we media overview
TRANSCRIPT
‘We Media’ & Democracy
Topic Points:
O What are ‘We Media’?
O Where / how has ‘We Media’ emerged?
O In what way are the contemporary media more democratic than before?
O In what ways are the contemporary media less democratic than before?
In The Exam:
O Historical – dependent on the requirements of the topic, candidates must summarise the development of the media forms in question in theoretical contexts.
O Contemporary – current issues within the topic area.
O Future – candidates must demonstrate personal engagement with debates about the future of the media forms / issues that the topic relates to.
Theorists/Theories
O Marxist Theory:
Chomsky/Habermas
O David Gauntlett
O Dan Gillmor
O Clay Shirky
O Evgeny Morozov
O Let’s start at the very beginning…
What is ‘we media’
O ‘We the Media’ written by Dan Gillmor
O about how the proliferation of grassroots
internet journalists (bloggers) has
changed the way news is handled
O One of the book's main points is that a
few big media corporations cannot
control the news we get any longer, now
that news is being published in real-time,
available to everybody, via the Internet.
What is Web 2.0?
O Aspect of the web that facilitates participatory information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web
O A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them.
Cultural Effects: Marxist
ViewO The dominant ideology of a society is
the ideology of the dominant or ruling
class
O The mass media disseminates the
dominant ideology: the values of the
class which owns and controls the
media
O Notion of domination
Gramsci: Hegemony
O The supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based on economic domination and intellectual/moral leadership
O A class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political and cultural values
O However, this consent is not always peaceful, and may combine physical force or coercion with intellectual, moral and cultural inducement
The American Dream?
Can the working class
achieve hegemony?
O If the working class is to achieve hegemony, it needs patiently to build up a network of alliances with social minorities.
O These new coalitions must respect the autonomy of the movement, so that each group can make its own special contribution toward a new socialist society.
O The working class must unite popular democratic struggles with its own conflict against the capital class, so as to strengthen a national popular collective will.
The Frankfurt School
Modernist ApproachO Mass audience as passive and gullible
O ‘hypodermic needle’ effects model
O Pessimistic claims about media
indoctrination
O Mass culture disseminates the dominant
ideology of the bourgeoisie
O News media controls our ideas and views,
pushing their views onto us, creating a
false class consciousness – Marxist view
Chomsky: Manufacturing
Consent
O The main aim of a media company
is to make money
O Newspapers achieve this through
advertising revenue
O This has an impact on the news
values and news selection
O Can lead to editorial bias
O News businesses that favour profit
over public interest succeed
Chomsky: Manufacturing
ConsentO Further distortion through the reliance of newspapers on private and
governmental news sources
O If a newspaper displeases, they may no longer be privy to that source of information
O They will lose out on stories, lose readers and ultimately advertisers
O news media businesses editorially distort their reporting to favour government and corporate policies in order to stay in business
Editorial Bias: Five Filters
(Chomsky)1. Size, Ownership, and Profit
Orientation
2. The Advertising License to Do
Business
3. Sourcing Mass Media News
4. Flak and the Enforcers
5. Anti-Communism
Size, Ownership and Profit
OrientationO The dominant mass-media outlets are
large corporations which are run for
profit
O Therefore they must cater to the
financial interest of their owners
The Advertising License to
do BusinessO Media outlets are not commercially
viable without the support of
advertisers.
O News media must therefore cater to
the political prejudices and economic
desires of their advertisers.
O This has weakened the working-class
press
Sourcing Mass Media News
O The large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidise the mass media, and gain special access to the news, by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring and producing, news.
O The large entities that provide this subsidy become 'routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates.
O Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers
Concept: Fourth Estate
O Is a societal or political force or institution whose influence is not consistently or officially recognised
O Print Journalism
O The concept that the press is an instrument of democracy providing a check on the abuse of government power
O It is the myth that the press is a vital defender of the people? –think about Chomsky!
Editorial Bias
Anyone?!
The state of the fourth
estate…O Relationships between powerful people e.g.
Murdoch and Cameron mean that their agendas are pushed forward in their publications
O Journalists are not as free because they are controlled by the conglomerate
O Chomsky: believes journalists were not representative of the population but instead influenced, hired and fired by power corporations
O Newspapers will print stories that sell, leading to more untrue and fabricated stories to grab the attention of the audience; this is mostly true of tabloid papers which focus on celebrities.
Key Thinking Points
O Do we have a free press?
O What constraints do journalists face
when working for a corporation?
O Who are the journalists?
O How far is news media controlled or
constrained by those in power?
O Are newspapers really the Fourth
Estate?
Leveson Inquiry…
O Into media ethicsO Focusing on the power of the news mediaO Relationships between media owners and politiciansO Lord Mandellsson said "arguably the case... that
personal relationships between Mr Blair, [Gordon] Brown and Rupert Murdoch became closer than was wise".
O Tony Blair: the word "unhealthy" rather than "cosy" was a better description of the relationship in some cases between journalists and those in power.
O Blair: The Sun and the Daily Mail were the two most powerful newspapers. The Sun was important because it was prepared to shift its political allegiance
David Gauntlett: Web 2.0 (Making
is Connecting – key text)
O Tim Berners Lee invented the Internet with the vision that people would be connected and creative
O “He imagined that browsing the Web would be a matter of writing and editing, not just searching and reading” –Gauntlett
O Web 2.0 invites users to playO We are seeing a shift away from a ‘sit back and be told’
culture towards more of a ‘making and doing’ culture
Web 2.0
O Includes a social element where users generate and distribute content, often with freedom to share and reuse
O Has resulted in an increasing ‘globalisation’
O The birth of a more ‘participatory culture’
O Moving from a communication model of ‘one-to-many’ to a ‘many to many’ system
David Gauntlett: Web 2.0
O In the case of the media, there is obviously the shift towards internet-based interactivity
O At least 3/4th of UK population are regular internet users
O More than 1/3rd of people have a Facebook account
O More and more people are writing blogs, participating in online discussions, sharing information, music and photo, and uploading video.
New Media
O Increased interactivity of audiences
O Poststructuralist theory sees the
audience as active participators in
the creation of meaning
O In a postmodern world consumption is
seen as a positive and participatory
act
O An increased ‘democratisation’?
Dan Gillmor: Citizen
JournalistsO ‘Big media’ have enjoyed control over
who gets to produce and share media
O Effect on democracy
O Who owns these companies?
O Are we represented?
O Gillmor sees the Internet as a catalyst for a challenge to this established hegemony
O Gillmor calls bloggers ‘the former audience’: news blogs a new form of people’s journalism
Citizen Journalism in Iraq
O Blogs offered an alternative to the
Western media’s accounts
O Collaboration of wikispaces, children’s
news blogs and Persian networkers
using the Net for a collective voice in
a country where free speech is
curtailed
O But is it all as rosy as it seems?
Clay Shirky
O Focuses on the rising usefulness of networks, using
decentralised technologies for social creation
and open-source development
O New technologies are enabling new kinds of
cooperative structures to flourish
Utopians
O One side sees the internet as a technology of freedom that is empowering humankind
O making accessible the world’s knowledge, building ‘emancipated subjectivities’, promoting anew progressive global politics, and laying the foundation of the ‘new economy’.
O The other sees the internet as an over-hyped technology whose potential value has been undermined by ‘digital capitalism’ andsocial inequality
Dystopians
O The internet came to exhibit incongruent features.
O It is still a decentralised system in which information is transmitted via independent variable pathways through dispersed computer power.
O But on top of this isimposed a new technology of commercial surveillance which enables commercial operators – and potentially governments – to monitor whatpeople do online
O Evgeny Morozov