Cultural pessimist view✅
The cultural pessimist view is help by those who believe that neophiliacs have exaggerated the benefits of the new media, and ignored or underestimated their negative aspects.
Problems of the validity of information
It is often difficult to know the source of messages in the new media - who they come from and who is sending them. It is therefore often hard to validate information - to know whether or not reports are true, and whether videos and photos are faked or doctored.
For example, videos and images may appear to show the violent suppression of protest by repressive regimes. While this may be a good thing when protesters have no other means of publicising their struggles, at the same time there may be no journalists, TV crews or independent witnesses on the ground to verify whether the images and tweets are real, faked, or exaggerated, or to interview the people concerned.
Similarly, much so-called ‘factual’ public information on the internet is often little more than disguised advertising for products. As suggested in the discussion of churnalism, such material is often recycled without checking the information or sources.
Cultural and media imperialism
Culture and media imperialism is the idea that the new media, particularly the internet, satellite television and global advertising, have led to the imposition on non-Western cultures of Western, and especially American, cultural values, with the undermining of local cultures and cultural independence.
A threat to democracy
The neophiliacs see the new media as a means whereby millions of ideas can blossom and different schools of thought can debate, and se this as giving more information and power to the once powerless.
However, critics suggest neophiliacs underestimate the threat to democracy posed by the new media corporations, and the impact of the digital divide, which restricts access to the new technology, particularly among the poorest and most oppressed people in the world.
The power of unelected commercial companies: the sovereigns of cyberspace
As the internet becomes more central to our lives, the power of the commercial companies providing the technology and web services increases. This poses a threat to democracy and enhances the power of the already powerful, as more and more of what we know is dominated and controlled by global corporations.
MacKinnon uses the concept of what she calls ‘sovereigns of cyberspace’ to describe the power of giant multinational corporations like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Vodafone to control internet access, satellite channels, social networking and mobile technology.
She suggests such companies, among the largest and richest in the world, now hold the kind of power over us that was once held only by governments.
These companies are now effectively part of our political system, but they are neither elected by nor accountable to the public in the way democratic governments are, and exercise what Curran and Seaton call ‘power without responsibility’.
Censorship and control
She also demonstrates how some undemocratic, repressive regimes, like those in China and Iran, monitor and control new media use. The internet, and particularly social networking sites email, face government censorship and surveillance often supplied by Western technology companies, which can monitor email and web traffic and block access to websites.
Major corporations dominate the web, and despite a the claims of enhanced democracy by the neophiliacs, the vast majority of websites, and particularly those that get the most hits and the most advertising, carry mainstream material and online comments that are within the dominant ideology.
In many ways, the issues of ownership and control, government controls over the media, the social construction of the news and agenda-setting, are applicable as much or more to the new media as they ever were to the traditional or old media.
Lack of regulation
The global nature of the new media, such as the internet and satellite broadcasting, means there is a lack of regulation by national bodies like Ofcom. This means undesirable things like bias, internet crime, pornography, drug smuggling, paedophilia, people trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime, terrorism, violence and racism can thrive virtually unchecked, alongside things like addiction to online gambling.
Commercialisation and limited consumer choice
For al the alleged benefits claimed by the cultural optimists, the new media are essentially driven by consumerism and commercialisation. The new media are about making money for the companies that produce the technology, the internet connection, the websites and services, and for those that advertise to sell their product and services.
Internet and mobile phone advertising is now a bigger business than advertising in the traditional media. Social networking sites are not really about connecting people together, but are just a means of targeting advertising at people who spend extraordinary lengths of time freely giving away to advertisers detailed information about their lives and interests.
This is a form of commercial surveillance, storing information about consumer preferences, through cookies left on their computers and mobiles, to bombard them with adverts offering products and other sites to visit based on their past browsing habits and online purchases.
There is no real increase in consumer choice
The digital divide means that there are still many people, both in the UK and worldwide, who are unable to access the alleged increased consumer choices made available via the new media. However, many cultural pessimists suggest there is no real increase in consumer choice.
Preston points out that while digital media offer customers the choice of what they want to read or look at, they dont bring to their attention - unlike TV or newspapers - the stories that people didn’t know they wanted to be informed about until they had seem them in newspapers or on TV.
There may theoretically be more choice, but if people rely for their news, for example, on recommendation from like-minded friends, it could mean they are consuming less news and that they are no longer exposed to a broader news agenda.
Sociologists showed how there is poorer-quality media content, with a ‘dumbing-down’ and tabloidisation of popular culture to attract large audiences, much of the same content on different TV channels, and endless repeats.
Celebrity culture has replaces serious programming, and infotainment has replaced hard news reporting to encourage people to consume media.
Increasing surveillance
The new media have increased all kinds of surveillance in everyday life. Apart from the surveillance by adversities mentioned earlier, there are endless examples of how the new media have operated to increase social control.
In 2012, a woman was jailed for 21 weeks for racially aggravated harassment and abuse after she was filmed on a phone racially abusing fellow travellers on the London tube. In America, a teacher lost her job after a parent spotted a Facebook picture of her with a glass of wine in one hand and a beer in the other.
While some might see these examples as a welcome use of the new media, such surveillance techniques can also be used by those with power to monitor and control social protesters, and to highlight and condemn all forms of non-conformist behaviour.
Surveillance is actually an integral part of mobile phone technology, as the mobile signal can be used to local mobile users, enabling the agencies of social control to find out where people are.
These agencies also have the means of monitoring who is posting information online, and communications between individuals and groups.
The undermining of humans relationships and communities
There will be an increase in social isolation, with people losing the ability to communicate in the real world as they spend less quality time having conversations with family and friends, and more wrapped up in the virtual world of solitary electronic media.
There will consequently be a loss of social capital or the useful social networks which people have, as they spend less time engaging with the communities and neighbourhoods in which they live.