Essay questions

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). This essay will be going over both sides of the argument.

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.

I strongly agree with this statement that new and digital media platforms have made media consumption far more powerful for the audiences. New media has had a profound effect on three of the most essential categories of society in the twenty-first century: economics politics, and the exchange of ideas. Of course, the scope of this article is limited in its ability to name the types of changes that are a product of new media, let alone a sufficient treatment of each category. However, it is important to sketch a brief schematic life of new media in the Information age.

From a Pluralist perspective the belief that new and digital media has created a new tactical and digital battleground against the elite or controlling class that was not possible with traditional media also highlighted by Briggs and Burke who state "the most important medium of the twentieth century ". A prime example of this is the digitally damaging and recurring hack by hackers anonymous which despite their political motives, the flaw in the manner the elite class assert their dominance, control and influence on society.

Marxism on the other hand believed in a capitalist society and class domination. By this they meant the elite and the wealthy conglomerates were to say at the top and provide all the media needed for the audiences and all the power audiences think they have is an illusion. This also links in with hegemony in that the higher social class has power over everyone else 

Following the other pluralistic argument of new media empowerment would be that the internet provides us with an array of information almost instantly, with websites such as Wikipedia allowing us to be enriched my information on virtually every subject online. However this information is often unreliable due to users changing correct information to make false claims on somebody

On the other hand Marxists also believed in print and analog broadcast models to be dying media, such as those of television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media which are predicated upon the use of digital technologies, such as the Internet and video games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. The use of digital computers has transformed the remaining 'old' media, as suggested by the advent of digital television and online publications.