Marxism and Pluralism

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?

In my opinion, audiences are empowered by developments to news and digital media to a large extent as citizen journalism allows audiences to challenge those in power. For instance, CNN an American news channel has been portrayed negatively on social media because recently this year CNN and Facebook hosted the first 2016 Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada. CNN conducted an online poll asking viewers to select which of the participants they believed won the debate. Despite the fact that the poll ended with Bernie Sanders holding 75% of the vote, and Hillary Clinton holding 18% of the vote, CNN published several articles declaring Secretary Clinton as the winner of the debate. Users of Twitter were unhappy with CNN's dishonesty and stated how CNN purposely tried to "bury Bernie Sanders's victory in an effort to support Hillary Clinton." This created online debate and as a result CNN removed the poll from their website. The fact that social media sparked a big debate demonstrates how new and digital media has allowed audiences to be powerful as they have the freedom to express their opinion on social media, ultimately other users, on Twitter for example, can retweet this onto their page. This can result into the issue becoming a trending topic, such as the CNN example which was trending with the hashtag #CNN in the United States for 24 hours. As a result, this leads to people becoming ‘opinion leaders’ on social media as their view may influence somebody else’s thinking if they are not already aware of the issue. Audiences have the freedom to challenge audiences and could be described as "rebellion is encapsulated in the internet" which is quoted by Keen and suggests how audiences do have the capabilities to challenge the elite.

However, an alternative view could be that Marxists are in in control and this is clearly evident for online newspaper sites which moderate comments which people leave on each article. In further detail, if audiences express their opinions which are too far out of the mainstream, that comment can easily be removed. This links to how the "elite" (in this case an online newspaper organisation such as The Daily Mail) have the power to remove comments online without hassle. For instance, if users use too much swearing in their comment this will automatically notify the website to remove the comment easily. For instance if somebody was to have an opinion about  how the Daily Mail are excessively racist that comment would be removed as the Daily Mail wouldn’t want people to think negatively of their brand.  

Although anyone has the ability to express their opinion on social media there are limitations on what can be viewed to other users. More significantly, YouTube in an example of a website were audiences can control what content is being exposed e.g. parents can turn on safe search. However, it is noticed that audiences are heavily empowered by the developments in technology as social media helps to expose the opinions of the audience. Even though websites have some control over what comments can be shown, this control is minor as audiences have the ability to spark online debates which could impact those with high control.