Have such developments made the media more democratic, with more equal participation by more people?

New and digital media erodes the dividing line between reporters and reported, between
active producers and passive audiences: people are enabled to speak for themselves.’
(www.indymedia.org.uk)
Have such developments made the media more democratic, with more equal
participation by more people? (48 marks)

In a sense digital media has made the media more democratic as digital media has given a way for the public to give their say on events they consider newsworthy through various social networking sites like twitter and Facebook  Many news website also have the ability for users to comment on them as they seem to want to have a level of interaction with their audience. These commenting systems allow for a level of interaction with the news institutions not previously had, of course, these institutions still have control over what content is posted on their websites and can moderate and remove them if wanted. This still shows them as being the beaugazie <Spell check wasn't very useful here> as they have the ability to affect their audiences say on their articles. 
Social media sites like Facebook and twitter are also used to give opinions, these sites are very useful for the general public to participate in the news as they can share and discuss news stories with friends or just post them on their wall to help them get attention. With twitter this has become more prevalent as there is the ability to discuss and post thoughts on topics that are trending and more people will be able to see these opinions through this as they are not only displayed to friends and are therefore able to get more popularity. 
Of course, as with all methods of communication on the internet, there are trolls and other unsavoury characters that tend to destroy any attempts at civil conversation. This is very prevalent on sites such as YouTube where users can sign up very easily and not display public information as they have a sense of anonymity and that they cannot be affected by anything they write. This is an instance where maybe maybe the institutions should get more involved with their products as people can just run rampart spreading discord on the internet. The way that people tend not to care about there comments due to being not face to face with people, a good example of this is on twitter where there have been cases of arrests over comments made via the site, even jokingly. One example would be where two UK citizens, Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Bunting, made joking comments about destroying america on a visit there and digging up Marilyn Monroe. These two comments got them detained after landing in Los Angeles where, after being locked up for a few hours they explained that they meant destroy america as get wasted and digging up Marilyn Monroe was a quote from the show Family Guy. This is evidence of authorities taking comments made on social networking sites far too seriously and if the institution themselves were the ones that brought these comments to the authorities attention then they should have to rethink some of there rules regarding comments. Rowan Atkinson made a statement that essentially said that people should be allowed to insult each other after a handful of arrests and fines of comments made on social networking sites. This "Campaign" for the right to insult one another also got the attention of Steven Fry This could be an instance of an institution standing up for those that had been targeted as he himself is a comedian and understands the value of being able to insult somebody, whether it is jokingly or not. These types of issues can be seen as being a form of censorship by institutions as they are preventing people from speaking freely about different topics, Whilst it is important for these institutions to monitor activity made one their media platform it is also important to let people speak freely about what they choose to.


(this is something I did ages ago and never published)