Web 2.0 – Participation or Hegemony Summarised

It is argued that Web 2.0, often referred to as ‘we media’, democratises the media, as anyone with a web connection can create and publish texts (‘user-generated content’); we no longer have to rely upon professional organisations (or traditional ‘old’ media) to act as the gatekeepers.

Some observers believe this has led to ‘dumbing down’ and ‘the cult of the amateur’ (see Carr, 2011); ‘dumb’ and ‘amateur’ because anyone, regardless of ability or expertise, can create texts

However it’s virtually certain that in the old, pre-internet days they would have had no chance. In April 1979 Blair Peach was killed in similar circumstances, and to this day no one has been charged with his death.

The argument that the internet has a liberating political function arises, in part, because authorities cannot control it as it is a decentralised network:

it was widely believed that cyberspace might challenge the authority of nation-states and move the world to a new, post-territorial era

The reality is that Twitter is an information-distribution network, not that different from the telephone or email or text messaging, except that it is real-time and massively distribute
countries like China and Iran have successfully controlled the general population’s access to the internet, and so have prevented the free circulation of information.

However it has also been argued that social networking sites have facilitated the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings

Politically, then, the internet has given the people a potentially powerful tool to communicate with each other, and so to challenge their rulers

What appears to be happening is that YouTube is now used more frequently as a commercial network for promotional and catch-up purposes that runs alongside, and probably dominates, the original, usually trivial, user-generated content.

What appears to be happening is that YouTube is now used more frequently as a commercial network for promotional and catch-up purposes that runs alongside, and probably dominates, the original, usually trivial, user-generated content.



We – the audience – no longer have to rely upon the token ‘access’ traditional media offered us, such as newspapers’ letter pages or radio phone-ins. Today we can easily produce texts ourselves, even if we seem to be more interested in mimicking traditional media by becoming YouTube celebrities, or watching music videos and/or television programmes by favourite artists.