NDM: Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

NDM: Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

1)

The traditional, hegemonic view in this case would be that the police, as a law enforcement agency, were just doing their best effort of maintaining the order that exists within society and preventing any intolerance of that. New and digital media helps create a different story though in the sense that it can be shown that the police overstepped their mark for their violent interactions with Ian Tomlinson, in some sense bringing injustices to the light of the general public. However the acquittal of the police officer who pushed Tomlinson is representative of how bringing injustices to light may not necessarily help bring victims the justice that they rightly deserve.

2)

The author argues that hegemony is being challenged in that the so-called 'ruling class' don't have the same control that they once did with society on the internet with it being a 'decentralised network' working to empower people 'oppressed by years of authoritarian rule.'

3)

In my opinion, new and digital media is without a doubt providing an avenue for audiences to challenge the ruling class. WikiLeaks particularly is representative of this, with the hacking of Hilary Clinton's emails for one coming to mind. This shows how the power of the oligarchy can often be put into question and be to some extent undermined by those online. However it can be argued that while there are challenges being increasingly made to the ruling class, overall through new and digital media they are simply reinforced further. This is do the fact that we still receive, to some extent, a replication of the news that we get on television and newspaper on e-media through things such as social media which makes us all-the-more accepting of this 'common sense'/dominant ideology.

4)

I believe that these events represent how these dominant ideologies that exist are now being challenged. Rather than a more centreground approach/outlook being adopted by the public, what seems to be more appealing nowadays is more polarising views whether it's from the right side of the political spectrum where we can place Donald Trump or the left where Bernie Sanders can be put in. Perhaps occurrences are simply the public representing their distaste for the middle ground governments across the world have adopted in the past.