The new media have enabled ordinary people to access and report, criticise, comment on and share more news and information than ever before. This has promote a culture of questioning, challenging and holding to account the power, decisions and actions of elite hierarchies, government and other organisations. Ordinary people consequently have more power in society.
Applying material from the item, and your knowledge, evaluate the impact of the new media on the contemporary society (20)
New media has opened up new possibilities for the consumer which weren't present with traditional media. This has impacted the way in which media is produced and consumed, which in turn has also affected the way in which society acts, interprets and approaches media.
Cultural optimists state that, as ordinary people now have the opportunity to create media (via camera phones and accessible technology - citizen journalism) and interact with each other via media (Facebook, Snapchat etc.), the way in which people consume and are subjected to media has now changed. New media has opened new possibilities for the audience which weren't present with just traditional media, as the source states. Cultural optimists see this as a positive change, because it leads to empowerment of the people, as it provides the people with information, which is knowledge, and knowledge is power (McNair). It also provides people with the ability to criticise what they're shown. As a result, now the audience is not passive as they once were, as they can now play an active role in the creation and distribution of media. This disproves the hypodermic syringe theory as it shows that the audience isn't passive in it's reception of media, and shows that the theory is outdated due to the fact that they're active in how it's made and that they can interact with it.
On the other hand, cultural pessimists argue that citizen journalism on news, and as a result society as a whole. News is now less likely to be reliable and accurate because the evidence, e.g. phone recordings or unverifiable sources, are very hard to distinguish from real or false reporting. For example, the 'Fake News' craze in America shows a large scale example of how the credibility of information can be disputed based on the reliability of it's sources. In addition, the viral nature of citizen journalism - its ease in being spread quickly, and the availability of it, means that media companies have to quickly produce articles to appease their audience. This has lead to 'tabloidization' (Thussu 2007), where information is simplified and cut down to the bare necessary facts, so its quickly produced and able to be consumed by the audience in the 'snacking' (quick, easily digestible articles) format that has become the norm. Both of these points show that new media has changed the way in which the audience consumes media - due to the unreliable aspect of new media and the change in how it's consumed, in modern society news has less information, is made faster, and is less reliable.
New media has also affected the previous status quo of media owners and their relationship with the audience. The top-down ownership has been challenged by new media, and replaced by 'cultural chaos' (McNair). 75% of newspapers are owned by four people, News Corp alone owns 32%, meaning that a very small number of people had control over the vast majority of news we consume, which leads to restricted exposure of what he audience hears in line with the owner's own agendas and political bias, according to the 'Manipulative Approach' from the Marxist perspective. For example, Curran and Seaton (2010) found that all 175 of New Corp's newspapers were in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, clearly showing bias from Murdoch. News was restricted, dumbed down, and had overt bias according to this approach. New media can be seen to stop this domination to a certain degree, as blogs, social media and smaller companies can now compete more easily with large conglomerations. However, Bivens disagrees with this statement - saying that the shift in power is small, and small, elite groups with continue to shape media output, although the method in which they do so may evolve, going against the item, and so society isn't impacted by this.
A combination of new media and globalisation has led to a decreasing distinction between high and popular culture, which affects society in a number of ways. Post Modernists argue that globalisation has led to a global culture - making all products and ideas open to everyone, and not restricted for the 'elite'. McLuhan with his 'Global Village' theory suggests that electronic media collapses time and space in communication, connecting media together to create a linked version of the web - supported by Lister with his view that new media has hypertextuality - it's linked to other media, which via globalisation is linked across the world, so a massive amount of the population shares the same media. So new media has affected society in that it's lessened the distinction between high and low culture, making popular culture an amalgamation between both, as well as being combined with global culture to shift even more from the original popular culture.
In conclusion, new media has impacted society in many ways, for example altering the way in which news is interpreted and produced, how the distribution of media affects what news is shown and what the people have easily available, and changing what popular culture is and how it's defined. It has hard a large impact on contemporary society, creating new possibilities for the audience and changing how the media operates.
