The Development of new/digital media means the audience is more powerful in terms of consumption and production.

This essay will be exploring whether the development of new/digital media has resulted in the audience becoming more powerful from both a Marxist and a Pluralist perspective. Some Argue that on one hand – The media controls use, on the other hand – the audience can interpret the media how they wish.

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.

From a Pluralist perspective media is produced with a considerable degree of flexibility in production choices. Which, in turn, means the active audience can manipulate the media according to their prior needs and dispositions. Enabling them to ‘conform, accommodate, challenge or reject’ (Gurevich) with content, promoting freedom of speech. This also means that they are not ‘drip fed’ the information – they are able to make and express their own opinions on the subject rather than just accepting and/or believing it. Furthermore, it can be sauggested that the development of new and digital media has encouraged both surveillance and information in terms of Blumler and Katz uses and gratifications theory. The surveillance footage is typically user generated content, especially during the Arab spring protest- which was organised online – The User Generated Content was viewed online by people in a similar situation, giving them a sense of identification and a moral responsibility to help and get involved. This resultantly means that there is democratization – people are becoming more involved in the running of countries.

On the other hand, yes more people are sharing things online which could prove as a façade of being more powerful but ‘web pages and blogs are like a million monkeys typing nonsense’ (Keen). People are constantlyo typing – most of the time they are literally just typing - they’re not making sense or creating their own opinion. Audience are stuck in ‘echo chambers’ they are not being exposed to other views because they can simply ignore and unfollow views that are not like their own, their own views and the views that they then go on to share themselves have stemmed from the dominant ideologies that was created by the elite. They are a passive audience and following the status quo. Fake news had been created throughout the 2016 US Presidential Election. Teenagers in Macedonia were creating sites in which fake news stories were created to gain ad revenue. Said stories were then shared more often than the ones that were factual approx. 7.4 million times. Even on this scale ‘a minority of producers always serve a majority of consumers’ (Pareto’s Law). A single teenager was creating information and ‘drip feeding’ them to Americans whom lacked autonomy and instantly believed what was written.

‘[the internet is] the most important medium of the twentieth century’ (Briggs and Burke) and ‘rebellion is encapsulated in the internet’ (Keen). Ultimately the importance of the internet and the addition of an active audience means that people are able to have and act on alternate views which would be seen as a ‘rebellion’. Journalism has recently changed and shown ‘rebellion’ in the US Election. Where rather than conforming to expectations and positively reporting on Trump. Articles were created to expose wrongdoings of the elite like him. This kind of investigative journalism is the epitome of ‘The Great Leveller’ (Krotoski) No one is more powerful than the other, being of a higher class doesn’t grant you the same privileges to protecting your reputation on the internet the way it did with traditional media.

Overall, The audience has become more powerful as a result of developments in the media. The negatives don’t always correlate to the audience having less power as the negativity would have branched from people being able to generate and share their own opinions despite it being unpopular and non-conforming.