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.

It can be argued that the development of new and digital media has made audiences more powerful, which is evident in the decline of newspapers. Due to this development it meant that audiences can access articles online rather than buying the actual newspaper, which can have some negative effects on the newspaper industry. This made newspapers less valuable and causing the nature of it to change from providing news to  providing opinions/ false information (such as click bait) to attract readers. But the newspaper industry who suffered the most are local newspapers. Only 49% of the people who consume news do it because they want to know what is going on in their local area, which means that more than 50% don’t care about local news which means that local newspapers such as the Ealing gazette has suffered. New and digital media can be blamed because people who use newspapers to find out news in general is decline, which means that bigger industries can afford to put the distribution of their newspapers on apps or online (the people who use apps/internet for the news increased by 11% in one year), which means local newspapers who don't have the budget would be hit harder. This means that the survival of these industries are significantly influenced by them utilising new and digital media to meet the needs of the audiences, in order for them to consume their products.

However, they can still maintain the quality of news in the newspaper to create the trust that internet news doesn't have, eg .google news just draws together sources from all around the world making it unreliable as a result printed newspapers can use that to their advantage. Furthermore they can increase the prices of their newspapers to compensate for the advertisement they lost to the internet. However the newspaper industry should really consider ways to work with new and digital media as it is going to continue to grow which may have an even bigger effect on them, the most attractive thing about news on the internet is citizen journalism and people being able to communicate their ideas, and so the newspaper industry should really consider that. Citizen journalism has allowed more powerful in the consumption and production of news. Most of the sources such as footage of a crime is mostly produced by the public, suggesting that they contribute to the production of news.

Furthermore, the development in new and digital media has had many impacts on both producers and consumer in the last 20 years. The developments include social networking sites, which allow people to communicate worldwide getting different sides of an argument/opinion despite cultural differences and language barriers. An example of this is Malala Yousafzai's twitter which has 244K followers around the world and is the discussion ground for children's rights to education in under developing countries. This suggests that the social media is a way of accessing opinions as well as getting involved with political debates/ pop culture in the long run the involvement of audience’s opinion can be the turning point to social change, showing how new and digital media made audiences more powerful. Similarly Obama used NDM (social networking sites)to campaign during his election, this allowed him to communicate directly to people of America so he knew exactly how to please and get votes of them, and the reaction of the audiences may lead to him getting the votes or not.

Marxists believe that media owners control ideas because they control the information people are allowed to access. They believe that the media is consciously biased; they provide members of society with a worldwide view or ideologies that explicitly favour the rich and powerful. This is evident in newspaper articles that mostly support right wing political parties such as the conservatives. 20 years ago people relied on newspapers that were mostly owned by the middleclass for opinions, this means that most of the articles were political biased towards left wing as a result people had a limited range of opinions. The increase use of new and digital media changed that. Newspapers being streamed online allowed people to get involved with news as well as commenting their opinions without being afraid to stand out as the internet is desensitised, as a result people have access to a greater variety of views and values. The desensitisation of the internet however has led to the number of suicide rates due to cyber bulling to triple in 2013 according to ‘good magazine’ suggesting that having access to variety of views and values doesn’t always lead to positive effects but can be damaging to society especially the younger generation.

Meanwhile, this desensitisation and citizen journalism has suggests that there isn’t really an empowerment of the media, but the audiences/ members of society are changing the ways of the media supporting purist beliefs. Purists believe that Choice is involved not just access to a range of different media and views but also to the status of consumers, for pluralist the consumer is the most important factor, this is evident by the use of social media and theses advertisement targeting everyone regardless of age and class, as a result supporting the pluriast ideologies. Digital media is new technology that has an impact on the media. These can be things such as apps, social media, online news, email and many more. Due to this, audiences have access to a greater variety of views and values. The internet is mainly, widely used by the younger generation as they have more access to it e.g. in schools or on their phones. However, is becoming more accessible for adults too. For example, 18.3 million households in the UK (70%) had internet access in 2009 compared to 2 million in 2006 and has risen to 87% in 2013, suggesting access to the internet is increasing significantly, each year. In addition, the younger generation use the internet to look up news, information, listen to music, watch movies, play games etc.  The internet can have positive and negative effects on society both economically and intellectually, meanwhile it is thought of as” the most important medium of the centrum “by Biggs and Burke suggesting that the internet is key in our society today.

In conclusion the development in new and digital media has allowed audiences to become more powerful. This means that they can use the internet to do almost anything. Meanwhile the new and digital media doesn’t always lead to a positive views and values, it allows allot of young people to access things they shouldn’t see such as pornography or to get to attached to pop culture influencing them negatively, and according to the hypodermic needle theory new and digital media as a massive influence on society today. Though this can be argued my a marxasits its a way of creating divergent and keeping people of lower class feel like they have control and access. As a result the extent to which the audiences are powerful is questioned.