What are the possible benefits and problems attached to the Internet?
The media constantly changes everyday and involved new and digital technology. For example, before technology such as computers, laptops, iPads, smartphones etc. came out, media such as newspapers and magazines would constantly be used and these were things that were important, however, due to this change, this encourage a lot more advertisement and allowed people to share more ideas amongst each other.
New technologies such as viewing articles online compared to reading them in newspapers changed a lot of things and allowed people to interact by commenting on the bottom of the articles starting biased wars as to what they believe in leading to technology to evolve quicker than ever. New and digital technology targeted all different types of target audiences ranging from adults to younger children drawing in a large target market being a stereotype linking to Perkin's theory of having some element of truth within each stereotype and the new and digital media, in this case, is usually known for attracting the younger generation of people.
One benefit attached to the media includes sharing views and ideologies of what people feel amongst one another by sharing things from many to many, one to many or many to one. By doing this not only gave people the opportunity to share ideas but also lead to a raise in awareness. For example, on YouTube, well known artists of today such as Justin Bieber's career started because of the use of new and digital media allowing him to be one of the most searched people upon the whole web.
One problem attached to the internet includes things such as institutional bias and this is where institutes allow their ideas to take over and to be well known so that they can share their views with more people getting them to believe in more things that the institutes believe in. For example, institutions such as Fox News are known for only showing one-sided stories; one impact of them doing this effected the voting within the US.'We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News.' -Being a potential downfall for the reputation for not only the internet but for the whole new and digital media. Linking to Pareto's Law of 80/20 showing that 80% of votes were due to the 20% of bias shown on television.
Overall and personally, my opinion is that the internet can be positive but can also cause problems depending on how people make use of it. The positives can be that more ideologies get across to people and opinions are shared in order to gain more awareness, however, on the other hand, negative things such as biased views also encourage more wars to take place such as political wars for example.
WWW/EBI: You've made some good points and engaged with the debate but I do think there are some areas we can improve. Your paragraph on institutional bias could say so much more (and make its point clearer) - particularly since you could surely argue the internet is a force challenging institutional bias? Analysing these questions from both sides will open up the top grades for you in the A2 exam - always go the extra mile!
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