Marxism & Pluralism: Alain de Botton on the news

1) To what extent do you agree with Alain de Botton's views on the News?

I greatly agree with Alain De Botton's views on the news as the news has so much power over audiences as it essentially "guides us" and informs us as to what is important and what is not, previously decided massively by religion. With this great power, it is essential that the youth must be educated on how to interpret and consume the news, especially as this generation is not only the generation who will be enormously influenced by the news but it is also the generation that would be motivated to take power and action, thereby helping "the nation flourish" with news. Despite this, I completely agree with his beliefs that "media has a short attention span" making the news laking variety at times proving his point of "neutrality [being] impossible". 

2) How can you link Marxism and Hegemony to de Botton's criticisms of the News?

Alain de Botton clearly has a Marxist perspective of the news as he greatly believes that the news is dominated by an elite class of the society, making everyone else below the elite, completely exposed and liable to any status quo or dominant ideologies forced upon us. With this perspective, he believes that the audience are passive and ideologies are injected into us, rendering us powerless and unable to voice and alternative viewpoint.

3) How could you use Pluralism and new technology to challenge de Botton's views on the News?

A pluralist perspective would actually argue that the advancements in technology have greatly improved and we are now able to easily access our own choice of news as well as produce news as well. With new and digital technology, we have options of doing this anonymously which ultimately means that we , to some extent, are protected from the repercussions of voicing alternative ideologies while still challenging the 'norms' that the elite has imposed upon us. 

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? 

New and digital media, often referred to as “the most important medium of the twentieth century” (Briggs and Burkes) signifies the starting point of what many people interpret to be a new form of democracy and equality however, there is still a proportion of society who trust an adverse concept of the developments in new and digital media is actually hindering the path to impartiality with an elite class holding power rather than empowering the audience.

As Marxist’s view the media as a tool used by ruling bodies to maintain a class divided society, a Marxist perspective would argue that the so-called “information revolution” has done little to benefit the audiences or to subvert the established power structures in society. Far from being a “great leveler” (Krotoski, 2012) as many have claimed, it has merely helped to reinforce the status quo by promoting dominant ideologies. The most popular news website in the UK by a considerable margin is the ‘Mail Online’, which receives more than 8 million hits every month and is continuing to expand rapidly – with forecasts that it will make £100 million or more in digital revenues in the next three years. Similar to its tabloid print edition, the website takes a Conservative, right-wing perspective on key issues around gender, sexuality and race, and audiences appear to passively accept what the Marxist theorist, Gramsci, called a hegemonic view. When one of their chief columnists, Jan Moir, wrote a homophobic article about the death of Stephen Gately in 2009, there were Twitter and Facebook protests but, ultimately, they did not change the editorial direction of the gatekeepers controlling the newspaper.

Furthermore, it may be considered that rather than the audience being more powerful with the developments of new and digital media, audiences are actually being dumbed down. Andrew Keen likened the Internet to “a million monkeys typing nonsense” in his book ‘The cult of the amateur’, implying that the audiences produce an abundance of inaccurate information. An example of this would be how the website, Wikipedia, allows anyone to edit and develop any information, which has all the possibilities of being nonsense, especially with “38% of UK pupils aged 9-19 never question[ing] the accuracy of online information”: audiences may believe completely inaccurate information. Moreover, audiences may not choose to consume the wide variety of information available and actually choose to continue consuming uninformative material. Recently, the Guardian released an article, stating that the number of young viewers watching TV is continuously decreasing due to the Internet and other forms of new and digital media being significantly more convenient to use. With a huge variety of entertainment being converged in single devices, it shows that since audiences can instantaneously access such media, they would more likely select a more compelling side of the media, leading to the dumbing down and disempowerment of the audiences.

