· Has Web 2.0 and the explosion in social networking really opened up new opportunities for democracy?
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?
· A form of government in which all eligible people have an equal say in decision making
· System of government used in most countries in the world except one-party states such as China, dictatorships such as Libya and non-symbolic monarchies such as Saudi Arabia.
· The X Factor as an example: in the 2010 series, 15,488,019 million votes were cast by viewers to decide the outcome of the programme.
o an example of media democracy at work
· Pre-digital era, there were very few ways in which audiences could make their voices heard.
· Digital revolution and Web 2.0 have given users the opportunity to communicate ideas globally through the use of social networking
o Series Six, winner Joe McElderry was held off the crucial Christmas No.1 spot in the British charts by ‘foul-mouthed rockers’ Rage Against The Machine.
§ Half a million Facebook users joined an anti-X Factor campaign to protest at the state of the modern music industry
· The uprisings in Egypt and Libya couldn’t have happened without the use of Twitter and Facebook
· It was probably the mobile phone and its evolution into a convergent device that enabled these uprisings
o Could communicate on the move and keep one step ahead of the authorities
· in the countries now experiencing this ‘Arab Spring’, access to mobile technology and the internet is still limited to a relatively small elite
· Not yet seen true democracy through the media.
· Internet has empowered its users by giving them unparalleled instant and almost unmediated access to unfolding news stories
o This had bypassed the hegemonic institutions that control the dominant media discourses in society
· Blogging is another way that the media are becoming more democratic.
o Blogs have as much access to global audiences as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation
§ July 2011 the most popular blog was not FailBlog or PerezHilton but The Huffington Post, a well-respected political blog with 54 million monthly readers.
· Some of the most significant events of the last ten years have been communicated by ordinary people who just happened to be in the right place at the right time
o For example the iconic video footage of the attack of 9/11
· Citizen journalism can do is provide eyewitness accounts and subjective angles on stories to complement the work of professional news organisations.
· We have entered a new age when audiences are producers and the traditional power structures are being forced to listen.
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