Applying material from the item, and your knowledge, evaluate the impact of the new media on the contemporary society (20)
New media has opened up new possibilities for the consumer which weren't present with traditional media. This has impacted the way in which media is produced and consumed, which in turn has also affected the way in which society acts, interprets and approaches media.
Cultural optimists state that, as ordinary people now have the opportunity to create media (via camera phones and accessible technology - citizen journalism) and interact with each other via media (Facebook, Snapchat etc.), the way in which people consume and are subjected to media has now changed. New media has opened new possibilities for the audience which weren't present with just traditional media, as the source states. Cultural optimists see this as a positive change, because it leads to empowerment of the people, as it provides the people with information, which is knowledge, and knowledge is power (McNair). It also provides people with the ability to criticise what they're shown. As a result, now the audience is not passive as they once were, as they can now play an active role in the creation and distribution of media. This disproves the hypodermic syringe theory as it shows that the audience isn't passive in it's reception of media, and shows that the theory is outdated due to the fact that they're active in how it's made and that they can interact with it.
On the other hand, cultural pessimists argue that citizen journalism on news, and as a result society as a whole. News is now less likely to be reliable and accurate because the evidence, e.g. phone recordings or unverifiable sources, are very hard to distinguish from real or false reporting. For example, the 'Fake News' craze in America shows a large scale example of how the credibility of information can be disputed based on the reliability of it's sources. In addition, the viral nature of citizen journalism - its ease in being spread quickly, and the availability of it, means that media companies have to quickly produce articles to appease their audience. This has lead to 'tabloidization' (Thussu 2007), where information is simplified and cut down to the bare necessary facts, so its quickly produced and able to be consumed by the audience in the 'snacking' (quick, easily digestible articles) format that has become the norm. Both of these points show that new media has changed the way in which the audience consumes media - due to the unreliable aspect of new media and the change in how it's consumed, in modern society news has less information, is made faster, and is less reliable.
New media has also affected the previous status quo of media owners and their relationship with the audience. The top-down ownership has been challenged by new media, and replaced by 'cultural chaos' (McNair). 75% of newspapers are owned by four people, News Corp alone owns 32%, meaning that a very small number of people had control over the vast majority of news we consume, which leads to restricted exposure of what he audience hears in line with the owner's own agendas and political bias, according to the 'Manipulative Approach' from the Marxist perspective. For example, Curran and Seaton (2010) found that all 175 of New Corp's newspapers were in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, clearly showing bias from Murdoch. News was restricted, dumbed down, and had overt bias according to this approach. New media can be seen to stop this domination to a certain degree, as blogs, social media and smaller companies can now compete more easily with large conglomerations. However, Bivens disagrees with this statement - saying that the shift in power is small, and small, elite groups with continue to shape media output, although the method in which they do so may evolve, going against the item, and so society isn't impacted by this.
A combination of new media and globalisation has led to a decreasing distinction between high and popular culture, which affects society in a number of ways. Post Modernists argue that globalisation has led to a global culture - making all products and ideas open to everyone, and not restricted for the 'elite'. McLuhan with his 'Global Village' theory suggests that electronic media collapses time and space in communication, connecting media together to create a linked version of the web - supported by Lister with his view that new media has hypertextuality - it's linked to other media, which via globalisation is linked across the world, so a massive amount of the population shares the same media. So new media has affected society in that it's lessened the distinction between high and low culture, making popular culture an amalgamation between both, as well as being combined with global culture to shift even more from the original popular culture.
In conclusion, new media has impacted society in many ways, for example altering the way in which news is interpreted and produced, how the distribution of media affects what news is shown and what the people have easily available, and changing what popular culture is and how it's defined. It has hard a large impact on contemporary society, creating new possibilities for the audience and changing how the media operates.
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