact that for a crowd of people it not just gives them much more wellsprings of news to browse, which is supportive of pluralism as Pluralist's consider society to be comprising of contending gatherings and interests, none of them overwhelming constantly; however it likewise gives them a stage which is to a great extent out of state control so they can report and discuss news stories continuous. However this might be an issue in a few states where the Government in control has to a greater extent a Marxist view and confines access to perspectives which conflict with there possess philosophies, for instance Russia and China have now both gone into assentions about firmly extending there firewalls to limit and screen content over the Internet. This obviously is a Marxist view and unmistakably demonstrates the perspective of an industrialist society as being one of class control. Doing a reversal to take a gander at how groups of onlookers devour media, specifically; where they see there News on the Internet as taking a gander at the OFCOM report of national review insights it expressed that around 43% of individuals who utilize the Internet for their News utilize online networking destinations, for example, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are both locales which many set up news associations use to exhibit there news yet it is likewise a stage for subject columnists who compose what they see and this is the reason online networking has such high client activity since groups of onlookers can believe this and not acknowledge the standards of an overwhelming society which is the thing that they may get when taking after bigger news associations. Subsequently, another pluralist point of view paretos law can be disregarded with Negropontes theory,’ the monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries’ this is suggesting that consumers now have a significant amount of sources to instead of using the select few chosen by their own government which unfortunately in countries like north korea is still the case.
