ESSAY

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.

The development of new/digital media has made the audience both more powerful in terms of consumption and production, in the current digital era new and digital media has revolutionised the world, along with the internet being “the most important medium of the twentieth century” (Briggs and Burke). 

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.

The pluralistic perspective argues that audiences have become much more powerful that they are able to “conform, accommodate or reject” (Gurevitch), presenting that the audiences now have a larger variety of choice, and are not force fed what to consume.  The uses and gratifications theories, surveillance is a prime example of this as the audience uses surveillance to obtain information about the world, and they have a choice of what news institution to use. The two highly regarded institutions being Sky and BBC, which is a public service broadcaster. Furthermore, production of media has become greater as they are able to create unique pieces of work that are of their own perspective that can be used to voice ones opinion, and even lead uprisings like the Arab Spring case, where the audiences had used social media as a medium to organize protests to overrule dictatorship.

 Andrew Keen stated that “web pages and blogs are like a million monkeys typing nonsense” which is in favour of the Marxist perspective that although there are millions of mediums to which the audiences have obtained some power, but they have no relevance in controversial debates and they cannot make significant impact, the new and digital media has made audiences powerful enough to produce media products/texts but it has only become an “illusion of autonomy” created by media conglomerates and wealthy corporations in order to maintain the status quo. In addition, citizen journalism has become a recurring phenomenon; however it does not hold a major stand against traditional, professional quality journalism. Moreover, Paretto’s law states that “the majority is controlled by the minority” which is evident from major institutions, also it is evident from Linn and Webster’s cast study that the “top 5%” of all websites account for “75% user volume”

In terms of pluralism, user-generated content has become the lead in supporting the ideologies of pluralists. User-generated content is enabling the internet has led society to undergo democratization, as audiences are able to produce media texts that do not contain biased, in favour of supporting major institutions and aren’t controlled by gatekeepers, and as Negroponte had put it “Monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving in to an array of cottage industries” which portrays through the introduction of new and digital media, the major institutions that were on top in the 90s have now become weak and unused. Examples of user generated content are blogs, websites and forums. Social media has also become an empowerment tool for the audiences as they have their choice of what they want to see. Twitter has given audiences the right to present their opinions without being censored. They are also able to weigh in on different matters and are given power in consumption as they aren’t force fed information.      

Consumption and production privacy has become compromised as “privacy maybe an anomaly, now over“(Vint Cerf, Google), which in turn has made the audiences weak and vulnerable, supporting the hegemonic ideologies that have infested the minds of audiences. For example, when the Apple icloud had become hacked and peoples personal information and pictures had become exposed on 4chan, which shows that the internet is a revolutionary medium but it makes us, as audiences, more prone to violation of privacy.“People in power control us” (Gramsci) this is evident as major institutions like Google manipulate what we see on their websites, in terms of Google when searching for information, they assimilate their own information with information from various sources to give their information first and then present the other sites, in order to increase traffic, in turn increasing revenue. As well as, youtubers being the people in power who control the audiences in to perceiving what they believe, for example Zoella. This links to the two-step flow model, which states that there are opinion formers and opinion leaders, the audiences, like sheep, follow the opinion leaders as they directly inject information in to the minds of the audience, linking to the hypodermic needle theory too, to have a larger influence on the audiences to manipulate them.  This begins to dumb down audiences as there consumption becomes more humorous rather than serious, as they start to become accustomed to listicles on BuzzFeed and lolcats where there are cat videos and memes.

New and digital media is a “paradigm shift” (Krotoski) as it has revolutionised the audiences in to becoming more powerful in consuming media products and producing media texts too. Prior to the internet the information and world news was directly injected in to the audiences minds as there wasn’t any variety and news had been late and old, now due to the synergy of video cameras, phones and internet in to smart phones, which enables audiences to record live events and upload them online to see, for example the beheading of a soldier in public was recorded and uploaded online.  The production of media texts has led them to be empowered and they are enabled to post live news, at a lower quality, but just as fast as news institutions.

In conclusion, the development of new/digital media has made the audience both more powerful in terms of consumption and production of media products. However, I personally believe that nowadays we as audiences have become puppets to cultural imperialism and capitalism as the class divides have become evident and the media is used as a body guard in order to stabilise and prevent any rebellions, even with the internet, “the rebellion is encapsulated in the internet” (Andrew Keen) it hasn’t broken through the barriers.