Another form of dumbing down that the audience is susceptible to is the large amounts of pornography available online. Despite a great proportion being censored or put under a paywall to not only monetise the industry but to shield this adult content from the young audience, is still not enough as 57% of 9-19 year olds have come into content with pornography and 38% of this figure is due to online pop ups. This shows that this adult content is becoming available very easily through the developments in new and digital media which injects wrong ideologies into young minds such as the dehumanisation and objectification of females in particular. A Marxist point of view would support the fact that pornography actually makes the audience lose the power they hold with the new accessibility of pornographic material.

However, a pluralist, who would support the notion that we live in a classless society and the audience holds a great deal of power, would argue that audiences are not passive users of the media and therefore have the ability to choose whether they “conform, accommodate, or reject” (Gurevitch et al) any ideologies conveyed through the media. Moreover, this “internet revolution” has given the opportunity to access the news and be aware of the current events occurring all over the world, proving the great power society has purely due to the fact that people are given the right to know current affairs. One of the biggest stories of 2011 was the Arab Spring story where citizens from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and several other countries, began revolting against heavy dictatorship. As some of the countries such as Syria, banned foreign journalists from working in the country, causing foreign news institutions relying on user generated content (UGC). UGC are footage that bystanders have recorded and with the developments in new and digital media, audiences have the ability to produce their own news by publishing videos on sites such as You Tube. UGC gives a great deal of power to the people who produce the clips as well as people who consume the clips: by putting journalists and readers on an equal platform with advancements in new and digital media, there is more democratization happening which conclusively leads to Rushbriger’s theory of the “mutualisation on news”.

Additionally, pluralists would see the wide array of choices and options of available media to be a key factor of what undeniably empowers the audience. With over 85% of the UK having access to the Internet, one of the most predominant forms of new and digital media, the audience would be able to discover world wide content, something that has become available to us with advancements in technology and media. It is often said that knowledge is power and so, the Internet has become “an application that will user in the information age” verifying that information is a valuable commodity that leads to knowledge and power.  Despite some sites conveying very radical and controversial theories, the wide variety allows for objectivity and neutrality as the Internet permits diversity in opinions.  An example of how the Internet supports objectivity and neutrality would be a film review site such as rotten tomatoes. The website exposes all reviews of films to the public, whether they are positive or negative, leaving it for the audience to create their own judgement of the film.

However, this massive choice of news and information available can be thought as another way to dumb us down as the excess of news to some extent, drowns us and audiences are unable to decipher what information is important and what is not. This can be interpreted as the elite's way of keeping the public within the status-quo making us unaware about the dominant ideologies that the news injects into us as well as completely concealing the biased nature of the news. Alain de Botonn stated that religion was what once guided us to find out what is important however, the media has taken over this role and guides us rather than religion but as the news makes neutrality impossible, the media cannot accurately advise us and it actually misguides us. Especially with there no longer being a market for good stories, we are helpless and exposed to only the negativity. For example, negative stories about the NHS are constantly being reported but the stories of how valuable the NHS is to society is hardly ever revealed, conclusively making us as narrow-minded the news institutions.

It can be inferred that the developments in new and digital media strip the audience of their power as it makes it easier for the elite to inject their dominant ideologies into the passive audiences. Baudrillard’s theory of hyper reality posed a theory that the audiences are unable to distinguish reality from simulacrum which finally causing society to be completely blinded by the reality that those at the top present to them. Pareto’s law of “ a minority of producers always serves a majority of consumers” illustrates that despite the middle to lower class society being the majority, they are still controlled by the minority of upper class.  A modern example of Baudrillard’s hyper reality theory is Disneyland, with its realistic civilization in Main Street and its life-like nature, which accentuates only the fantastical aspects of reality. This desired lifestyle causes the park visitors to spend more money in the park whilst completely obscuring the commercialization of the park. This mirrors how the media conceals their attempts to transmit ideologies into the audiences, whether it is political or social.

To conclude, there are many points supporting both sides of the argument, proving that audiences’ consumption and production of media has possibilities of provoking empowerment as well as disempowerment, ultimately displaying that developments in new and digital media can have many different affects on the audience. 

