It is without a doubt that the new and digital media has had a substantial influence in how it offers audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies, therefore empowering them to an extent. The positive impact as a result is due to the audience demonstrating the ‘uses and gratifications’ of how they would use these particular products that new and digital media has offered them. It also means that both the media producers and audiences have a “supply and demand” relationship, as audiences may no longer remain passive but instead make use of what is being created by the media product. A prominent example is the user-generated content that enables the audience to look at the content and express their own opinions about it in social networks like Twitter for example. Other similar examples are when Apple’s music streaming service and social networks are a great combination in the sense that they support each other by spreading attraction to a particular music artist.
User-generated content has had a positive impact as it has enabled the audience to view a “reality” of the things going around, and gives them an alternative option as opposed to consuming information from trusted news broadcasting companies such as BBC. This means that there is more freedom experienced by the audience as they have access to more diverse information that isn’t mediated and filtered usually for the public eye to see. An example includes the “#BlackLivesMatter” movement, where numerous UGC have been released on the Internet of prejudice and discriminatory cases against the black community. Footage such as Eric Garner’s death has kickstarted the ideology of #BLM as perhaps the audiences who identify as black individuals themselves have the urge to comment on this in respect to their own image. This demonstrates surveillance and a positive impact that the new and digital media has given them, as it allows the black community to speak out against police brutality and racism that still remains active in the status quo. Globalisation and the combination of the Internet has aided this spreading of #BLM’s awareness in the sense that it gives access to a wider range of audience, and as McLuhan mentions there is a “Global Village” of users across the globe who might see things from another perspective than what is conventionally believed. For example, another case of police brutality including Ian Tomlinson’s death, who was a victim to manslaughter was innocently battered as he wasn’t part of the protest that was taking place. The hegemonic view that the Metropolitan police in the UK are here to ‘Protect and Serve’ is obviously not the case as proven by the video footage, which again emphasises on how crucial UGC has on offering different ideologies than what is usually believed. In result, there is a positive impact due to the fact that there is justice being brought, as after an inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing, the officer, Simon Harwood, was prosecuted for manslaughter. Without the collective participation of the audience, simply put someone could have gotten away with murder.
However, as much as there is a positive impact in shedding light by offering more diverse values and ideologies to certain situations in the media, it can also cause a false reading and a misinformation to the audience. For example, picking another case that fueled #BLM is Alton Sterling’s death. Alton Sterling a 37-year-old black man, was shot several times at close range while held down on the ground by two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers. When observing this case from one standpoint, it is a situation of racist police brutality as evident from video footage he was seen to be held down. Since then, there have been speculations about Sterling being armed with a gun which he apparently attempted to reach in his pocket as the person recording panned away. If this was the case, then the engagement of #BLM and parties against this specific case would be a product of misinformation as some audiences might have been too quick to judge on what plain sight they see it in. This kind of false reading in the media is usually on purpose or by mistake, commonly used to manipulate and support a particular agenda, which in this case is to empower and bring justice to the black community who have been treated unfairly by the law.
This is a similar approach a Marxist for example would agree with; that new and digital media has actually damaged values and ideologies due to the fact of their belief that institutions have power over the consumption of their audiences. New and digital media has given an alternative method of surveillance to the audience, therefore meaning that the power doesn't necessarily all rely on institutions such as BBC presenting information to the public but the public actually proactively searching and consuming information as individuals. The other negative impacts associated as a result are also false information again. With the lack of gatekeeping, the information being released in the Internet is not certified and mediated, meaning there are increased chances of false information being spread or even the common case of fake news. An example of this was when Russian online news reported of Queen Elizabeth's death, The fake stories claimed the site published but then withdrew a story that the monarch had died. The alleged report on royal.uk was headlined 'Death of Queen Elizabeth II' - but was denied by Buckingham Palace to a leading Russian media outlet. This sort of announcements causes a moral panic among the audience as there is a distortion in what to believe and what not to believe. In some sense, hard news such as death of important figures and celebrities might even become desensitized in the sense that the audience might not take reports seriously.
On the other hand, the audience certainly have more choice when it comes to choosing what media content they wish to view. That is what a pluralist would argue as they believe audiences are free to select and reject media content which they don’t believe offers them a certain set of values and ideologies. NDM has created a new platform for audiences to select and reject news content; this comes from social media sites, blogs and News institution websites like The Daily mail and The Guardian. Even though choice of news outlets may seem like it has been expanded online, a Marxist would argue against the pluralists perspective of audiences being free as a lot of the companies online like the social media sites are not independently owned but fall under an umbrella of companies, for example Facebook own Instagram; another social media site, and with total combined users reaching over a billion what seems like a platform that offers audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies actually has a negative impact as the content is both regulated and controlled to the specifications of the parent organisation. This can be better explained with Pareto’s Law and this states that the minority of media producers, produce content for the majority of people, therefore masking the absence of a diverse range of values and ideologies.
No comments:
Post a Comment