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.
Has new digital media given the audience more power or has
it just given the media firms more success in terms of consumption and
production.
The increase of news online has lead to the decline of print
newspapers this has allowed the news institutions to produce websites,apps,
social media pages and live streams so this gives the audience a quicker and
easy access to live news.Instead of waiting for the paper tomorrow as everyone
has access to internet and has a smart phone or laptop to access the news online.Also
its meets the needs of the audience as the audience want the sports section as
on the newspaper it just a could of pages at the back and its one day late
however online you can search for your clubs news, with many other links to
gossip and videos.Also some institutions have pay walls. This means that
consumers have to subscribe and pay a monthly fee to read a certain newspaper
online.This has become a good solution for media firms who put up the paywall
as they believe they don't want to release their news content for free however
the audience wont pay for a monthly subscription as they can get their news for
free somewhere else.However the free content might not be as good as the ones
with a paywall as its free it might be not a reliable or even copied and pasted
from other rival news websites.Therefore the media firms who put up the paywall
have made loss in and haven't made profits or a large amount of revenue.
Also there has been an increase in citizen journalism as
soon it was easier to have camera phone in your pocket and when a citizen saw a
unusual or disasters they would take a picture or video.They can post it up
online or give it to media institutions as many of the big news station use it
on their news segments and online posts to show the audience how reliable they
as the video in context with the description.The picture or video from citizen
shows a sense of realism as the content is sometime unclear,low quality and
very shaky in comparison to a real camera having a exceptional lighting and high quality camera equipment to
help the audience get real sense of what happened however the citizen
journalism is more effected as it was right in the moment and gives the
audience the perspective of someone who was there.An example of citizen journalism
is the death of Ian Tomlison who was pushed over by police at a protest in
central and died of natural causes after suffering a heart attack.The video got
in the hands of the guardian who wrote a article on it and the video was seen
every where online on TV news channel.As after the police faced no punishment
or further actions.Also this happened in New York where a man was choked by
police as they took him down for selling cigarettes and he yelled out I cant
breathe several times as the police kept go on and a pedestrian videoed
this.The video went online all the favorite African american artist or actor
posted up a swell other people and the #Blacklivematter was trending and
#Icantbreathe was trending too.All these example who produced by the audience
and the # and it becoming trending was all due to the audience and the media
institutions used to this talk about it on their website or segments.So they
jumped on the bandwagon as they didn't use any of their sources or research as
it was all new digital media produced by the audience.
Media researchers Galtung & Ruge analysed international
news stories to find out what factors they had in common, and what factors
placed them at the top of the news agenda worldwide. They came up with a list
of news values.Such as Continuity
Events that are likely to have a continuing impact (a war, a
two week sports tournament) have a high value when the story breaks.Negativity
is the bad news such as death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage and
natural disasters.Elite Nations Or People is any story which covers an
important, powerful nation (or organisation) has greater news values than a
story which covers a less important nation. The same goes for people. Barack
and Michelle Obama are newsworthy whatever they do.Then exclusivity is
a major factor when setting the news agenda. If a newspaper
or news programme is the first and only news organisation breaking a story,
then they will rate that very highly. The UK Sunday papers are very fond of
exclusives, and will often break a story of national or international
importance that no one else has.Then there's more as these news value allows
media institutions to not be biased and ensure they give there audience a
variety of news to tune into.
Furthermore user-generated content is defined as any form of
content such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums, posts, chats, tweets, pod
casting, pins, digital images, video, audio files, advertisements and other
forms of media that was created by users of an online system or service.This is
what plurists stand for as the users get their opinions out their and get
recognised through their content as their aim is to create an equal society,
who share the same values and beliefs.the users are benefiting a lot from it as
some of them are posting themselves singing or rapping on YouTube and they come
out with a record deal out of it also YouTube who video themselves playing
computer games such KSI who is a multi millionaire or post pranks like
RomanAtWood who is also a millionaire.
A plurist view would argue that the audience has more power
in terms of consumption and production as the audience can "conform,
accommodate or reject" Gurevitch any news that is produced and
distributed. This is a great example of uses and gratification theory as the
audience read what they want, when they want depending on whether it meet their
needs.So its comes to the fact that a media outlet story or post is not good as
if it dose not fit people needs.This
comes to the audience consumption and production power through ndm as this
gives the audience the right to become their own type of journalist,citizen
journalist.As they see a incident and take a video or picture,post it online
and they get a conversation going.This shows the enormous amount of power they
have as they can now become the producer and distributor of media for example
the police brutality situation happening in the US when Eric Garner died from
being choked to death and a video of a was posted online that civilian videoed
and the audience can hear the victim say "I cant breathe" as then
this started to trend on twitter.The video was used online by huge news
stations and on news segments.So this just shows the roles of power as huge
news stations are using the audiences content.
However a Marxist would argue that media giants have adapted
themselves to use ndm to produce their content as "the internet and the
digital revolution do not pose an immediate or even foreseeable threat to the
market power of the media giants" Herman and McChesney. The media firms
are now have live blogs and streams,they also have comment section and apps
given the audience up to date quality information.As the journalists are
professionals and educated in that field citizen journalism really is "a
million monkeys typing nonsense" Andre Keen as what they say is not valid
or affect others opinions.As Baudrillard's theory of hyper reality suggests
that audiences believe they have more power than they actually do, however fail
to see that the ruling class still hold power over us.As the media firms
manipulate the audience and feed them information as this is the hypodermic
needle.As audience have many disadvantage through consumption and production as
they may use click bait to get more views or post a hoax to get more likes or
re tweets as they are just fooling themselves.
In conclusion i have come to the decision that the audience
seem to be more empowered by the developments in new digital media,as it allows
them to give themselves a voice through consumption and production as they are
now able to produce and distribute what they think.Without any telling them
different except for the response they get through comments or direct
messages.Their can make career for themselves by their podcast or blogs or even
their YouTube videos.also their contribution to some real tragic events such as
the innocent murders in the UK and US so can we imagine if those citizen
journalism videos and pictures never happened where would we be right now.The
news or police would have probably gave the audience inaccurate
information.Also the other part where the audience are empowered is that the
paywalls are unsuccessful and it just show how media institutions need the
audience as they can receive news for somewhere else and the decline of newspaper
has impacted the media firms as some jobs have been lost and instead of making
profit they make losses and that's because of the audience not purchasing them
because of the new digital media.