NDM News Story 19: Sky launches new set-top box to take on Netflix and Apple

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/18/sky-q-launches-new-set-top-box-netflix-apple

SkyQ is a new service has unveiled by Sky which is a new box set that similarly to Amazon, Netflix and Apple, provides top quality streaming services. Sky believes that this product will be the newest innovation since the Sky+ box that was released in 2001 and will allow users to use their account on 5 different devices as well as having 5 times the space allowance of their current box set. The new service has a improved remote which is a touch pad that Apple TV introduced. It also allows viewers to record TV shows on their box set and then automatically put the recorded shows on any device that Sky Q is connected with which allows shows to be accessed from anywhere. Also, surprisingly, the box set will encourage ad skipping to make streaming shows more convenient. The Sky Q box will be released in early 2016 and the price will be revealed closer to the release date.

• Allows access to “best of the web” services including YouTube, music service Vevo, Facebook and content from Condé Nast, publisher of titles including GQ, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Wired.
• “Think of Sky Q as something that is beyond a box,”“It is an eco-system of products. The important thing is it allows you to consume programmes in and out of the home across more screens than ever before. It is about more than just TV content, we are bringing the best of the web to the big screen.”
• this feature was the “number one requested” additional feature that customers have said they want to extend their viewing experience beyond the living room.
•  free-to-air players such as ITV and Channel 4 are also likely to be affected if Sky Q gains traction as it will allow a vastly greater amount of time-shifted viewing – recording and watching later – where viewers skip ads. 

With the introduction of Sky Q, a lot of pressure will be put on already existing streaming sites such as Netflix to improve and deliver better technology. This is also very surprising as many company's rely on advertising to gain revenue but seeing as Sky feel like they can be successful without the advertising, this can foreshadow Sky Q's success 

NDM News Story 18: Sun website traffic recovers as Mirror slips back

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/12/sun-website-traffic-mirror

After the Sun began ending their paywall, the Sun has seen a massive rise in their readers and are expected to see a bigger rise when their paywall is completely abolished at the end of november. While the Sun is increasing their readers, the mirror is slightly falling behind. Similarly, the guardian is also falling behind despite having a very successful month in September. Websites that are seeing increases in their readers are the metro and the daily star. 

• The Sun website bounced back in October, adding more than 180,000 daily unique browsers to take its total to 1.29 million.
• This represented an increase of more than 16% after a 14%
•  Mirror parent company Trinity Mirror was buoyed slightly by growth from its network of regional newspapers, which saw a 2.6% rise in daily browsers, however the group as a whole was still down 2.2%.
• Last month Trinity announced a £200m deal to buy out local newspaper group Local World, which will give it control of more than 80 further titles.
• The Guardian was down by 2.6% to 8.15 million daily unique browsers
• The Daily Star website also saw a large increase after a bad September, of 9.35% to 623,977 daily browsers.

With the Sun winning the power they once had before the paywall was put up, Rupert Murdoch would be able to spead his dominant conservative ideologies once more as well as he may consider to expand the company by hiring more employees. Now establishing their readers once again, they may try different methods to further create more profit.

NDM News Story 17: Thinking machines: the skilled jobs that could be taken over by robots

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/12/thinking-machines-skilled-job-robots-steal

There have been more and more robot creations that have the ability to take over job roles that was once thought to be impossible. Some of these robots have the ability to replace someworkers in the most competitive fields such as science, medicine, enternatinment, pilots, journalism and law. In the entertainment industry there have been cases of holograms of artists and actors who had died, appeaing in concerts and films. For medicine, it is belived that robots would be able to handle jobs thta nurses and GPs do as similar functions of these humans can be recreated in robots. There are many aeroplanes now flying without a pilot as they can be controlled with a remote from another destination and as for journalism, there are machines that can write convincingly written news stories after inputting some key data.

