Is the media more democratic as a result of new technology.
digitcal divide
With this new media age we are in, web 2.0, we have so much technology around us, internet enabled phones and tablets that all allow us to voice our opinions. Voicing our opinions can take many different forms, for example, citizen journalism, user generated: videos, pod-casts, blogs etc. We are allowed to voice our opinions through services such as youtube and blogger for example, however these services are owned by the same company. This supports the idea that even though the audience has more power than it did previously, media still is in the control of the dominant media firms, for example google twitter, facebook. People have been given more of voice thanks to the new age of media, but they still are under the watchful all seeing eye of gatekeepers, who decide what can be made mainstream and what not. However people still are able to get their points across and make news by virally spreading things, for example the bus driver uppercut wouldnt of made news if it wasnt for it spreading around the internet, mainly through social networking websites. Nichie target audience websites such as worldstar hiphop enable things like this to be news, because they allow for UGC to be accessed by a wide audience. This is the same with youtube, blogger and other similar websites and services just like it. There is a digital divide in our age where people dont understand technology or whatever their reason is not to use it. New technology allows for us as a culture and community to bridge the gap and try to reduce the digital divide, by things making a big enough noise on social networking websites and nichie target audience websites, that they cannot be ignored by the big traditional media insitutions that are the main source of information to the digital have nots, of the digital divide. To answer the original question, yes the media has become more democaratic as a result of new technology for the reasons above.
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