Are the media becoming more democratic?

The technological advances has revolutionized the way in which we perceive the news which we receive. This is because the change in consumerism has meant that the concept of 'We media' and Citizen journalism' has become the dominant force in the way we receive news;With a developing world and the new age of technology it is having a great effect on industries such as media as the sources and way which we consume media. The introduction of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter has made a big impact as the majority of internet users now have the choice of what they read and what to believe. This has now challenged the mainstream old media suer powers such as newspapers and TV by making the population question if what they are told is true. However this shift in power to citizens has been abused and can lead to false news which is said to be damaging the newly created virtual sphere.

With Twitter being a place where the users do not fear recogniton

Citizen journalism is one of the pioneering concepts which has changed the way in which we consume news and entertainment from the media and this is mainly due to advancement of digital convergence. Digital convergence is where several different types of media are put into one product for example a smart phone will now have a camera and a internet receiver so that a person can take a picture and then post to a blog or twitter account allowing for mass distribution instantly. This was notable in the recent London riots as victims and culprits were using messaging services such as bbm to communicate about what they were planning to disrupt or what the current situation of their local area was.. This became a powerful tool as the 'media gods' such as newspapers and television no longer had the power to dictate what news we saw as there was alternative choice put in place for the masses to consume. This is a very democratic example of new media as there was freedom of speech and a choice to select what people wanted. This new movement of citizen journalism disrupted the hegemonic order that the media gods had established as no longer was it a minority dictating to the majority what could and couldn't see. However media convergence showed that citizen journalism eventually aided the big media industries as news channels such as sky news used the images that were published to capture and alert the police to who the criminals were.

This made it clear to media gods that the power of the public sphere had become more potent due to its large involvement for creating and stopping the London riots. This was due to the initial fact that initially the big news were circulating the same old images of the riots each day without fresh evidence having chosen not to display the images that the citizen were choosing to show. Even with advances like this however the democratic movement of media isn't completely floor less world wide. With certain countries and members of the population with limited or no access to the internet cannot participate in the media revolution and this is known as the digital divide.

This was noticeable in countries if north Africa as the growing numbers of citizens with access to internet are grasping the concept of citizen journalism. The Syrian uprising is an example of this with bloggers using there power to broadcast there message to powers of the Europe to alert them to the mistreatment of their people. In December 2010 a man was harassed by a governor and slapped in plain view of locals and after the police failed to listen to his argument he incinerated himself as a beacon to the country. People decided to rally and use the power of smart phones to record and distribute their public protests so that there cause was not censored by the government. This lead to trouble for the Syrian government as countries like the United Kingdom were now aware of the political corruption and were using the videos from YouTube to notify their public about the problems abroad. This meant that the power of citizen journalism had grown as it had been shown by the media gods so that it was redistributed to a wider audience.

These actions of the Syrian people follows the principles of theorist Papacharissi who argues that in democracies "privacy is recognized as a basic human right — the ‘right to be let alone," and this idea that people had the right to be left alone was what spurred the Syrian uprising; as the man who died as a result of his incineration because of injustice left a whole nation in uproar and the people believed they had the right to be left alone by a corrupt government and so decided to use the power of the media as a way of broadcasting their message. These two example of the power of citizen journalism challenge the theory of media gods by Gauntlet and so how the people now have the power to produce themselves and it is the media gods using these publications to broadcast their news. As there is more choice and opinions out for news now this shows the media is becoming more democratic due to the changing political world and the power of the internet allowing production and distribution more accessible therefore allowing for more choice and freedom of speech which are fundamentals to a democratic society.