Participation Debates – The media and democracy ..
So, what is ‘democracy’?
Democracy is a form of government where people have an equal say in making decisions. Democracy is the st system of government used in most countries in the world except one-party states such as China; dictatorships such as (until recently) Libya; and non-symbolic monarchies such as Saudi Arabia. This relates to media though the idea of 'one person one vote'. The X Factor for example, in the 2010 series 15,488,019 million votes were cast by viewers to decide the outcome of the program.
However it wasn't always like this, In the pre-digital era, there were very few ways in which audiences could make their voices heard. Want to complain about a TV programme? Send a letter to Points of View and it might be read out on air. Want to comment on local politics? Phone your local radio station and hope you are given a few seconds of airtime. The digital revolution and Web 2.0 have given users the chance to communicate ideas globally through social networking. Some commentators have claimed that the uprisings in Egypt and Libya couldn't have happened without the use of Twitter and Facebook.However, in the countries now experiencing this ‘Arab Spring’, access to mobile technology and the internet is still limited to a relatively small elite, so perhaps we have not yet seen true democracy through the media.
If information is power, then the internet empowers it's users by giving them instant, unmediated access to to new news stories from a variety of sources. Bypassing the hegemonic institutions that control the dominant media discourses in society. Take the death of Michael Jackson, many people found out about the death through the social networking sites twitter and facebook then on the TMZ entertainment blog, way before the traditional media institutions new about it. Why is this democratic? Instead of waiting for the story to be edited and mediated by news, with their own ideological motives, we had access to a huge range of points of view, direct and unmediated.
The uses of blogs is another way that the media are becoming more democratic, it allows you to debate about anything, politics or even favorite band, a blog has access to an global audience as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Some of the most important events of the last ten years have been communicated by ordinary people who just happened to be in the right place at the right time: for example, the iconic video footage of the attack on the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001.
So is traditional journalism dead? Is citizen journalism the future? Perhaps not, but what citizen journalism can do is provide eyewitness accounts and subjective angles on stories to complement the work of professional news organisations. We've entered a new age when audiences are producers and the traditional power structures are being forced to listen.
In the Age of Media Six Questions about Media and Participation
- Because of the changes in the media the audience who are consumers are also now the producers.
- Social networking sites allows the audience to interact with other people around the world whereas blogs for example gives people the opportunity to say their opinion also blogs don't require getting any editing or permission to post what they think. Youtube, another example allows people to share their work around the world.
- There's a huge change from the traditional media to the new media. No more user-generated content or citizen journalism.
Whats New?
- Technology changing isn't always the best thing because it can cause a revolutionary social change.
- Technologies are created by the wider social, economic and culture developments.
Who's participating?
- Research suggest that there are some inequalities in participation based on gender differences. For example, women are taking over blogging sites while men are usually dominate video sharing.
- However, in terms of social class, for example in the US young people from middle class who have computers are less likely to have muti-media capabilities that are needed for more sophisticated content creation and sharing.
Twitter is dominated by middle class people. Young people are the early adopters of Twitter are the digital generation
Web 2.0 – Participation or Hegemony?
- Web 2.0 is referred to 'we media' which democratises the media, as anyone with web connection can create and publish texts. This means the audience don't have to rely on professional people anymore.
- Because anyone can create pieces of texts, people believe that this has led to dumbing down.
- Finally, audiences no longer have to reply on traditional media.