• Adam, a scientist-robot, created in a partnership between Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities, became the first machine to independently discover new scientific knowledge in 2009
• The most notable example is the cameo by Marlon Brando in Superman Returns, released two years after his death. Footage from Superman (1978) was mixed with computer generated effects to create a new scene.
•  the Da Vinci robot is already capable of performing surgeries no human surgeon would be able to handle.
• IBM’s Watson project, most famous for winning an episode of the American game show Jeopardy, can understand spoken questions and seek the answer from a massive database of technical knowledge

With the massive increase in artificial intelligence, there are many possibilities, shown in the article where many jobs can be taken over by machines. With this occuring, the need for human employees will significantly decrease making it more difficult to find respectable jobs. Despite this, it may lead to more jobs being accurately done.

NDM: Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

Research the Ian Tomlinson case. What would the traditional, hegemonic view of the police be in a case like this? How did new and digital media create a different story? What does the police officer's subsequent aquittal suggest about the power of new and digital media?

1)  A Traditional Hegemonic view of the police may be that they have great power over the majority of the diverse society. The Ian Tomlinson case shows a police officer striking Ian Tomlinson, causing him to die shortly after. The police who were involved in this incident were not charged or punished, showing that those in the elite class have a great influence to manipulate the news in order for their benefit and to oppress those from a lower status and class. However, despite the officers not being convicted, their action were exposed with the citizen journalism video, clearly showing how Ian Tomlinson was assaulted. This is very disadvantageous as it goes against the story that the elite is trying to create to protect their law enforcers. The acquittal of the police officer shows the great power that some people have in society as they can completely eradicate many issues and avoid situations that is to their disadvantage. 


What does the author argue regarding whether hegemony is being challenged by Web 2.0? 

2) The article shows that with the internet increasingly giving power to the working class, the internet acts as a platform that allows people to challenge hegemonic views and people are no longer oppressed by societies normalities of the elite having utmost power. Sites that encourage audience participation and user generated content such as You Tube, allows for audiences to post up videos of anything they choose which can threaten the elite's power. The article provides an example of how much new and digital media has transformed the power that people of lower class and status have. In 1979, Blair Peach had a very similar incident occur to Ian Tomlinson, however, to this day, no one has been charged with the death of Blair Peach. The Ian Tomlinson case occurred in 2009, and with the rise of new and digital media, people pressured the elite that this case should go to court. The article continues to say that without the increase of new and digital media, the Ian Tomlinson case would have never been taken to court. The author finally says that the power has not completely shifted from the producers to the audience but it has definitely upset the balance as people can easily create texts similar to the producers and do not need to rely on the traditional media offered to us.


In your opinion, does new and digital media reinforce dominant hegemonic views or give the audience a platform to challenge them?

3) In my opinion, new and digital media, to certain extent, offers a platform for audiences to challenge hegemonic views as it allows them to confidently voice their views, ideas and perspectives on issues that would probably be hidden by the elite without new and digital media. The internet especially offers a platform where the audiences can join together to push forward their opinions to challenge the hegemonic views more powerfully. Despite the powerful elite having a strong hold over the media and its portrayal of events and incidents, new and digital media such as user generated content greatly helps audiences to challenge the hegemonic views rather than reinforce them. 

NDM: News values

Immediacy: has it happened recently?
Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain?
Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?
Frequency: does the event happen fairly regularly?
Unambiguity: is it clear and definite?
Predictability: did we expect it to happen?
Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event?
Continuity: has this story already been defined as news?
Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people?
Negativity: is it bad news?
Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death.


Immediacy: Immediacy is extremely important as people want to find out about information quickly. With citizen journalism, news can be spread a lot faster and professionals would be able to report the news with greater conviction as there are more evidence supporting their articles.

Familiarity: people are more likely to have a greater concern for issues if they directly affect the audiences or are within close proximity of the incident. With citizen journalism, audiences are able to visually see the issues in other country and may begin the prioritise their importance more.

Amplitude: the amplitudes of an event is very vital because if the amplitude is large, that means that it will affect more people and more of the audience would be interested to hear these issues. Citizen journalism allows there to be a variety of evidence from the event and despite incidents in small scale not being covered in the news, people will still have great chances about hearing of these small incidents when they are on sites that showcase these videos such as you tube.

