Marxism & Pluralism: essay

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?

Audiences are empowered by new and digital media due to the recent advancements of the internet and how it's had a massive impact to people’s daily lifes. With the internet it helps people with their views on society this links with pluralism which links with the ideology of the majority who are not the elite have all of the power to do what they want and are free to do as they please and people live in a classes society and that people society is created by the people who are in it. This empowers people because of the factor of the majority all believing in a brighter future fighting the presence of "The Man" being the big elitist group that is the big cooperation’s like the BBC, BSKYB and NewsCorp. This empowers people because "The internet is an empowering tool ... an exciting and revolutionary prospect". 

With Hegemony it's all about the idea of the elite having control over the general public with presenting their views and ideas and the general public accepting them as common sense with the big media cooperation’s brain washing the general public to make them believe whatever the news cooperation's personal agenda is. This is the ideology of hegemony with the elite brain washing and manipulating what they are thinking without the need of violence or over-powering pressure but with persuasive and manipulative techniques to make the reader or listen believe that they have free will but in reality they have none. And Marxist is very similar with its beliefs, their ideology is all about the idea of the middle class becoming the biggest group in all of the social classes which leads to the idea of "Rebellion is encapsulated in the internet" it's all about control from the elite and convincing the masses that they have free will with stops the ideology of empowerment because their belief in empowered is all a calculated risk from the elite playing with the middle class like puppets. With the internet it does pose an immediate threat but not a dominant one it still have time to be control by the industry with "Top 5% of all websites accounted for 75% of user volume","57% of 9-19 year old have come into contact with pornographic material online" and "38% of UK Pupils aged 9-19 never question the accuracy of online information". So even when the public have an escape from the over controlling media with the internet who really controlling it, it's just another set of Media Cooperation's.

I going to start this question with an example that showcases both sides of the theory. "HackGate" was a key example of how both media theories work at the same time. Firstly this situation happened when News of the World started hacking celebrities phones to get any information they can from their answering machines and as a result the general public didn't care how they got this information just that they got it in the first place. However this all changed when they hacked into a murder victims phone in 2010 and this completely changed the public opinion of News of the World (even if they have been doing this for years) and has lead to the News of the World being closed down. The reason why I say that this is includes both theories is that with Marxist the general public was accepting whatever the big news cooperation's have to say and send to them and as a result this leads to the general public not challenging the news companies and how they are getting this information. With pluralism people started to challenge News of the World the moment when they found out where they were getting that information from and this means that the people rallied against News of the World so both theories are at work during this news story. This shows how people are empowered and unempowered as well because they were controlled by the big media companies and enjoyed the status quo and until they found out how they got that info it led to people revolting against to the big media companies.

Another story comes from the Coronal Gaddafi and the story of his death and how pluralism has empowered the audiences too much and has an negative effect on the news. When Colonel Gaddafi died his dead body was preserved in a freezer room so that anyone can take a picture of a dead man. This led to the media taking a picture of the dead body and posting it into the news as well. No moral panic was sparked and that is a problem, pluralism has led to people having too much power and has corrupted news as the way we see it. It's become the case that audiences are too overpowered when Rupert Murdoch said that "Newspapers need to adapt to survive" the adaptation may lead to a new version of news that is unrecognisable. If there is no moral panic to a story that is graphic and might include someone who is universally hated but it's still a human being that doesn't deserve to be hang out in public like a puppet.

Another example of Pluralist views empowering people is Ferguson. This has lead to a global scandal with everyone now aware of police brutality from racist cops but this all started from social media and people recording the police treating black people as inferiors and not giving the same rights when arresting someone this became a worldwide story when Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer which was a tragedy however the truly bad thing was when people who thought that the police officer did the right thing started a crowd funder which got up to $500,000 for that  officer and then he got another $500,000 for an exclusive interview as well so that man became a millionaire for murdering an innocent man and the police tried to cover this up by showcasing him shoplifting to cover up the mess up. This started a uprising on social media with more and more people recording people who are getting arrested so that we can see if the police are following the rules set themselves and the hastag #BlackLivesMatter has started and has trended around the world on twitter so that highlight how people have been empowered by this new tech age through Pluralist views as well.

However I believe that Marxist and the ideology of the people having less power than they think they do. A key example of this is the 2015 election for Pride Minister in the UK. People on social media dominantly twitter were all talking about the election and who you voted for and on one hand you can say that younger people had a greater influence in the election than ever before and more and more young people were actually interested in politics which was unheard of before this election and what was the end result. Rupert Murdoch corruption holding a firm grip on the election with no party ever winning an election without Rupert Murdoch's support which is such a bad thing because it cancels out all the good that social media is having it's basically a group of people shouting about who they want but it all leading to the rich elite telling the poor what to do which links back to my previous point of Marxist and the ideology of the people having less power than they think they do because of the fact that the true influential people are still using more traditional media like newspapers and TV and as a result sure you can go on social media and talk about how Labour is amazing about who is really listening to your point but when the newspaper is talking about who you should vote for you automatically listen because they are experts and we are just the general public.

In conclusion I don't believe that there is a clear winner in this argument. Both sides show two sides and there is even a story that has both theories working together as well as both theories working at the same time so it's impossible to talk about how people are empowered because it depends on the story if the people are empowered or not.