LR

1) Type up your feedback in full (you do not need to write mark/grade if you do not wish to).
34/48 B
A good essay, showing good critical autonomy.
Very strong with two sides but missed opportunities to cover specific examples from the news case study.

2) Read through the mark scheme (go to the last two pages of the document - Section B New/digital media). Of the six different statements for each level (e.g. A sophisticated and comprehensive essay, showing very good critical autonomy.) write which level you think YOU are currently working at for each one. Explain WHY and, for any that are not Level 4, what you are going to do to improve in that area. 

3. 
WWW!                                                                             
A sophisticated and comprehensive essay,                                      
showing very good critical autonomy.
Very Opinionated and Balanced.                      

Improvements!                                                                                                                             Sophisticated application of a wide range of media debates, issues and theories and wider contexts.
Need to use more issues i.e. NDM Stories.

A clear individual case study, with a range of examples.
Need to use more examples.

Well structured and clearly expressed.
Well Paragraphed and pointed structured.

3) Look at the Examiners' Report for this particular paper. Read page 10 - Section B New/digital media. How many of the good points or higher level answer examples did you include in your essay? What were they? What could you have added to improve your mark?

Almost all students discussed the impact new and digital media has had on enabling
audiences to participate, with detailed examples to support this from their case study.

• Good answers also addressed the harder concept of democracy, but were able to apply it
to a really wide range of case studies, not just obvious ones like news.

• Good answers used this to discuss the changing role of audiences and producers. Higher
level answers debated the arguments for and against.

• Higher level answers debated the obstacles to equal participation and democracy, for
example the digital divide in the UK and globally, the power and control of media
organisations. Sophisticated answers debated whether this was increasing or decreasing
with developments in new and digital media. Good answers had examples of this from
their own case study rather than just as a general point.

• Good answers discussed the reasons why there was democracy or not, using media
issues, debates and wider contexts.

4) Read through these exemplar A grade essays from last year. What do these essays offer that yours does not? Identify THREE things you can take from these essays to improve your own responses in future.

1.More Quotations
2.NDM Stories
3.Lots of Statistics for both sides of the Argument.

5) Write ONE new paragraph for your January assessment essay. Ideally, this should be a section you did not cover in your original essay. This paragraph needs to be comprehensive and meet the criteria for Level 4 of the mark scheme.

LR PARAGRAPH

In terms of the Arab Spring Protests, there is an undoubtable sense of democracy regardless of the digital divide that is greater within the countries involved. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter facilitated the communication between the participants in their countries. It could be said that due to the lack of regulation online, the protests were able to come about. People were exposed to uncensored views, views that they may not have seen had this only been reported on traditional news outlets such as  newspapers. From a marxists perspective if the only source of information was from newspapers, nothing would have happened. Content creators inject the information that they believe or are told to write about (hypodermic needle), this is then believed and not contemplated by the audience and what is said is automatically believed to be factual or right. Due to the intense ideologies created the status quo is not challenged. NDM has resulted in a more Pluralist perspective can be successfully applied as the active audience is capable of viewing things their own way. The fact that they are exposed to various views online means that this is more easily applied. Because there is such a variety of content. It can be argued that if it wasn't for NDM these protests wouldn't not have happened, or to the extent that they did. The accessibility meant that more people could organise themselves and encourage others and it wasn't restricted to their local area.

NDM STORIES PARAGRAPH

Fake news has become paramount in the last year alone. With two incredibly important elections that seemingly resulted in shocking results, Most likely due to echo chambers, there is little evidence to suggest that there isn't an issue with fake news. Most importantly Reddit CEO admitted that he edited/deleted comments that he didn't agree with. The largest Trump Supporting community The_Donald, had comments altered to seem as if they were attacking the moderators. This could suggest that new and digital media isn't democratic, we have the same issue of a minority of producers serving a majority of consumers (parrots law) but in more of a regulatory sense. A variety of content is being created but in reality how much do we have access to? How much is being removed or altered by the people in charge so that the content on their site suits their own desires. Even Barack Obama highlighted the issue during the presidential election 2016, where 19 percent of the content published by extreme left-leaning Facebook pages was false or misleading, 44 percent of US adults get their news from Facebook and the fake news was interacted with 8.7 million times. Meaning they would be shared more often given the algorithm in place. people don't always check that what they are reading is true, people manipulate this. Even though there is a lot of freedom on the internet we are slowing falling into the same issues that we faced during the times where traditional media was prominent.