Frequency: some news are considered more important than others as they appear more often in the news as they prove to be a great problem. Citizen journalism allows there to be a large variety of evidence to be collected.

Ambiguity: At times, news articles tend to be very unclear posing questions that are unanswered which increases the curiosity of the audience. By having citizen journalism, the journalists for institutions may be able to write a bit more accurately as they have evidence to support their article on a topic which began with not much information.

Predictability: Some news articles may be very predictable for the audience because it is either a topic that appears often or it continues from a different incident. Citizen journalism gives a different way in which audiences consume the news and adds variety to the somewhat monotonous news stories.

Surprise: News stories that have no predictability factors can cause shock for the audience causing the audience to be more intrigued by some of the news stories. Citizen journalism intensifies the audiences shock by providing visual evidence for the audience

Continuity: With some news incidents occurring over a long period of time, audiences are expecting some of the news stories. This means that even citizen journalists would be able to expect these stories and may even plan to film evidence, which might even lead to better quality citizen journalism.

Elite nations and people: Elite nations and people may, in some sense, seem untouchable. Therefore news stories about them, especially in a negative light would be very shocking for some of the audience members. Citizen journalism, further, intensifies the shock and might make the story more believable if it is one that is not a very believable incident.

Negativity: audiences seem to be more engaged with news that it very negative rather than positive as they feel like they have become more aware of the issues around them. Citizen journalism allows the audience to sympathise with those who have been negatively affected.

Balance: It is easier to balance out negative stories with a positive one through television or for tabloid newspapers as they can compliment the person  for broadsheet it is much harder unless something significantly important happens such a female MP is elected or running.

  

NDM News Story 16: Candy Crush(ed): Zuckerberg pledges to halt Facebook game invitations

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/28/candy-crush-zuckerberg-facebook-game-invitations

An aspect that immensely annoys Facebook users are the endless requests and notifications from games as the majority of the users, have no interest in Facebook's games. During one of Zuckerberg's Q&A sessions, a question was asked about how to stop Candy Crush requests and if Zuckerberg had any intentions to end this irritating aspect of Facebook. To many of the audience's delight, he revealed that he had looked into putting a stop to these notifications and thought that it would be very good and beneficial to solve this particular problem. He also stated that Facebook have many other priorities that they must sort out first but he hopes that at some point, this issue would be dealt with. Zuckerberg did not go into much more detail and the creator of Candy Crush did not comment on this event but many people hope that this idea would be implemented as soon as possible.

• The top-rated comment, with 7,500 likes, in response to Zuckerberg’s call-out for users’ questions before his talk at the the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi was a straight-to-the-point: “I don’t want any more invitations to Candy Crush. How can I stop it?”
• “This is where these Town Hall Q&As are really useful because I actually saw this question, that it was the top voted question on my thread,” Zuckerberg said. “So I sent a message to the person who runs the team in charge of our developer platform and I said by the time I do this Town Hall Q&A, I think it would be good if we had a solution to this problem.”

I think the way Mark Zuckerberg responded to this issue is a very good example for other institutions as it shows that in order to succeed, the audience's opinions and comments are very vital. If Zuckerberg did solve this problem,this may be very positive for those who use Facebook purely for communication and there may be slight possibilities that more people will continue or even start to use Facebook more often.

NDM News Story 15: ITV could snatch The Voice from BBC with offer to air kids' version

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/02/itv-the-voice-bbc-the-voice-kids

Next year after its fifth series, The Voice's corporation deal with the BBC will expire a
nd ITV, as well as BBC both bid to continue the show. However, it is ITV whoo are offering to run the children's version of the Voice. The show's creator, Dutch media mogul John De Mol will ultimately decide who will run the show. John has been trying to get The Voice kids to air in the UK but BBC decided not to as it may draw accusations of a publicly funded broadcaster putting pressures on children. The Voice has been greatly popular abroad and it is the company Talpa along with John De Mol who decides its future. Talpa is owned by ITV studios making the head of ITV Studios Kevin Lygo, have a say in the decision of what will happen to the Voice. If ITV can secure The Voice, they will be able to look less reliant on Simon Cowell who created many of ITV's most popular programmes.

