Marxism & Pluralism Essay

Marxism & Pluralism Essay

In this essay I'll be exploring the different ways that the development of new digital media has changed the power that the audience has but also the consumption and production of information that audiences consume. 

Nowadays consumers have now become more powerful in terms of the consumption of news that they intake. The institutions that we have are losing the power that they had. This can be seen with the decline with the newspaper industry. It has brought not only media potential, by togetherness within the world. Audiences have become more powerful in terms of consumption and production to a large extent. Since the news has become something that we can access online more and more people have drifted away from accessing the content from a traditional platform such as the newspaper. This can be because of the convenience of accessing it online because of the advances in technology and people want to get the news for free rather than going out and paying for it. 

Institutions such as businesses and media organisations are used to manipulate audience members to purchase a product or consume a piece of news without having the time to challenge them. For example, a news institution like The Sun could have their own ideologies regarding politics and it will simply be consumed by consumers.Things have changed to such an extent, that there has essentially be the opposite. Audience members now have the ability to speak out, In fact institutions who abused their power by inflicting their ideologies upon their consumer base has left a huge impact on their survival as an industry as a whole. Audience's are trying to gain news about the outside world seemed to be a necessity, something that they must obtain, now they can access news for free and can essentially continue to get what they want without even demanding for it. This has lead to a decline in power from institutions in to the hands of the audience member and a Marxist would argue that there would have been at the top of the chain and who were the ones trying to dumb-down audience members in order to attain their power. And to and it is true. We have now become more greedy to getting everything quickly people want news faster so they'll be more advances in technology. Marxists would say that this revolution has done not much benefit the audience.

In addition , The audience have now gotten more news for free online and the institutions need to bring a pay wall so that the journalists don't lose their jobs for example James Murdoch quotes "It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it". What has happened is that customers want to receive their news by a certain institution because they have built a strong relation with it for years and the brand loyalty can take control of them than the Internet can. Institutions such as The Daily Mail have created a strong brand and image to customers, that over the years they will have so many loyal customers they cant really be challenged due to this loyalty. 

Overall, I think that consumers are in power more now because of the advances in technology have meant that they have more freedom and can do exactly what institutions do and new and digital media has brought more power towards the people rather than institutions.