1. Cultural pessimists view on new media

Question 1

Who are Cultural pessimists?

Answer 1

Cultural pessimists point to the ,downsides of the New Media such as the rise of Fake News, domination of a few media companies, the rise of echo-chambers, the reinforcing of elite power and increasing commercialisation

Cultural pessimists criticise the Cultural optimistic view on new media

Question 2

Outline the negatives of new media such as the rise of echo chambers

Cultural pessimists

Answer 2

Social Media has led to more polarisation and conflict
Social networks are increasingly isolated from each other into ‘echo chambers’ – people find other people with the same views as them & all follow each other and reinforce same views of the world.
People are now less likely to see views which challenge their own. As a result, we have a polarisation of opinion. The case of Brexit is a great example of this.

By allowing people to connect with each other globally, the internet makes it easier for organised crime to commit phishing (mass emails) and to sell drugs online, among other crimes.

Groups like 4chan are also a good example of the downside of online global communities – largely anonymous groups who organised collective trolling and hacking just for the lols.

Polarisation-division into two contrasting groups or sets of opinions

Question 3

Outline Domination of Media conglomerates as a negative feature of new media

Cultural pessimists

Answer 3

Cultural pessimists are critical of new media, argue development of internet has led to us living in an increased state of surveillance. Companies like Facebook & Google use individuals data to help target advertising.

Argue internet has been controlled by big tech companies – Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook.
These companies invested hugely in New Media & now control access to social media sites but also search engines and the web servers which store our info

i.e people being de-platformed without warning or reason on YouTube and Twitter – typically those who hold radical views, suggesting these companies determine who can express what on social media.

• ## Some of the info online may just be ‘fake news’ – deliberately misleading to serve political or corporate ends. The Vote Leave campaign is a good example of this.

Counterpoint:
However the way new media can be used for surveillance also improves the abilities of social control agents to solve and prevent crime e.g. monitoring discussions in chat rooms etc)

Question 4

Outline how new media has reinforced elite power

Cultural pessimists perspective

Answer 4

Mainstream political parties now run sophisticated advertising campaigns using big data to manipulate the public into voting for them: Trump’s campaign and the Brexit campaign are 2 examples of this.

Larger political parties & corporations have more money to spend on advertising to keep their biased info at the top of internet search engines such as Google.

The most radical views are censored – while individuals may be free to express any opinion online, some of the most radical have de-platformed.

Question 5

Outline the negative features on new media to focus on in relation to Cultural pessimist

Answer 5

• Rise in echo chambers
• Domination of media conglomates
• media reinforcing elite power