• If it secures The Voice and The Voice Kids, ITV will have a potential pipeline to bolster ratings on Saturday nights
• ITV has more big entertainment shows in its stable such as I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here, Britain’s Got Talent and newcomer Ninja Warrior

By the voice going to ITV, they will be able to increase the popularity of the show in the UK and it would be beneficial for ITV as well due to them being able to bring in more audiences after XFactor's decline in viewers and avoid the clashes that often occur with the Voice and X Factor. As this deal is beneficial to both parties, it would be a very good choice for ITV to take over the voice to build up their revenue.

NDM News Story 14: New wave of podcasts aimed at younger, wider audience

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/25/podcasts-aim-for-younger-wider-audience

A Swedish podcast platform called Acast has been given a large investment in order to develop internationally. Acast is led by former spotify executive, Ross Adams and aims the platform at people who tend to watch reality TV shows such as Made in Chelsea and The Only Way is Essex. People who listen to podcasts typically tend to be in their mid 30s to 40s and a bit geeky. Despite this, Serial, one of the popular podcasts in the US has bought in a much larger female audience. "Voice triggers the imagination in a different way," said Martin, Acast's director of content, expressing that podcasts have a unique way in conveying information such as news or stories. many other influential people in he media, in particular, Barack Obama, have stated that podcasts are an upcoming form of media that may soon break into mainstream media.

• Acast, a Swedish podcast platform that received investment of £3.2m in May to develop internationally.
• On-demand audio grew by 34% in the UK in 2014, while 46 million Americans
• 17% of the population – listen to at least one podcast a month.
• “The traditional podcast audience in the UK is in their mid-30s to 40s and a bit geeky."
• Barack Obama acknowledged the power of the medium by appearing on an American podcast called WTF in June.

I think that podcasts do have great potential to become a well used form of media in society as people continue to find easier methods in accessing information and entertainment. Podcasts are a significantly easy way to get information as listening is much easier than reading. There is a possibility for podcasts to gain popularity however, podcasts have been in existence for a while and have reached low levels of acknowledgement, proving that ultimately podcasts most probably will not reach high popularity. 

NDM News Story 13: Sun website to scrap paywall

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/30/sun-website-to-scrap-paywall

The Sun, that was once under a paywall, has now decided to scrap the idea and offers the majority of their content for free. The Sun's publisher, News UK, who also publishes the Times and the Sunday Times, have come to a decision to increase revenue through online advertising, similarly to major competitors such as Daily Mail. This change in strategy will take place on November 30th which also happens to be Cyber Monday which is one of the best-performing days of the year for online retail. Other than choosing to rid the paywall, other events that has occurred for the Sun include the political site SunNation winning plaudits at election time and entering platform partnerships with Apple News. The Sun has viewed their period of having a paywall, very helpful as they have become more aware of what their audiences want and how they should provide for the demand.   

• News UK made the decision to put the Sun, the UK’s biggest-selling tabloid, behind a paywall in August 2013

• The Sun reported more than 30 million monthly unique users in July 2013

• The Sun have a record 1.25m customers signing up to be managers and their content has reached 276m people on social media.

• Since relaxing its paywall strategy the Sun has increased its average daily browser numbers to about 1 million.
• The national newspaper market has seen unprecedented falls of up to 30% in print advertising this summer

As there are many sources for readers to find their news from, many of the audience would rather visit free news sites rather than one in which a subscription is needed. Therefore, the Sun's choice to dismiss the paywall will be avery beneficial one as they may steadily gain their lost audience and earn more revenue through advertising. Like the article states, the period that they were a paywall has given them a lot of information on the new audience who prefer to make good use of the free information that can be found on the internet.