Does your case study suggest that new and digital media have had a positive impact by offering audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies?
New and digital media offers audiences a diverse range of values and ideologies; through the news and music industry, it is evident that there are both positive and negative impacts on audiences. The impact of new and digital media on both the news and music industry have enabled audiences to become more dominant and liberated through the idea of the internet offering a democratic space, however it can also be argued that this is merely an illusion thus the power ultimately lies with the institutions.
Social media offers a democratic space for audiences to engage with a diverse range of values and ideologies whilst simultaneously having the ability to produce user generated content thus the rise of citizen journalism is extremely beneficial for audiences. "The internet is an empowering tool... an exciting and revolutionary prospect" (Al Gore) and therefore citizen journalism allows audiences to share authentic, raw gritty footage of particular news events online and on social media. Ordinary people are able to influence the news agenda and thus transform the infrastructure of the news by creating a new meaning to Galtung and Ruge's news value of 'immediacy.' The ability to live stream on a number of social networking platforms such as Facebook Live, Periscope and Snapchat, enables audiences to access news immediately as soon as it happens. This therefore provides raw evidence for the law enforcement as this footage is unable to be edited as it is live streamed. A brilliant example of this is the Eric Garner case which was filmed on a mobile phone by a bystander. The footage reveals an unsettling image of Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City police officer, kneeling on Garner's head whilst he pleads 7 times that he cannot breathe. Although this footage was brought up in trail, Pantaleo was not indicted, revealing the corrupt law enforcement thus allowing audiences to come together in order to share their views and opinions on the situation of 'Black Lives Matter' which is a huge campaign. Twitter has enabled audiences to therefore initiate campaigns such as 'Black Lives Matter' and therefore allows audiences to collectively aid positive images of black identity. A more recent case is the 15 year old Texas boy, who was shot by a police officer which was filmed on officers body cameras. Based on nationwide data collected by The Guardian, black Americans are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be killed by police when accounting for population. In 2016, "police killed black Americans at a rate of 6.66 per 1 million people, compared to 2.9 per 1 million for white Americans." These results are ultimately shocking and thus the ability to share content online and share values and ideologies allows collective audiences to be part of a participatory media, where user generated content matters and is valued by audiences thus supporting Jenkins idea of celebrating this 'participatory' media, believing the media is now replaced with an egalitarian approach. Social media therefore allows audiences to come together and be extremely powerful in terms of what they are able to share and be exposed to.
However, on the contrary, it can be argued that citizen journalism has had a negative impact on audiences as they are essentially exposed to extremist views and ideologies which are essentially harder to censor and regulate due to the elimination of gatekeepers online. Facebook Live has been extremely controversial recently with the live stream of Steve Stephens murdering a 74 year old man; the video remained on Facebook for more than 2 hours and was shared and viewed a countless number of times. With Facebook being the most used platform with 22% of the world population being active users and having 79% of American users it exacerbates the control of the organisation and reveals the heightened difficulty of censorship online. A broader example is ISIS beheading videos and graphic torture content which is easily accessible online, which reveals the negative impact of new and digital media, enabling extremists to showcase their ideologies. Although footage is unedited, aiding audiences with 'surveillance' (Blumler + Katz, Uses and Gratifications theory), it can also be argued that it is extremely easy to manipulate footage and an image, evidently proven by 3 British males who posted a picture on Facebook saying they were in Syria. They also sent Snapchats to journalists as ‘proof’ that they were in Syria, revealing the effects of manipulation and how citizen journalism could just be something that brings about this “15 minutes of fame” and the quality of this offers a negative impact on audiences. This also reinforces Livingstone/Bober’s 2005 findings of “38% of UK pupils aged 9-19 never question the accuracy of online information.” Therefore, whilst audiences may feel empowered by the ability to create user generated content, the quality and validity of the values and ideologies that they are being exposed to are questionable thus impacting audiences negatively rather than positively.
