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Examples Of Alternative Digital Media

1510 Words7 Pages

Drawing on appropriate scholarship and using relevant examples, evaluate arguments around 'alternative' digital media, activism and protest.
‘Alternative’ digital media challenges mainstream media, connecting communities that are isolated or minorities. In recent years, the internet and social media has helped communities rally together to form social movements to challenge the government’s power. The production of media is what deems it alternative and how it is shared among peers. This essay will focus on how the internet is used by people as a platform to help activists to organise protests.
Defining alternative media is a challenge. However, there is a problem with defining alternative media as everything could be alternative to something …show more content…

A sense of community is felt within the people outside the mainstream media. Communities are formed between those minorities of which mainstream media doesn’t favour.
“The representation of ordinary people in alternative journalism does not set them apart as heroes or victims, but as voices that have as equal a right to be heard as do the voices of elite groups” (Atton 2008, p.221)
Atton’s argument is that alternative journalism doesn’t alter or undermine the minorities views like the mainstream media. Atton’s view is that everyone’s opinion is valid and should be heard. In groups such as Keep Britain Tidy, which relies on social media to spread the word and change people’s views on the topic. This group enables a safe space for people with similar views and people who want to act. However, there is a problem with social media as it is run by corporate …show more content…

Gehl (2015 p.2) agrees with Atton’s point of everyone’s opinions being important and deserving to be heard “By offering access to decentralized, democratic methods of media production, alternative media challenge media power both at the level of organization (i.e., ordinary people can control production) and at the level of messages (if ordinary people make media, then their concerns will be privileged, rather than those of capitalists, politicians, or cultural elites)”. As Gehl suggests, when ordinary people are making media, their points are as valid as those ones who don’t use alternative media. Gehl points out that the ordinary peoples’ opinions would be taken over those of the government and mainstream media.

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In 2013, the percentage of news stories that focused on Latinos was one percent. Of those stories, many surrounded immigration and crime. This fact fuses the two topics that Soledad O’Brien discussed in her Sept. 30 lecture at The College of New Jersey: diversity and journalism. O’Brien views journalism as a great opportunity to tell the stories that she wants to tell, and for her, those stories are ones that normally don’t get told -- they are the stories of people who live in poverty, are of color, and who are marginalized by society. O’Brien believes that she has the drive to share these stories because of her upbringing, which is how she began her lecture.

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Stories are no longer respectable and virtuous as they were at modern journalism’s beginning. Thus, by journalists Fallows and Rothman have named the media as unethical. Another way that modern journalists have transformed today’s media is that the media now relies on the popularity of its stories and articles. Journalist Jack Shafer uses his article, “The Rise and the Fall of the Obama Media Romance” as an example of popular opinion reflecting

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Technology is advancing very rapidly, but is it hurting or harming us? In the article, “ Is Google Making Us Stupid”, by Nicholas Carr, he examines how the internet has altered people’s mental abilities. Malcolm Gladwell writes an article called, “ Small Change”, in which he draws attention to how the internet has changed the engagement of social activism. Carr’s argument that the internet alters a person's mental abilities, changes their thought process, and destroys their concentration complicates Gladwell’s point that the internet loses the meaning of social activism, changes how activist are defined, and it takes over activism on a social level, because the arguments presented are similar but the outcomes of the internet vary between the

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Society expect to be constantly entertained; they have become so concerned with things such as who the latest star is dating, scandals, or dumb people doing rather idiotic things. Much of society have been consumed in their personal instant gratification and what makes them “happy”. When on an off chance that news does show things that are serious and impactful(not necessarily positive things that is happening in the world) people have become so numb that the best they could do is feel sympathetic and at worst continue on with their day. The other part of the problem is that those behind what is being published and shown on the news media have been absorbed in their avarice nature, whatever allows them to make as much profit they do. “Writing thousands of hours of coverage from what could have been summarized in a couple of minutes every few weeks, a new rhetorical strategy was developed, or-let’s be generous-evolved”(6), Saunders describes the new formula formed by mass news firms that would yield the most profit.

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Stuart goes on to talk about many different forms and practices of media pointed towards multiple dissimilar races. One could say his tactics reflect that of the media, and the examples he uses in the article mostly rely on his emotion towards his argument. Stuart claims that the media can structure and change the way we view things through rhetoric. An example of Rhetoric, would be if one were to walk into a class room, and In his

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A media source which ignores or censors important issues and events severely damages freedom of information. Many modern tabloids, twenty four hour news channels and other mainstream media sources have increasingly been criticized for not conforming to general standards of journalistic integrity. In nations described as authoritarian by most international think-tanks and NGOs media ownership is generally something very close to the complete state control over information in direct or indirect ways. Undesirable consequences which occur due to media imperialism are: • Commercially driven ultra-powerful mass market media is primarily loyal to sponsors i.e. advertisers and government rather than to the public interest.

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Many people over the world rely on ‘real life’ and ‘offline’ action and behaviours to express their opinion on politics. For those without the internet, their voices may go unheard and ignored. Furthermore, Papacharissi expresses that popular forums online may not create a utopian democratic society as many extremist groups are able to discuss their views online. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a great illustration of how the internet can publicize extremist views and undemocratic values, as they promote racism towards African-American citizens. These negative effects are a creating a significant obstruction towards the creation of a global democratic society.

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Diversity in the media will bring awareness to situations that are happening in communities that not everyone is accessible to that, in turn, can better those circumstances. Due to the lack of diversity in the media, it has put a strain in minority communities which Nam goes on to quote Dori J. Maynard, “Lacking these voices, the ability of the media to serve the public interest is itself compromised. ‘The news media is not only failing to serve the communities, but the country at large when they fail to reflect what’s going on in communities of color,” said the late Dori J. Maynard, former President of the Robert C.’(Nam par.2) and the causes the media to fail in not informing people everything that's going on but Instead picks and chooses what they

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In conclusion, political impact on social media is huge and obvious. Social media platforms is substituting the traditional formal news media which has restrictions on the news and information they share especially in closed societies. Governments of closed societies are facing a problem because the government cannot control the news and the information shared on the internet which diminish the government authority to control their citizens. Lack of control on internet has made social media a platform for activists in politics and human right

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