Essay Plan

Development in new/digital media mean that audiences can now have access to a greater variety of views and values. To what extent are audiences empowered by these developments? 

Introduction
I believe that to a large extent audiences are empowered by these developments as it gives them a range of views and values that they nay not be able to access on traditional media such as the new. However, also new/digital media doesn't empowered in stead takes away power from audiences in a number of ways. 

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• Development of social media sites - Facebook was key in the Scottish referendum as it held opinion polls and allowed people to express their views and believes concerning the issue  
• more democratic - 85% voted 
• Engaged more audiences 
• Got teenagers involved 

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• Apple release a new update iOS 8 which is designed to make phones more secure empowering audiences to full comfortable use their phone and sharing personal stuff 
• Recent hacks into celebrity photos 

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• Twitter has replaced traditional media such as the new and newspapers 
• Empowering people as it gives audiences control of the stories that matter to them - Personalised new feed 
• News agenda
• Whereas traditional media decides what stories are important and relevant to use - gate keepers - news worthy 

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• Andrew keen 
• Dumbing down
• such as the ice bucket challenge doesn't require much intelligence plus covers up the real issues in society 

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• Wikipedia - misleading information so its not empowering people 
• traditional media have gate keepers who validate the true stories before there produced.

Conclusion
In conclusion i believe that to a large extent new/digital media does empowered in a number of ways but we must be aware of the dangers of relying to new/digital media to much for example some stories can be misleading thus giving people the wrong information