Media debate Marxism vs. pluralism


Media texts are ‘dumbed down’ to generate mass audiences, they feel they can get more profits by doing this.

The media texts are only there to conform and cater to the audiences needs. Audiences are active but they choose against opposing or questioning what they see. They decide what they want to see.

By having one ownership they do not choose, many people are passive and therefore accept everything, which leads to elitists being in control not the audience.

The media we consume is from a wide variety, it is so diverse that we are in control of what we watch, hear or read. If we don’t read the sun we are able to read the The Guardian ( which is owned by someone different) so we are initially in control of our choices in media texts.

Yet still The Sun has a high circulation and is more likely to be read by the middle/working class. Murdoch is getting his message across political or not.

However the question of influence requires boundaries. It is necessary to consider that whilst Murdoch may own the main media institutions we are able to select what media texts we consume, if audiences choose to read The Sun you proving pluralism and the active audience theory who are actively able to choose their text.

Not everyone is aware that particular elites own a lot of the media, many may not understand what they read. To them a newspaper is simply a newspaper. They are being falsely exploited.

Basically the audience have control over what they read, watch and listen to, nobody can force feed ideologies into their minds but it is easy to sway ones ideas especially if you are an elite like Rupert Murdoch.

Comments:
1. Firstly this debate does not use enough media terminology. Possible words that could have been used are ideologies and monopolies.
2. Theories can be referred to such as the hypodermic needle. ‘And the active audience theory who are actively able to choose their text.’ Here instead of saying ‘the active audience theory’ it should be the uses and gratifications theory.
3. Finally the Marxist side of the debate isn’t as strong as the pluralist argument. It isn’t developing.

How much of a pluralist am I?

I believe I am a pluralist because I am aware of the media texts around and the way the producers work to manipulate audiences, this is possibly because I am media literate and an active viewer. As we get more media literate we as audiences become more demanding and selective consumers being able to choose from a wide variety. There is a wide choice of media especially because of the increased growth in the Internet, allowing audiences to spread their opinions in to others without restrictions. Individuals have the ability to choose texts, which suit to there preference.

Google makes friends with network sites to battle Facebook
Jemima Kiss and Richard Wray
The Guardian
Friday November 2 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/02/google

Google last night teamed up with MySpace and Bebo to battle against Facebook for a larger share of the booming social networking market.

Google has signed up MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and Bebo, a favourite among UK teenagers, to its new OpenSocial system that aims to link services on some of the web's most popular sites. It has also recruited the business networking service Linkedin, one of Asia's favourite social networks Friendster and its own Orkut network, the market leader in Brazil, as it goes head to head with Facebook.

Google has been searching for ways to counter the phenomenal growth of Facebook. Last week it lost out on a chance to take a stake in the business when Microsoft secured a 1.6% shareholding in a deal that valued the three-year old technology firm at $15bn (£7.2bn).
The OpenSocial network will give developers of applications such as games, video players and photo albums that sit on social networks, a standard software kit that will allow their applications to work across multiple websites.

MySpace's co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, said last night: "What we all want is for the web to be a better place, a more interesting place, as more innovation occurs."

Facebook has already exploited the popularity of applications. The site offers more than 7,000 tools, mostly built by independent developers and companies, that users can add to their profile pages for free, encouraging more time to be spent on the site and offering a promotional platform for other web companies.

By opening up part of its code to allow developers to build applications, Facebook stole a march on MySpace.

Mr DeWolfe said yesterday's agreement would create a new "de facto standard" for the development of home-made applications. "We really think the next level of innovation is going to be from deeper application integration."

Bebo has an estimated 10.9 million monthly British users. It will hope that opening its site to the OpenSocial network will encourage more international users and make the site more "sticky". Bebo's UK-based president, Joanna Shields, who joined the company from Google, described OpenSocial as "a positive step in the right direction".

"Developers and social networks have an important, symbiotic relationship, the success of which depends on developers not having to replicate the work they do to bring their innovations in front of the largest possible community