Digital media, in many ways, changed how we consumer media products
Who do you think benefits most- audiences or producers?

To introduce, digital media has enabled a wider audience and so forces the industrial producers such as the BBC, SKY and ITV to become more interactive. This has encouraged user generated content, increased the amount of citizen journalists and increased the advances in technology, which in turn has made it cheaper to purchase technology for the citizens to enable them to become producers.

Firstly, “media globalisation is tightly interweaven with world economy and market forces” and so as more products are available to consumers, the consumers become producers too. Supported by this, the theory of Marxism suggests that the media industry is only money motivated, therefore with such technology available to consumers and producers, consumers are more likely to become producers. For example, www.youtube.com enables producers to post up their productions as long as they meet youtube’s privacy and copyright criteria.

Similarly, programmes such as ‘you’ve been framed’ encourage citizens to ‘send in’ their media via text, email or DVD, and in turn the citizens receive £250. In effect the cash payment acts as an incentive for the public, but in reality, programmes such as these rely on citizens and their media to broadcast. Similarly, the news channels act like this where they rely on citizen journalists to produce media about factors such as the weather conditions across the world, traffic situations within major cities and also the citizen’s personal opinions on the discussed topics within the news. Therefore this benefits the audience and encourages a healthy democracy.

Also, with reference to the ‘rodney king’ recording found on many sharing websites, this encourages citizen journalism. From this it can be concluded that “capitalist production develops technology combining together various processes into social life”, whilst encouraging consuemrs to become producers. In turn, this creates demands for induvidual packages such as sport, science, history. And so, th emocrtic UK, although catyering for all, does not “resist the tyranny of the specialists”. Despite catering for all, new digital media also benefits products as more profit is then easily comissioned.

In addition, the advances in technology mean that there is more demand, and so more consumers purchase the products of the induvidual companies such as Nokia, Samsung and Blackberry. Obviously this benefits the producersbut it ensures that the audience remain passive despite using the services provided. However, it can also be argues that the producers have their technology for it to be use with web 2.0 to access a wider audience. In turn, these products suggest that “the americanisation of world culture so often commented on and often deplored might be better described as the discovery of world culture”. In this case, this this statement is true as at the moment there are over 5 hundred million facebook users who can access it on their ‘smartphones’. This not onyl benefits the audience but enables the producers to widen theri horizons to attract more consumers.

On the other hand, channels such as sky, bbc and itv have ‘send in’ sections specifially designed for consumers. This relies on citizen journalists to produce media about factors such as the weather conditions across the world, traffic situations within major cities and also the citizen’s personal opinions on the discussed topics within the news. This means that web 2.0 fully flourishes as it iis used daily by most of the world. As technology advances it suggests that in terms of cultural imperialism “western nations dominate the media around the world whcih in turn effects the world”. For example, Libya and Egypt relied on facebook and twitter to spread democracyt and rebel against dictators such as Gaddaffi. Western culture no “longer imposes thrid world cultures...destroying cultures”. Therefore, enabling consumers to become producers, increasing interactivity and spreading world news and culture.