Essay Question - 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.

This essay will be exploring the views for and against the statement “The development of new and digital media means the audience is more powerful in terms of consumption and production. The essay will explore the views for and against this statement looking at it from the view of a Marxist supporter and the view of a pluralist supporter. 

A Marxist perspective would argue that the so-called “information revolution” has done little to benefit audiences. 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.

On the other hand, the pluralist perspective would argue that New and Digital media developments have greatly benefitted audiences. A pluralist point of view would see society as a system of competing groups and interests, none of them predominant all of the time. We as the audience have a more active role in the production of the news through citizen journalism, with the “information revolution”, we are better able to challenge the status quo, and we can question what the powerful people of the media feed us. Rather than being, drip-fed beliefs and ideologies that previously we would just believe without question. For example, “Arab Spring” protests, which took place in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, were coordinated through social media because people took a stand and refused to belief and be oppressed by what the Government fed them.

Despite the arguments’ that the pluralist perspective brings a Marxist would still argue that the “information revolution” has not really given the audience the power and freedom that it claims to have done. Marxists believe that society is still class based, that power structures still exist, and that the mass media can influence us greatly. Therefore, as per the Hypodermic Needle Model, Marxists would rule in favour of the view that we are being injected with information by mass media groups that could be harmful to us or create moral panic. As Andrew Keen says “Web pages and blogs are like a million monkeys typing nonsense” (The Cult of the Amateur – How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture). For example, the stories that we regularly hear about terrorism are fed to us in such a way that we have no escape from the effects that the message and we end up believing what we are told without questioning the facts that we are being presented with. The journalists behind the stories just keep typing/writing and what they feed us is just a bunch of words that we assume to be true.   

However, pluralists would argue that we are able to interact with one another more and share our views and values through sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which are two of the most popular social networking sites out there. As per statista.com, Facebook had 1.79 billion monthly active users as per the third quarter of 2016. Having access to such sites where we can openly interact with each other means that we are no longer just passive receivers of the media material that we are being fed we are also producers of the media.

The Marxist view would challenge the view of the pluralist saying that we have more freedom with the developments of new and digital media. A Marxist supporter would say that the media has in fact dumbed down their output and construct texts simply to generate mass audiences. Marxists believe that media producers are producing texts in such a way that they are maintaining a social divide and therefore reinforcing dominant ideologies and the status quo. For example, the extremely recent story of ex Countdown presenter Carol Vorderman revealing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here that she was rejected for a job because her “breasts weren’t big enough”, published by The Telegraph. This story supports the view that the media construct stories only to generate a mass audience because this story was constructed to emphasise the exact quote that Vorderman said in order to generate a mass male audience primarily and maintain a divide between the male and female genders.  

Finally, a pluralist perspective would rebuttal the views of the Marxist supporter, as they believe that the “information revolution” has not only given us more freedom in terms of production but also consumption. With access to sites such as Facebook, we can actively decide whether to take interest in the stories that are published. We are simply able to do this because we voluntarily decide whom we want to follow and who we do not and therefore if we do not wish to take an interest in the stories that are published by a particular organisation we do not need to follow them. For instance, if you do not wish to take an interest in stories posted by The Daily Mail then you do not need to follow them.

In conclusion, the developments of new and digital media have definitely given audiences more power in terms of production and consumption of the media. We are better able to challenge the status quo. As Castells (1996) said, “Technological blossoming of the culture of freedom, individual innovation and entrepreneurialism”. We have more control over what we are being fed by the media companies because through the use of UGC we are now a part of the media companies; we are no longer outsiders looking in we are immersed within the ins and outs of production and consumption.