January assessment: Learner response

January assessment: Learner response

1)

WWW:

Sharp focus on the question and detailed understanding

EBI:

Lacks much specific discussion of the case study - the press/newspaper industry. Write an additional paragraph on this. Also, a paragraph linking it to Marxism/hegemony.

2)

• Level 4 - a sophisticated and comprehensive essay, showing very good critical autonomy 
• Level 3 - proficient understanding of new and digital media. Need to make mention of the impact that this has had on elements of the newspaper industry - decline in the print platform 
• Level 4 - a sharp focus on the question.
• Level 3 - good application of range of media debates, issues and theories and wider contexts. Need to discuss the impact that current things like fake news can have on this democratic space e.g. reference to Facebook's issues  
• Level 3 - a comprehensive individual case study, with a range of examples. Have to implement the examples of the weekly new and digital media stories on my blog
• Level 4 - well structured, articulate and engaged

3)

I included quite a good number of the higher level points in my essay, such as the digital divide and also Pareto's Law in relation to the control media organisations still have. However I could've added:

• Marxism and Pluralism
• Decline of newspaper industry
• Proper examples from a case study

4)

• Quotes from media theorists/experts
• Statistical evidence
• Discussion about ideology (Marxism and Pluralism/dominant and alternative)

5)

The impact of new and digital media can be said to have been democratic, although this has come at the expense of too much information being 'pushed' to the public. The internet has brought about what Castells referred to as 'The Information Age,' with an estimated 672 billion gigabytes of information circulating around it currently. While this has been good in acting as another source that people can choose to use for information, it has also meant that a proportion of people in society have felt overwhelmed by its gargantuan nature. The Pew Research Center's report into the issue this year showed that some 20% of American adults feel the burden of information overload. This issue seems to be particularly worse in households that are less economically well off, with 47% of those whose household income is less than $30,000 sometimes feeling stressed by the information they have to keep track of compared with 39% of those earning more than $75,000. However, something that can also be looked at is how the truckload of information that comes through the internet, isn't always reflective of the truth. Fake news and just generally inaccurate information, is something that has posed a threat to the very foundations of democracy. In a world where 66% of 9-19 year olds who went online regularly had not been given any guidance about how to judge the accuracy of online information (S. Livingstone), fake news has been able to have influence in significant elements of democracy such as voting. The recent 2016 US election is representative of this, where stories containing misinformation about the presidential candidates were said to have had an impact on people's votes. So when this is factored in, it's bad enough that people get too much information that they have to take in regularly, but they also have to sift through what's fake and what's not. These are some of the more negative impacts that new and digital media has had on the 'democratic space.'

It could also be said that new and digital media is having a negative impact on the democratic space as it's helping contribute to the death of newspaper institutions which actually help underpin democracy. One thing newspapers, particularly local ones, have been notable for is their investigative journalism. This involves newspaper journalists carrying out investigations to help keep the concept of accountability within society. Examples of it go from the 2002 Catholic Church crisis discovered by the Boston Globe, to the Panama Papers by The Guardian among others, to even the 2016 English football scandal by the Daily Telegraph. Journalism like this has ensured that corruption has been kept to as low of a level as possible, with it being exposed when found. However with the 'siphoning off' of ad revenue that digital giants like Google and Facebook have been responsible for, it's been increasingly more difficult for newspaper institutions to continue funding journalism of this nature. This can be seen with The Sun for example, a leader in the UK newspaper market, who in 2016 saw a £10m fall in revenue, with this being able to be attributed to things like the increased usage of new and digital media platforms like social networks e.g. Facebook and Twitter. With this, it could be argued that actually what new and digital media is doing is 'reducing' the level of democracy we get in this democratic space, as it's helping contribute to the death of one of if not the iron core of journalism itself [investigative].