Marxism & Pluralism: Alain de Botton on the news
1)
I agree with the view of Alain de Botton in that the point of news is something that society still doesn't totally understand, along with news institutions themselves perhaps not providing us with the information they should be. Presented with an excess of it which tends to be based around sensationalism, particularly with tabloid newspapers, and a quite narrow-minded and limited agenda, current news doesn't make us take up the critical appreciation that we should be. Not only this, but it's getting increasingly difficult to get people to become engrossed in news that is actually important as oppose to news that is fun/entertaining.
2)
Marxism in particular can be linked to de Botton's criticisms of the news since something that tends to be described in the ideology is the concept of media output being 'dumbed down.' Rather than us as an audience receiving news that's important and is also going to be beneficial to us, rather we're provided with news that solely seeks to generate the hugest audience possible. From here we can also link this to the concept of the ruling elite trying to maintain the status quo since we're drip-fed with stories that are essentially just soft news.
3)
Pluralism and new technology can be used to challenge these views mainly in that audiences don't just get these stories and accept them for what they are. As pluralist values state, once audiences have read a story in the media they can then proceed to conform, accommodate, challenge or reject stories, so they're not as passive as they're often made out to be. Not only this but with the rise of new and digital media, audiences are given another way to challenge things they see published on the media through things like social networks.
4)
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