“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the mind of the masses.” As writer Malcolm X so put, the media plays an incredibly influential role in society and thus whoever controls the media can easily manipulate society. In 2011, this stupendous amount of power and influence was held by a mere 232 executives from six media giants which controlled 90% of American media. However with the advent and rapid growth of new media, this power has since been steadily weakened and spread more evenly among the masses.
New media has led to the rise of a new source of information - social media. People now make use of platforms such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook to share information and news as quickly as possible. News is being reported within the hour by individual journalists who have minimal budget and corporate backing. The fast pace of social reporting has undermined the power of traditional news establishments such as newspapers and TV channels as they are unable to catch up with social media. Moreover, social media also polices the news reported by these traditional news establishments, ensuring that the news reported is truly objective and not biased towards any one party as shown in the fall of prominent media figure Dan Rather who was brought down by bloggers when they found out that he was planning to release fraudulent news. This clearly shows how social media has shifted the power balance between traditional news establishments and the individual by weakening traditional news establishments.
Groundbreaking art can also be shared using new media and thus weakening the tremendous influence held by traditional art institutions. People can now publish their works via new media instead of art galleries and exhibitions. This allows the art scene to be more diverse and also largely removes the financial aspect of publication. The limits previously set on the art scene hindered people who were poor or did not conform to social norms such as transgender people. Since traditional art institutions had a major say in the kind of art displayed and published, the art created by the poor and the minorities were largely filtered out, resulting in a highly elitist art scene in which only the rich and privileged could participate. New media has greatly eroded the power of such art institutions, allowing people to showcase their art to a global audience easily without having to go through these institutions. Writers are now able to self-publish for a small fee on Amazon Kindle, bypassing corporate publishers and artists can now simply upload their art onto social media and even receive feedback from other artists regardless of location. As such, new media has indeed undeniably undermined the power of traditional art establishments and corporations.
Social movements are able to reach a global audience through new media as well, thus creating a greater impact on society. People are able to find out about social injustices and oppression of others by establishments such as a corrupt government or even transnational corporations and hence pressure these establishments into action to rectify the situation as is seen in the case of the Nike sweatshops. Also social media has made it much easier for such social movements to be organised on a global scale, especially the feminist movement. The Everyday Sexism Project started by Laura Bates on Twitter demonstrated this perfectly. Women were able to share stories of the discrimination they faced in their everyday life and thus garnered global attention to the systemic oppression women faced by society, empowering women everywhere. Social media, as such, acts as a form of policing of establishments, placing restrictions on them.
Despite all the benefits and empowerment new media has brought to the individual, it is not necessarily correct to say that the statement is entirely fair.
New media is still being controlled by corporations such as Google. Though it is true that new media is comparatively unrestricted as compared to traditional media, it is still under the control of such corporations. Google, for instance, is a new media juggernaut. It not only controls one of, if not, the world’s greatest search engine but also several social media platforms such as Youtube. These forms of new media have so ingrained themselves into our lives, making Google an undeniable influence in our society now. Thus it is more than apparent that new media does not weaken establishments but rather grants them even more power over us as a society.
New media can still be censored by governments and corporations. While one cannot deny the leaps and bounds taken by technology especially in terms of social media, the same can arguably be said for censorship technology. Governments are legislating cyber activities nowadays so as to regulate the online community. In Singapore, bloggers such as Gan Huai Shi have been charged under the Sedition Act and fined or even jailed. As new media grows and evolves, censorship methods have not been in a state of stagnation either, evolving as well to better achieve the aims of the government or corporations. Hence it is clear that new media does not empower individuals.
While it is true that new media grants the masses a voice, one must remember that behind this burgeoning media giant, there are also several corporations which still influence the content we receive every day and perhaps, regardless of future developments in the media industry, there will always be a corporate presence. Despite so, it is undeniable that new media has indeed made media a two-way street and as such, the masses now can also influence establishments as they do us.
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