With the rapid technological advancements of new and digital media and more significantly, free technology, audiences are able to access a wide range of news sources, allowing them to stay up to date with current affairs. According to a 2015 Ofcom report of news consumption, 43% of 16-24 year olds access news from social networking platforms, revealing the importance of social networking for the youth demographic in particular. The rise of the “technological blossoming of the culture of freedom, individual innovation and entrepreneurialism,” (Castell, 1996), has spurred the decline of the newspaper industry thus enables audiences to be empowered through accessing what they personally want rather than what the newspaper editors carefully craft. Audiences no longer have to wait for a newspaper to be printed, instead are aware of current affairs as soon as it happens. Audiences can thus access a wide range of values and ideologies and shift across the political spectrum enabling them to be exposed to several opinions, offering them the ability to know more. The fact that online news is also free, also reveals the importance of news as a 'public good' as Clay Shirky believes. However the fact that it is free also allows audiences to take advantage of this thus audiences are no longer passive and can therefore choose what news they want. Alain de Botton argues that the architecture of news has almost been dilapidated and deconstructed by audiences' dominance as they are able to choose what to click on, most popular being stories addressing popular culture rather than important news. de Botton also argues that audiences are manipulated to believe that news has to invigorate a 'moral panic' (Stanley Cohen) and either involve death or involve some sort of hope. This therefore reinforces the Cultivation Theory and Gerbner's idea of 'Mean World Sydnrome,' as the media drip feeds similar negative media messages thus making audiences susceptible to adopting a negative view of the world. Alain de Botton believes that the audience wants to receive news that either contains some sort of moral panic as that’s what we have been conditioned to know. Thus, stories for example of the 14 year old cryogenically frozen girl becomes one about death and false hope for technology that is not yet developed, thus making it an increasingly popular story due to the conditioning of the media on audiences. New and digital media has enabled audiences to access a wide range of values and ideologies immediately and rapidly but this stimulates the issue of the change of news values and the news agenda.
Furthermore, the dystopian view of hyper-reality can also be perceived as a negative impact for audiences as they are exposed to so much news that the importance of it can no longer be justified, revealing the negative aspect of being able to access far more. Jean Baudrillard argues that audiences live in a world of hyper-reality where the media world is more 'real' than reality itself and this dichotomy between what is 'real' and what is an illusion has simply collapsed, thus audiences become passive to capitalist conglomerates. Audiences are therefore more susceptible to fake news as they are unable to distinguish this from reality. If a news story is unquestioned by the dominant portion of mass consumers, it is therefore seen as 'common sense' and therefore should be accepted by audiences due to the hegemonic value of it. In addition, this relates to Althusser's theory as ideology dominates an audiences' life through the ideological state apparatus (ISA), as the media implicitly dominate through common sense, acceptance and social norms. During the US Elections, an analysis by BuzzFeed found that 38% of posts shared from three large rightwing politics pages on Facebook included “false or misleading information,” thus the issue of fake news being the cause of Trump's election is an interesting debate. Similarly, with Brexit, although not necessarily focusing on fake news but more the distribution of news as the media coverage during the time was heavily pro-Brexit according to a study at Loughborough university, thus highlighting the manipulation of the media as an essentially biased space that is controlled by conglomerates. China is a great example of a country who employ extreme censorship; they fully block or temporarily 'black out' online platforms during periods of controversy, for example the June 4th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. From this, it is evident to audiences that the media has an influence on audiences in terms of values and ideologies and what is essentially being 'fed' to them. Ultimately, Marxists would argue that the elite are in control of the media therefore these ideologies are purely an illusion.With that being said, it can therefore be argued from a Marxist perspective, that although audiences are able to access a diverse range of values and ideologies, all of this is manipulated by corporations that essentially want audiences to passively hold this illusion of being in power of choosing what they read and consume, where in reality, conglomerates control everything. This idea of Functionalism and this 'collective consciousness' relates to Chomsky and Herman, revealing how the media manipulates populations to prevent them from rebelling. This idea of the 'echo chamber' thus makes it much more difficult for audiences to distinguish reality from fake news as audiences would find it harder to neglect values and ideologies similar to their own. This also relates to Blumler + Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory and their idea of 'personal identity' which makes it a struggle for audiences to disconnect from others sharing the same values and ideologies. This therefore makes it hard for audiences to filter out fake news themselves due to this concept of hyper-reality. Although new and digital media offers audiences a range of values and ideologies, the validity and truth within these are questionable and therefore reveals the negative impact it has had on audiences.
However, from a Pluralist perspective, it can be argued that new and digital media has benefited audiences as they are able to become liberated through the access of a range of values and ideologies through the idea of globalisation. Audiences now have the ability to access news from all around the world instantly and therefore American news also becomes news to us in Britain for example. This therefore allows us to access news from hometowns too as current affairs in small towns such as a small village in Paraguay for example can be easily accessed through online sources. McLuhan's 'global village' is a great concept to understand the terms of globalisation and this concept of unity within the world. However, it can also be argued that due to the rise of globalisation, there is now a lack of local journalism, therefore cultural imperialism takes over and American news for example becomes more important and significant. Due to this lack of journalism, the local news stories published become ones of mere opinion polls and ones to generate interest rather than significance. For example the Newcastle Chronicle recently published an article about fining people for feeding seagulls, therefore generating interest for the local community as it involves them specifically. The quality of news is therefore in decline from this as a result of new and digital media enabling audiences to access a range of stories and sources, allowing audiences to choose what is important to them.
