The Impact of the New Media

Cultural Optimists - more informed consumers, wider choices and more participate

• Consumers can now access information, complaints and reviews about anything that interests them

• Better informed of products and places - argue it gives them greater choice

• Now have opportunities to participate

Cultural Optimists - greater democracy

• New Media can give more power to ordinary people - helped democratic societies

• Vast ocean of information available to all

• McNair: “Information, like knowledge, is power”

• Social movements and campaigns now use the new media to spread their ideas - more power into the hands of ordinary people

• Citizen journalists now have a big influence on the mainstream media’s content and agenda - post their own reports & respond to what has been distorted by mainstream media outputs

Cultural Optimists - more access to all kinds of information

Access to huge amounts of information

• high culture - previously limited to educated elites

• news and information articles from a wide range of sources

• can gain information themselves rather than relying on others for it

Cultural Optimists - the world becomes a global village

McLuhan - thanks to the digital media, people from all over the world can easily to talk to each other and share ideas

• new media promotes culture identity

• blurs the boundaries between the local and the global meaning different people and cultures are brought together

Cultural Optimists - social life and social interaction is enhanced

Postmodernists - new media as contributed to social diversity

• new media has opened up news channels for communication and interactions, enhancing and replacing existing face-to-face interactions

• media has become a way for someone to express themselves

• may lead to more in-person meetings - some platforms an role of rekindling old connections

Cultural Pessimists - problems of the validity of information

Difficult to know the source of information - hard to validate

• ‘fake news’ - emergence of artificial intelligent

• material is often reused without checking the information or sources

Cultural Pessimists - cultural and media imperalism

Imposition of Western, particularly American, culture on non-Western cultures

• undermines local cultures and their ability to maintain independence

Cultural Pessimists - threat to democracy

the power of unelected commercial companies: sovereigns of cyberspace

• MacKinnon: ‘sovereigns of cyberspace’ to describe the power of giant multinational cooperation’s - now hold a kind of power over us that was once held only by governments, effectively part of our political system

censorship and control

• MacKinnon: some undemocratic, repressive regimes (China & Iran), monitor and control new media use

• filtering/blocking and surveillance technology often supplied by Western technology companies

Cultural Pessimists - lack of regulation

large scale and global landscape of new media meant that there is a lack of regulation by national bodies

• e.g. Twitter - criticisms as individuals and their families have faced cruel abuse, and rape and death threats from those disagreeing with their views

Cultural Pessimists - commercialisation and limited consumer choice

new media has been driven by consumerism and commercialisation

• making money for the companies that produce the technology

• sell their products online - bigger business than advertising in the traditional media

• targets of advertising at people who spend time online - no real increase in consumer choice

Preston - digital media offer consumer choice of what they want to read or look at, don’t bring attention to stories that people didn’t know they wanted to be information about

Barnett and Seymour & Curran et al - poorer-quality content, ‘dumbing-down’ and tabloidisation of popular culture is used to attract a larger audience

Cultural Pessimists - increase surveillance

Increased all kinds of surveillance

• surveillance techniques can also be used by those with power to monitor and control social protestors

• agencies also have the means of monitoring who is posting information online, and communications between individuals and groups

Cultural Pessimists - undermining of human relationships

Increase in social isolation

• people losing the ability to communicate in the real world as they spend less quality time having convocations with family and friends

• loss of social capital or the useful social networks which people have as they spend less time engaging with the communities and neighborhoods