Marxism & Pluralism: To what extent...?

NDM Question: Developments in new/digital media mean that audiences can now have access to a greater variety of views and values.  To what extent are audiences empowered by these developments?

New and Digital media has arguably revolutionised our social climate and increased the empowerment of audiences within the media. In the words of Briggs and Burke, it is "the most important medium of the twentieth century". Pluralists would support this through evidence such as Twitter's interactivity and most recent involvement of incorporating a 'heart' to replace the 'favourite' button, allowing audiences to highlight the tweets and posts that they feel most passionate about.  On social networking sites such as 'Twitter', audiences are able to have their quiet voices heard and pluralists would agree that new and digital media allows audiences to express their views that would have initially never been heard. Castells, 1996 comment of new and digital media as "technolgical blossoming of the culture of freedom" reinforces this. In particular, they see the dominant theme of interactivity that circulates the new and digital media as a positive aspect adding to human interaction. A noteworthy point in regards to Twitter is the video element that allows audiences to publish 30 second or longer, clips of whatever they please. This prominent example of audience empowerment also relates to the theme of citizen journalism where pluralists would accentuate the positivity drawn from new and digital media developments. In the case of Ian Tomlinson in 2009, if it wasn’t for the digital film that captured the police officer attacking the innocent man, the officer wouldn’t have faced any punishment. Therefore, liberal pluralists would highlight that new and digital media developments lead to a more democratic society and even the powerful can be scrutinised and brought down when in the wrong. Additionally, many other citizen journalism cases such as “I can’t Breathe”, Eric Garner 2014, clearly illustrate the empowerment of new and digital media for audiences as they were able to democratically convey their views in regards to the brutal death of the black American. 

Marxists however, would dispute this strongly through their intensive belief that the media is controlled by the bourgeois who are the acting puppeteers against the weak proletariats. This is evident through their supporting ideology that social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, are ultimately run by rich white males, who additionally have access to a large array of personal content created by consumers. Vint Cerf from Google would enforce this issue behind new and digitial media as "privacy may be an anomaly, now over". This prominently supports the disempowerment of audience’s privacy due to new technological developments. A prime example of this audience disempowerment would be through the celebrity I-Cloud scandal, where nude images of stars such as Jennifer Lawrence were exposed to the mass populace. This clearly shows the conniving  acts conglomerate leaders will embody to maintain power and control and as Natalie Fenton stated "those who have power, use it in particular ways". Also, in response to the pluralistic view that sites such as 'Twitter' enable "quiet voices to be heard", is in fact simply unrealistic, as the Marxist view would greatly support. This is clear through the fact that with all loud voices comes a sense of status and power (shown through following bases on social networking sites); thereby resulting in how many people will end up viewing the content. And in most cases, anybody with less than 20,000 followers and a celebrity status, on Twitter is far less likely to make a global impact and embrace a fulfilment of empowerment through new and digital media technologies as they are ultimately the proletariats in society and only the bourgeois are listened too. 

In my opinion, I too agree with the Marxist view as the ultimate power lies with the bourgeois who embody the highest status of empowerment when it comes to new and digital media developments as they are able to control and monitor the acts of audiences. Ultimately the conglomerate leader's are fooling audiences into believing that through verbalising their opinions on social networking sites societies becoming more democratic and audiences too are holding a greater sense of empowerment, when in fact it is a simple disguise and masquerade to hide the corruption of the bourgeois power who hold the ultimate hold against the proletariats (mass public) and remaining undeniable control.