marxism vs pluralism

"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.

If a pluralist were to answer this statement, then it would mean that audiences are in fact more empowered by the new/digital media, given that there are extensions in which communication technology has enabled these audiences to no longer be passive, and is more supportive of the statements that pluralism makes, such as the ways in which they consume news. Some of these methods include UGC, where there is a distinct view from what sometimes the media may be hiding, and therefore gives more meaning and significance to this 'freedom of speech' movement. An example includes the death of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor who collapsed and died in the City of London after being struck by a police officer during the 2009 G-20 summit protests. The shocking part is that Ian Tomlinson was innocent, had no influence in retaliation against police officers, and ultimately wasn't one of the protesters. The video recording that shed bright lights to his death has as a result given and challenged hegemonic views of police forces that were designed to protect and serve, but obviously this is quite the opposite as evident with the seen video footage.

On the other hand, a Marxist's approach would disagree with this, and instead would insist that the audience are not being empowered enough given that their ideologies share the hegemonic view that certain social classes, specifically the 'elite', who control dominant views set in the media. This is as of course suggested by the theorist Gramsci. Similarly, theorist Alain de Botton also quotes something parallel to this, explaining that "News corrupts us", therefore instigating the core opinion of why Marxism views do not think that new/digital media empowers the audience. Factors such as the 'gatekeepers' have an influence in this, where there is believed to be a figure that controls the process through which information is filtered for dissemination, therefore inputting more dominant ideologies and "feeding" the audience targeted information, and keeping a constant and similar status quo. 

However, pluralists disagree to this sustained status quo and instead, as quoted by theorist Gurevitch the audience are enabled to "conform, accommodate, challenge or reject", meaning that the audience are yet again not passive, and in fact "manipulate" the media in some sense if they're willing to do so. Examples include social media plateforms, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, where the "culture of freedom" is more pronounced as users can express their subjective opinions on anything by tweeting, re-tweeting, pinning a post, and simply using the app's special features. As a result, pluralists would yet again agree that new/digital media empowers them, as opinions shared on the Internet can be seen by anyone and can also in a sense be unremoved, as a theorist once stated, "Trying to take information out of the Internet is like trying to take piss out of a pool...". An example of this "stained information" on the Internet would be the Arab Spring protests, where protests took place both in states with a very high level of Internet usage (such as Bahrain with 88% of its population online in 2011).

In result, a Marxism would probably be more criticized for the ideologies in modern day, as the dynamics of information and structures have completely changed within time, almost in a sense making some of their beliefs obsolete. 

social media passiveness, - echo chambers

http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/11/20/what-happened-social-media-being-conversation-platform-instead-echo-chamber

What happened to social media being a conversation platform instead of an echo chamber?

The article describes social media to currently be that "Curated and personalised news feeds are driving us into holes we might not be able to dig ourselves out of", meaning, we’re becoming more and more self-absorbed with those that share our own views. The article presents other influences on this, including Facebook where in 2013 the 'unfollow' feature was introduced. It gave users the ability to quietly unsubscribe from a friend’s feed without their friend knowing – hiding your friend's right wing views and pictures of their cats from your feed, for example – but to anyone else you're still friends.

• nearly one-third of social media users (31%) say they have changed their settings in order to see fewer posts from someone in their feed because of something related to politics
• while 27% have blocked or unfriended someone for that reason
• taken together, this amounts to 39% of social media users – and 60% of them indicate that they took this step because someone was posting political content that they found offensive.

As lastly stated by the article: "Did social media contribute to putting Trump into the White House or voting us out of the EU? Yes, but it isn't social media's fault; it's ours for not challenging the rhetoric and abandoning the debate." Which basically comments on how sometimes the audience in social media is passive and lets a dominating opinion that one would agree with, control their core beliefs, and this belief simply spreads with a snowball effect.

new zealand media merger and clickbait

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/26/new-zealand-media-merger-risks-growth-of-glib-click-bait-coverage-say-editors

New Zealand media merger risks growth of 'glib, click-bait' coverage, say editors

The article discusses how the merging of two media companies, 'Farifax Media' and 'NZME', would be a threat to democracy in a country like New Zealand, where already  it is suffering a dearth of serious content, as commented by former editors of the two companies. Three of the editors, Suzanne Chetwin, former Dominion chief Richard Long and ex-New Zealand Herald editor Gavin Ellis, criticise the trend towards “click-bait stories” at a time when television has “all but abandoned current affairs and our public discourse is increasingly glib”. As a result, the merger was sold as an attempt by both companies to stem revenue losses and drastic staff and budget cuts, particularly to rural and regional newsrooms.

• The merger would see one organisation controlling nearly 90% of the country’s print media market (and associated websites), the greatest level of concentration in the OECD and one that is exceeded only by China

News institutions have now as a result taken an unethical approach to news consumption, where they have no disregard for the quality of news they're presenting but instead putting up with 'clickbait' titles, purposely trying to grab users' attention in order to sustain revenue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38064854

Trump wages war on 'dishonest' media 'but will now meet NY Times'

The article discuses how president elect Donald Trump is being put in a worse image than he already is by the New York Times, where he accused the news company of giving him "unfair" media coverage. Throughout his campaign to consult this issue, Mr Trump accused the media of dishonesty, sometimes targeting individual journalists at his rallies and even denying some outlets accreditation to his events.

