NDM baseline assessment learner response

NDM Baseline assessment learner response

'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?'

= 40/48 (A-)

WWW: Well written, balanced answer, with well chosen examples

EBI: More on institutions/Pareto's Law - backing it up with data/statistics about their business with audience

It can also be said that the developments to new digital media haven't really empowered audiences since as said before, it's a minority of media producers that always serve a majority of consumers. As stated by Lin & Webster in 2002 in Pareto's Law, the Internet works in a similar fashion to more traditional media in the sense that you have just a few producers (institutions) serving a incomparably large(r) amount of consumers/readers. Lin & Webster also went on to say that 'the top 5% of all websites accounted for almost 75% of user volume.' This is representative of the fact that even though audiences have the opportunity to create their own publications whether it be a blog or website, people will still tend to mainly consume the work of the more major corporations. We even see this evident within the Ofcom report on the consumption of news in 2015, where out of the 41% of UK adults that said they used the internet for news, around half (51%) use the website or apps of TV and radio companies to get it. This gives an insight into how although audiences have a greater sense of freedom with how easy it is for them to create their own news sources, it's not necessarily going to be consumed as widely as the ones from broadcasters, not really working to empower audiences as much as may have been thought.