Does your case study suggest that new and digital media have had a positive impact by offering audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies?

Does your case study suggest that new and digital media have had a positive impact by offering audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies?

In this essay we will be looking at the ways in which new and digital media have had a positive impact by offering audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies.  Throughout this essay I will be looking through a Marxists and Pluralists view.some would argue that UGC does have a positive impact as a result of NDM. For example, the Arab spring protests which began in 2011 were heavily documented via social media, facebook in particular. It wasn't news teams reporting on it first but rather ordinary citizens who posted updates to facebook and organised protests on facebook as it was an essential tool to gather momentum.

A pluralist would say that social media such as Facebook and Twitter has provided audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies. Massive social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been dominating for the past few years. These social media sites have encouraged their users to raise awareness and challenge the world’s view of the political world. An example of this through the social media site twitters where a worldwide campaign surfaced their site. This has been trending which is the #blacklivesmatter campaign. This form of user-generated content allowed users to challenge the so called ‘powerful’ authorities on their wrong doings. This campaign surfaced into our digital lives when a series of unjust concerning black males where going unnoticed by the American police authorities. A video surfaced online of a middle age black man who goes by local authorities when he was minding his own business and posed no physical threat. The video then went viral and brought to a very serious matter concerning police brutality. This form of citizen journalism allows everyone to voice their own opinion unlike other countries where this isn’t possible. This is called the digital divide. There was a story on the guardian in which ‘Mark Zuckerberg rejects 'crazy idea' Facebook influenced US election’. This story showcases how powerful the internet is and how it allows people voice their own and views and ideologies.

 A Marxist would on the other argue that the impact of new and digital media isn’t democratic. This is case as they believe that audiences don’t have as much power as some media institutions do. They believe that new and digital media is far from krotick saying that the internet is a ‘great leveller’. They believe that the massive media outlets have the power to manipulate the audience through their choice.  You could say that new and digital media has challenge Herman’s and McChency. Theory that ‘’traditional media will not be relinquished top easily’. This is the case as through the raise new and digital media as traditional media is in decline. The negative effects people may debate on is that we cannot trust the internet because anyone has the freedom to write whatever they wish to and therefore brings up a more recent argument, 'Fake News'.A Marxist view would suggest that audiences are not empowered with developments in new and digital media. Allan Debotton- theorist would claim that,’news outlets need their audiences to be frightened in order to get through to us’ this, along with Gramscis theory fully supports the Marxist argument as it is clear that in tabloid news and TV news bad news of pain and destruction is frequent and the balance between this and good news is heavily leaning towards the bad and one would get the feeling that this is what the media institutions want us to see and usually end up creating a moral panic. This would suggest that audiences are not empowered. Furthermore De Botton also said that we have ‘narrow minded news’ meaning the news is bias and as consumers we aren’t empowered to change it and are essentially spoonfed the information that the large media conglomerates want us to see for instance companies like Google and the mail online are earning 100’s of billions over the course of several years, and this supports the Marxist view and indicates that audiences aren’t empowered and also suggests NDM is having a negative impact on peoples beliefs and values.  They believe that the control of audiences are limited in term for their control. 

New social media sites such as Snapchat and Instagram has had a positive effect on the audience. Snapchat especially has had a positive impact.  Snapchat has become extremely popular over the past years as they now have 150 million users worldwide.  These user generated content has allowed users to express their own views and ideologies and challenge the status quo. This is evident through the #blacklivesmatter campaign that surfaced on twitter.  This campaign challenged discriminated on the black community sharing light into police brutality. Due to the “trending” mechanism on Twitter, more people have come across the values and ideologies of social movements such as Blacklivesmatter. Twitter has enabled audiences to therefore initiate campaigns such as 'Black Lives Matter' and therefore allows audiences to collectively aid positive images of black identity. A more recent case is the 15 year old Texas boy, who was shot by a police officer which was filmed on officer’s body cameras. A lot of the time, businesses may use this app as they would believe that it is less time consuming. Therefore, this then leads to the fact of which people on the internet are not to be trusted.

With the introduction of news and digital media producers have been pushed to enforce more audience interaction schemes through user-generated sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Media producers such as news platforms have recognised that traditional media is in terminal decline and that social media sites is the dominant platform for news. Many different news platforms have got their own official social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook. This is so they can interact and give out the same views values as they would get on TV News programmes and more. A pluralist would argue that audiences are now becoming more active and more of the media they consume. This is the case as a pluralist believe that audiences are perceived a capable of manipulating the media and having access to that plural values of society’ enabling to ‘conform, accommodate and reject.’ This showcases that audiences have the power to recognise what they are reading is true or not. This is a massive change due to the raise if new and digital media. In traditional media it was harder to this as it was one of the only news platforms.

From this essay I can conclude that new and digital media overall has had a positive impact on audiences. This is the case as there some drawbacks concerning authenticity, new and digital media allows us to notice that there is something wrong as user generated sites share light into this.