NDM Essay: Marx and Plural Response

"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."

New and digital media has arguably revolutionised our social climate, allowing audiences to embody a sense of power when consuming and producing products. However, there is sufficient evidence that can dispute these developments and this essay will challenge the opposing views. 

The rise in new and digital media developments have empowered audiences in terms of producing, through the increasing ability of user generated content. For instance, as The Guardian's recent article outlined, "Twitter introduces a poll feature" (25/09/2015), which allowed audiences to create their own polls and interact with each other. Similarly, other social networking sites such as 'Facebook' and 'YouTube' have provided the element of user generated content, through the 'comments' section added below videos and articles. In terms of Blumbler and Katz, this is a prime example of 'Personal Relationships' through the strong interactivity element where audiences can verbalise their own views, while responding to others. A common denominator between the social mediums is how their developments have empowered audiences through having the abilit of creating their own online 'characters', i.e.  Facebook profiles allow individuals to display their own statuses, pictures and videos.

Pluralists would support this and agree that the new developments have allowed audiences to create their own media products. In particular, Castells described these developments as "...blossoming of the culture of freedom, individual innovation and entrepreneurialsm" - evident through blogs and vlogs. These innovations have proven to be a success, as shown through the "Blogosphere Magazine: Issue 5". The magazine outlines the success that has followed different YouTubers. For instance, "The Beauty Crush", who featured on the front cover of issue 5, is a prominent example of a normal girl from London, who used new technological enhancements to empower herself and become successful, as reiterated through her 1,683,350 subscriber base on YouTube. Therefore, pluralists would use this as solid evidence to support their dominant ideology that we live in a classless society and everybody has an equal chance to evolve, which can happen through audiences utilising new and digital media technologies to empower themselves.  

Additionally, new media developments have empowered audiences through Citizen Journalism. Over the years there have been many cases to prove this, such as the most recent in 2014, Eric Garner - “#I can’t Breathe” story, which went viral on several leading social media platforms  – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. The video captured the attack of a black male being strangled to death by a white male police officer in the USA. Not only did this result in a public outcry (Moral Panic, Cohen), but it enabled one audience member in particular (the witness), to produce news that would have initially not fitted into the news values (Galtung and Ruges, 1981), such as elite people, that news conglomerates base their daily headlines upon. To further reiterate this, in Paul Lewis’ Tedx lecture he stated “certain things are becoming news due to citizen journalism”, which signifies the extreme power that audiences have in producing content that can make ground breaking differences.

However, the Marxist view would refute this and argue that the bourgeois ultimately hold all power, leaving audiences disempowered by these technological developments. This is prominent through the lack of privacy and intense amount of surveillance that revolves around social networking sites, reiterated by the views of Vint Cerf from Google: "Privacy may be an anomaly, now over." The invasion of privacy which the elite can make at any given time, indicates the minuscule amount of power that the proletariat (mass public consumers) hold in regards to new media technologies. Furthermore, if audiences produces content deemed as "breaking out" of the hegemonic status quo, it will be removed, fooling audiences into a false sense of empowerment. In Alain de Botton's recent lecture he too accentuates this idea: "anybody who puts a different point forward is a radical - then is sidelined as an extremist". 

The Telegraph’s article “Facebook bug shows users how many people have viewed their posts” additionally holds sufficient evidence that hardly anybody reads status's if they are not attached to an important figure in the public eye. Therefore, one could argue against Krotoski’s “The Great Leveller” comment about new technologies  seems to solely benefit the elite in terms of money and their underlying power. This ultimately is fooling audiences through hegemonic control into believing they too have power. An unquestionable example to support this would be James Murdoch’s statement: “The internet has given readers much more power”, which has proven to be untrue through the monitoring that restricts audience publicising their own opinions that break out of the status quo. In particular, it would be within James Murdoch’s interest to encourage audiences into this “illusion of power” to disguise all of the power that he holds. Marxists can thereby underline the clarification that the elite are the ones who are in power and the audiences are dis-empowered, as shown through profits margins and their ability to act as the puppeteers monitoring the movement of the proletariats.   

To conclude, it is difficult to dispute that the institutions and conglomerate leaders have in fact maintained a significant amount of power through new and digital media technologies. But in fact, most of the evidence suggests that the plural approach to argument is more prominent and there have been an array of developments that have empowered audiences.