He feuded with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who later alleged that he had offered her gifts, including hotel stays, in an attempt to influence coverage. In short, this just emphasizes the extent to how much power the media has.

As said before, the media has a huge hegemonic influence on how the audience views a certain figure or event, and this is most affecting people in politics or in an important 'hard news' field like Donald Trump. The fact that Donald Trump is trying to bribe his way into making his image positive says enough about the influence the media has.

Obama is worried about fake news

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/20/barack-obama-facebook-fake-news-problem

Obama is worried about fake news on social media – and we should be too

The article discusses how Obama states that we live "In an age where there’s so much active misinformation, and it’s packaged very well...", introducing influences such as Facebook, television, or in other words, the media to have been the embodiment of misinformation by presenting rumours and wrong information to people. Simply, he states that “everything is true and nothing is true” as a way of saying that information on the Internet is hard to distinct between genuine and true, against lies and false.

The fact that a significant figure such as Barack Obama has commented and shed light into this topic, surely the outcome will be that audiences will now be more skeptic, but as a result may also damage their reliance and trust as a whole in the sense that news institutions will now feel less confident in the information they present.

marxism and pluralism: alain de botton

Marxism & Pluralism: Alain de Botton on the news

1.) Alain de Botton's statement, explaining how new and digital media, and technology, has had a huge influence on news is without a doubt something to agree with. He raises questions like: How come disaster stories are often so uplifting? What makes the love lives of celebrities so interesting? Why do we enjoy politicians being brought down? Why are upheavals in far off lands often so… boring? In short, he is trying to insinuate the passiveness the audience in modern society are subject to by the media, where they're sort of being fed.

2.) Hegemonic views and Marxism give news a sense of a dominant ideology being fed towards their passive audiences, where they've only seen and have been 'forcefully' given information to be consumed, and to not be questioned. As a result, they're blindsighted by a more real and honest approach, such as other views from UGC, where users share their perspective of the situation, and instead where the media may not always show this perspective to cover up the story for specific reasons.

3.) Alain's 'pathology' in which news institutions are sort of the only source to some people's news consumption, and as a result are only being fed to one side of an event, is somewhat true. However, as stated with the use of technology earlier, audiences are now in more control of what type and how they consume news on a much more vast range of levels with the use of technology and the world wide web. 

4.) http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/so-brand-victim-fake-news-what/1416180

"Last week, the proliferation of fake news on social media ignited a debate over its influence on the election. And two global brands, Pepsi and New Balance, got caught in the online vitriol when top company executives were misquoted in fabricated articles that went viral, and consumers called for boycotts of their products."

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/03/youtube-upgrades-its-comments-system-to-give-creators-more-control/

"YouTube upgrades its comments system to give creators more control. YouTube today is rolling out an upgrade to its comments system, with the goal of putting creators more in control of which comments get featured in the feed, as well as the ability to better interact with their viewers and fans."

marxism, pluralism and hegemony

NDM: Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

1.) In summary, Ian Thompson, an elderly man, was beaten on the leg with a baton by police during  a protest while being suspected to be one of the protesters, while the end result being his death, and while he was innocent, minding his own business, which has caused a lot of controversy regarding the topic of police brutality. 

The preferred hegemonic view of this incident would be to blandly defend the police force as they're thought to protect citizens that do no wrong, and vice versa to criminals. However, any sane person would agree that Thompson was a victim of unnecessary police brutality, and clearly seen from the UGC video Thompson was not apart of the protest and was simply minding his business, to which then the police officer unprofessionally couldn't compose himself with. The new and digital media as a result then challenges this cover up that the media would have bought to defend the police force's image, while UGC clearly says otherwise, presenting objective evidence.

2.) The author, Nick Lacey, explores whether Web 2.0 has really democratised our access to the media, and switched the power from producers to audiences, or whether it has simply become absorbed into the values of 'old media'. In short, Lacey believes that hegemonic values can be challenged by the new and digital media, where social networking apps to spread UGC, therefore we are not this passive audience that simply is subject to being fed news, and that media is no longer 'gatekeepers' anymore.

3.) I think any rational user on the Internet would look one step further, therefore challenge any situation that is happening based on the objective information they see, and this happens to be UGC that seems to be the catalyst to these challenges. Of course too, the media is much less like the 'old media' now, where there is a constant switch between the black and white side of news, and is very hard to give a definitive judgement purely based on what information you're being presented with. As a result, consumers can turn to other alternative news consumption, for example, social networking apps such as Twitter to share your opinions as well as acknowledge other people's opinions.

4.) The hegemonic values of political events, especially concerning presidential candidates have taken their influence and their effect to the point other countries feel as if they're being affected as a result too. Obviously, people would challenge the dominant ideology between their opinion on who should've rightfully been the president of United States, and whether the outcome was the right judgement or not, based on their subjective opinions. This is the same case of Brexit, where people have accused the voters of the winning opposition to have been 'racist'.