With changes in technology and society’s increased receptivity to use these technologies, the media has also evolved and become even more powerful. This can be epitomized by what Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation, a media conglomerate said last year at a media conference. He said that young people nowadays do not want to be preached at, and to carry this religious analogy further, he said that if we want youths to understand the gospel, we must engage them in a conversation about it. Moments later, he put his rhetoric to practice as he purchased Myspace.com, one of the many websites that allow the masses to connect themselves to the media. In short, Mr. Murdoch was making reference to what New Media entails – Participatory Media. As more and more blogs are created, and as more newspapers and periodicals go online, people’s participation in the mass media has also changed. While we used to be the recipients in a one way flow of information, we are now contributors as well as consumers in a two way flow of information. Society now has the ability to voice their opinions in their blogs or in online forums of a newspaper’s website. This undeniably makes the media more powerful as an information network. An influx of opinions allows the media, as well as the people to have a broader view of issues. Such a phenomenon would be incomprehensible and deemed ludicrous if the internet had not flourished. Thus the power of the media is not grossly overstated.
With the mass media’s role as information network more powerful, its other role of being a political watchdog automatically becomes more powerful too. The role at which information travels now makes politicians increasingly wary of the media. One wrong move and the globe will be drawn to the actions of the politicians. His actions would be severely scrutinized. Take for example America’s fiasco at Guantanamo Bay, the way the media worked to inform the world of the injustices taking place there was through a combination of old media- investigative journalism, and new media- highly developed information network. When the world learnt that detainees were detained without trail, when they learnt of the suicides by inmates in order to get the world’s attention, America received political backlash. The extent of the backlash was so huge that mighty USA buckled. George Bush, at a recent EU summit, promised to close down the prison and either release the inmates or give them trial. Although no timeline is given, the symbolic significance is still there. The mass media had effectively done its job as a check against nations. This role of a political watchdog would not have been so effective if not for new media. The searing pace of information dissemination accelerated the process. Therefore the influence of the mass media is still strong. It is not overstated.
Despite the obvious advantages and strengths, critics say that the mass media is ineffective in less developed countries. They say that the lack of decent network infrastructure or political maturity blunts the power of the mass media. A favored example of theirs would be China. Right there, its censorship laws have halted the influence of mass media. For instance, Google’s Chinese website ceded to governmental pressure and agreed to censor search results according to the government’s instructions. Even the voicing out of opinions is stifled at a grassroots level. Chinese movies depicting the chaos of “The Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” are banned. Critics put these as the main reason why the power of the mass media is greatly overstated. I beg to differ. If we are to judge the power of new media, we must compare it with prevalent boundaries of the region in question. China used to have state-dictated media, it still ahs it now, but the country is slowly loosening up its control. This is as much its desire to attract investments as it is the influence of the media. It is the barrage of opinions criticizing its censorship laws that forced China to loosen up. These critical opinions force the government to try and portray itself as a country that is slowly reforming. If it wants to garner more investments, China must show that it is receptive to public opinion. Therefore, the loosening up of China is its response to criticism, which is a consequence of the mass media. Hence the power of the media is not overstated as it is able to bring about changes in what was once a tightly controlled state.
With the growth of the internet and its increased accessibility for every man in society, the face of mass media has changed. Armed with its evolved form and increased capabilities, new media is proving to be even more powerful than its predecessor. This information network is spreading across the world at such a rapid rate that it would be naive to label it as being overstated. In fact, with such changes plentiful in the mass media, we should deem New Media as being just another step in what is the mass media’s continual ascension to greater power and influence which was started by the creation of print media in the 1400s.