Power in the Media model Essay

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

In today's society with web 2.0 and subsequently social media, large influencers and big media conglomerates have a very wide audience and power that can reach everywhere in the world. This wide audience and reach that they have can be positive and negative in many ways, such as constructing ideologies in supporters and they can show certain events in particular ways to manipulate the story and outcome. 

Stuart Hall's Representation Theory states that people will receive media and information in different ways and how media is represented and how accurate it is to real life. Media is notorious for representing people groups and minorities in stereotypical ways, consistent exposure to modified or targeted material can make it become a normal thing for the audience be it good or bad this is known as the Cultivation Theory. Similarly the mean world theory suggests that the media links and overlaps events which gives a distinct view of the world. The media commonly displays material that would be disturbing in real life but on the media becomes mundane and normal, mean world anxieties are linked to the amount of TV and media one watches, the perception that there is so much violence in the world that everyone is at risk. 

Since the introduction of web 2.0 people have been given the power to represent themselves in the way they intend it to be taken. Traditionally the mass media and Linear TV were the only way news and information was given, this provided them with all the power to represent situation however they want, nowadays audiences can interact and give feedback as can go trending on different social media platforms for speaking out against something in less than a day. This hegemonic power the media can take away some of the power from people trying to represent themselves as the media can twist the meaning of what actually happened. Although the fact that people are able to represent themselves in any way significantly decreases the power the mass media once held. This balance of power is still leaning towards the Big 5 and large media studios, however they are shifting their content to suit their audience such as including more women in film and including a more diversely ethnic cast.

Woman unlike in the past are being able to represent themselves and also be given the same jobs and roles as men have for example being given major roles in movies and also being heavily involved in the production process, and also not representing woman as accessories and rather given more powerful roles with more meaning than just eye candy. Different ethnicity's have been represented unlike in the past where in the past it has been a white dominated media, in 2020 films that had at least 21% minority in the cast had the highest online viewership rates from ages 18-49. People of Colour are being given a chance to represent themselves as it is a prevalent topic in todays society. Large film companies bow to the Chinese censorship laws in order for their movie to be aired in China, this is because China doesn't allow many movies to be shown in their country so ones that are shown make a lot of money. Because of these rules companies can't show a chinese person in a bad light and there can't be a chinese person as a bad guy, and in some cases making them the hero. The power of repetitive messaging in major media can result in persuading people to do things, for example in New Zealand in the midst of the corona virus was constantly reminded that the country was a "Team of 5 Million" and to "Be kind" this became a common thing to hear and was constantly repeated until people began to believe it. 

Henry Jenkins' fandom theory states fans enjoy media so much that they create content based upon it and form communities known as fandoms. An example comes from Disney plus' Mandalorian, where a fan remade a scene from the popular TV series because he didn't like the way the scene went, he ended up doing such a good job that he has been brought into the LucasFilm production team. Another example is from Netflix's Stranger Things where a large fandom of pre-teens was reposting clips from the show as well as their own edits eventually accounts from this fandom began to be banned as the clips they uploaded were copyright infringements known under Article 13.

Although the people have in a way balanced out the power of these large media firms, they still have the advantage as they own most of the platforms people can represent themselves on, for example Donald Trump the former president of the United States was banned on twitter for a series of tweets which we said to have started riots in America, people aren't able to control for themselves what it morally right and wrong, which is another limitation of their power, but who is deciding what information is suitablet and what information in "dangerous".

o