Power and the Media essay

Question:

"To what extent do people today have the power to represent themselves?":

Essay:

We see that power in the media is about who holds the power in constructing ideologies about society, events, and people groups in society. We can look at this a little bit with Stuart hall's Representation theory which pretty much outlines that the stories we tell and the stereotypes we perpetuate, all work together to shape our beliefs about ourselves and group identity. this pretty much means "He who controls the narrative, holds the power". We can also see, however, that people today do have a lot more power to represent themselves than what they did around 10 years ago as well as being less "gullible" or easily persuaded through the media put in front of them.

Stuart Hall and his representation theory however can be broken down further than this, and he tells us that what something is meant to mean or does mean doesn't actually have any meaning or have its own meaning until the media gives it its meaning. This shows that the media literally gives everything they cover their own meaning and how they want to present it. Stuart Hall said, "It has no fixed meaning, no real meaning in the obvious sense until it has been represented." This talks about how unless something is represented it actually has no meaning to it and this is why the media has had so much power in the past because they were the only ones who could represent something and could give that thing the meanings they want. This has however been flipped on itself and does not really have as much grounding anymore because with the increase of and bettering of technology people are now more easily able to represent themselves and even others in the way would like now. Even though people have now got more power to represent themselves there are still things such as the mass media who have such a powerful grasp on us and society and how we view certain topics. Stuart hall thought that the Mass media has such power over how we perceive things. However, this means we, as the audience, can reject certain ideas and ideologies if we do not agree with them. He talks about how the media are actually "attempting to fix a meaning for the majority of society" to keep majority social supremacy. Audiences can only start to combat these stereotypes and break down these social ideologies is by interrogating what the purpose serves. 

Stuart Hall also came up with his reception theory that talks about how "the media generally tends to repeat representations of people or groups of people over and over again" and the effect of these repetitions build up over time. This overtime puts certain representations in the minds of the audiences and slowly makes the masses/ audiences, (us), start to believe in or become indoctrinated on that certain topic. He believes these repeated ideas/representations cultivate our perceptions and change our behavior over time. The way groups are presented over and over again will eventually become the "dominant ideology in society".

Although in the past, we can see that people have pretty much been brainwashed and exposed to whatever the media has wanted them to see, we are starting to 'evolve' and break away from these traditional power structures because audiences are now able to interact with and create media having a say. Because of web 2.0 and the proliferation of the internet we are able to interact (comment, Dm) with big media conglomerates and influence them in the ways media is being created and even distributed. This means that audiences are no longer just consumers but producers as well, the media theorist who came up with this theory clay shirky coined this as the term 'Procumers'. His theory indicated that actually there is no longer any passive audiences band that people want to be able to comment and give feedback and create their own media. This all has become possible due to massive changes and increases in new technology. This could also be linked to the "Fandom theory" proposed by Henry Jenkins in which it explains that fans now act as 'contextual poachers' that take elements that take elements from media texts to create their own culture. The development of this ‘new’ media has accelerated ‘participatory culture’, in which audiences are active and creative participants rather than passive consumers. This pretty much means they create online communities, produce new creative forms, collaborate to solve problems, and shape the flow of media. This is what generates what is thought of as 'collective intelligence'. From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological one. A good example of Jenkin's "Fandom theory" in use would be in the case of a creative film and special effects individual that went by the name of "shamook" was hired by Lucasfilm after he created his own take from a scene in the Mandalorian, which was released on the 12th of November 2019. This is clear proof of how audiences want to be heard by the creators of movies but it also shows how producers, directors, and writers, etc... are wanting to hear from fans as well and are even reaching out in certain circumstances. 

However, although more power has been given to audiences because of technology, the balance of power still greatly rests in the hands of the big 5 media conglomerates. Although they are still controlling the media they are giving their audiences what they want to hear with twists on it so they are still able to show their agenda and what they want audiences to get out of the media in front of them. This can be shown with the women in power movements as well as the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements and how people are looking for and wanting a more diverse cast, From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological one. We can look at what is called "The Hollywood diversity report" to give an idea of what strides forward and where these companies are looking at going in the future in the sense of these changes. "The Hollywood diversity report" is the only place that “tracks how well women and minorities are represented in four key industry employment categories: lead actors, total cast, writers and directors.” “All four job categories showed progress in 2020, but women and people of color are still underrepresented in critical behind-the-camera jobs”. These are some stats that the Diversity report came out with.

• Women made up just 26% of film writers and just 20.5% of directors. Combined, minority groups were slightly better represented as directors at 25.4%. Just 25.9% of film writers in 2020 were people of color.
•  In 2020, nearly all of the films with a female director also featured a female lead (94.7%). Films directed by minorities had the highest level of cast diversity. And 78.3% of films directed by people of color featured minority leads.
• The most underrepresented groups in all job categories, relative to their presence in the U.S., are Latino, Asian and Native actors, directors, and writers.

Darnell Hunt, dean of the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences and the report’s co-author, had this to say,  “We’ve been systematically looking at these key job categories and comparing the representation of women and people of color to the all-important bottom line for eight years, and it’s encouraging to see skyrocketing numbers this year in front of the camera,”.

Ana-Christina Ramon, the report’s co-author and the director of research and civic engagement for the division of social sciences, said, “Our report finds that women directors and directors of color have overwhelmingly diverse productions,” “However, these films often have smaller budgets than those helmed by male directors and white directors. So, in a year where more diverse productions were made more accessible to larger audiences through streaming services, the contrast is stark as to what types of films have the big budgets. There is clear underinvestment of films made by, written by, and led by women and people of color".

We can also see how big tech companies want us to see what they want in the sense of how they can also block and censor who they want on social media now, An example of this is how, Facebook & Twitter have put their ideologies onto the public and given them a certain perception on the previous president of the U.S.A Donald Trump by, Facebook, banning him for 2 years, and, Twitter, banning him indefinitely. This shows the public the idea that Donald Trump is too outspoken and conservative, Racist, Misogynistic, etc... the list could go on. This is the big tech companies doing the same thing as what the Media have been doing online by putting their ideologies and ideas onto the public over time by bombarding them with repeated info about certain subjects. The media will have also reported on this topic which will have put this idea/ideology into others' heads and cause the public to believe those things about Donald Trump.

In essence, I believe that yes people and the public do have more power and influence in representing themselves, but also I think that the "Big 5", and big tech/media conglomerates have the majority of the balance of power in representation still and are still able to put their ideas and ideologies out there easily without the majority of people noticing, as, most of the population are most likely still passive consumers, and we haven't reached a majority bracket of people being 'prosumers yet.'