The music industry is a great industry to explore in terms of the illusions of audiences; thus reveals the negative impact of new and digital on audiences, through the process of standardisation and homogenisation. Theodor Adorno argues that media products are simply filled with images of goods produced by a capitalist society, therefore creating false needs for an audience. The cultural production is taken away from artists and placed in the hands of the big corporations, the huge conglomerates which operate in an oligopoly, thus revealing the hegemonic control these corporations have over audiences. There is this element of pseudo-individuation which means that there are slight differences within certain music, however they are essentially the same, for example boy bands; there are incidental differences between Take That and One Direction, however they have the same standardised approach to create a catchy song to appeal to all mainstream audiences, thus offering audiences the exact same set of shared values and ideologies rather than diverse. This illusion however means that artists no longer have freedom to produce individual music as it is simply controlled by the conglomerates. However, it can be argued that the rise of new technology has actually had a positive impact for audiences as artists are essentially able to distribute their music independently through social media and the use of free technology, without the backing of an actual record label. Chance the Rapper is a pioneer; he is an independent artist who is not signed to a record label and relies purely on sponsorships, merchandise and live concerts to take the place of album sales. His recent album 'The Colouring Book,' was the first artist to get on the Billboard 200 charts based on streams online. The fact that Chance is able to produce his music and be hugely successful without the backing of a record label reveals the threat for record labels but it highlights a positive impact for audiences as they are able to hear independent music that is not controlled by corporate capitalism, thus revealing the positive impact of new and digital media for audiences in terms of music.
Independent record labels are also becoming extremely successful through the use of new and digital media and therefore offers a diverse range of values and ideologies for audiences as they are able to be exposed to explicit social and political commentary. This is evident with the independent record label TopDawgEntertainment which is owned by Anthony Tiffith, who allows all his artists to have 'total creative control' of what they produce. This is explicitly shown through the recent album produced by Kendrick Lamar, one of the most well-known member of TDE and arguable the most political. His recent album 'Damn' mentions the recent US elections and the current state of America; he also focuses on the Black Lives Matter campaign and responds back to FOX news who said 'hip hop has done more damage to African-Americans than racism itself.' Geraldo Rivera reported this after Lamar's BET awards performance in 2015, where he rapped a song about black lives and the corrupt law enforcement on top of a police car. Lamar responded to Rivera through YouTube, saying 'how can you take a song about hope and turn it into hatred.' Lamar essentially is able to aid positive images of black men and therefore subvert stereotypes of black people being 'decivilised' (Alvarado). Due to the humble image presented by Lamar, audiences are able to personally identify with him, thus issues of the black man become 'universal identification' (Shepherd et al) rather than simply issues related to black people. Audiences are able to positively to be impacted by the truth, the social and political commentary through music thus allowing a wide range of audiences to be exposed to a diverse range of values and ideologies. The impact of globalisation and cultural imperialism can therefore be seen as a positively beneficial one, that enables world-wide views to be heard. The impact of independent artists therefore enable audiences to be attached to the truth rather than media products that merely fulfil the corporate model of today's mainstream music industry.
Audiences have been largely benefited by new and digital media as it does indeed offer a wide range of values and ideologies through the access of a large spectrum of news stories and music accessibility. However, it can be argued that ultimately, corporate capitalism and conglomerates merely create illusions for audiences thus the values and ideologies presented can be seen, in regards to the news industry, as completely structured to be unquestioned, thus audiences are prone to be conditioned by the news that involves a moral panic rather, meaning that although audiences are exposed to a diverse range of values and ideologies but the dominant mass population still ultimately share the same set of values, which has been manipulated by the media. Similarly, the music industry is victim to the mainstream hegemonic control over artists and what they produce through homogenisation, however the rise of independent artists and the transformation due to new and digital media, has had a more positive impact on audiences as they are exposed to a diverse range of values and ideologies that are not controlled by conglomerates. Ultimately, it can be argued that the rise of independent labels and artists are currently not enough to capitalise the conglomerates, thus the mass population and mainstream consumers are subject to the illusion that these record labels portray. The illusion of a diverse range of values and ideologies are therefore evident for both the mass news and music industry, alluding audiences to the belief that they are positively impacted by this, when in reality they are simply slaves to the corporations.
