Ben Essay Question

We-Media and Democracy

Q)Explore the claim that the 'new' media are more democratic than the 'old' media.

A) Democracy can be a system where people get to express their own opinions freely. In government terms specifically, the public is allowed to vote on their representative, e.g the Labour party.

In Media terms however this means that the public or Home video makers and mainly "Grassroot Journalists" can now influence what is within the media and distribute these different forms of "we media" through a range of different bodies such as Social Netowrking sites and Films for example to aim for a response / reaction from their targeted viewers. For example a video posted on you tube that portrays ones view may be uploaded to gain a response therefore someone else wanting to respond will then make thier own video to upload to you tube and could raise the awareness of the original video and make it go viral.

In the past Media has been narrowcasting with only the radio and televisions with a limited amount of channels to distribute thier news ect. Alongside newspapers which was probably the most constant imfomation source. The radio and BBC basically controled the media due to no other distributers and therefore the public could only accept this at face value and could niot have no input of thier own to the news unless they where interbiewed by a newspaper.
However nowadays it is alot easier to have a more broadcasting media which means that "grassroot journalists" can share thier knowledge on a range of diffenet formats that werent accesable in the past purely because they werent invented, for example; the Internet has created YouTube, Social Networking sites and an Internet based film industry such as Lovefilm ect. All of these sources can spread Information on a huge global network. Therefore anyone can access these websites as technology is increasingly getting better making it easier for the public to record/make thier products, weather it be Music for Myspace or Video based opinions which can then be uploaded on the worldwide popular YouTube. These can get popular very quickly and can go viral if it is at least interesting in any way.

Whereas there is another side of the story as the big corporations in global media such as BBC & SKY can pretty much controll the media as pretty much every home in MEDC'S have televisions.

Dan Gilmore the theorist behind "We Media" says ;
"Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation."
"Journalism’s transformation from a 20th century mass-media structure to something profoundly more grassroots and democratic.technology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before."

In the past Film was new to everyone and was produced by a small selection of film companies with standard Genres of films and this was first a massive growing industry in now the worldiwde famous Hollywood. Hollywood pretty much distributed the popular films all over the world, however the creation of the Internet has given us more choice e.g. Lovefilm, Sky box office, youtube where anyone with internet access can watch pretty much anything they want however there is a bad side to this as films can be Pirated and downloaded illegal which is bad for the film companies as they loose out money.

Overall due to the vast range of resources of information in a more broadcasting media has created a range of firms that controll the golbal media alongside the general public who can now share thier opinoins virally and worldwide therfore creatying a more diverse media which in turn is Democratic!