Essay NDM

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.