Marxism & Pluralism: To what extent...?

Developments 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?

Audiences are empowered by new and digital media due to the recent advancements of the internet and how it's had a massive impact to people’s daily lifes. With the internet it helps people with their views on society this links with pluralism which links with the ideology of the majority who are not the elite have all of the power to do what they want and are free to do as they please and people live in a classes society and that people society is created by the people who are in it. This empowers people because of the factor of the majority all believing in a brighter future fighting the presence of "The Man" being the big elitist group that is the big cooperation’s like the BBC, BSKYB and NewsCorp. This empowers people because "The internet is an empowering tool ... an exciting and revolutionary prospect". 

With Hegemony it's all about the idea of the elite having control over the general public with presenting their views and ideas and the general public accepting them as common sense with the big media cooperation’s brain washing the general public to make them believe whatever the news cooperation's personal agenda is. This is the ideology of hegemony with the elite brain washing and manipulating what they are thinking without the need of violence or over-powering pressure but with persuasive and manipulative techniques to make the reader or listen believe that they have free will but in reality they have none. And Marxist is very similar with its beliefs, their ideology is all about the idea of the middle class becoming the biggest group in all of the social classes which leads to the idea of "Rebellion is encapsulated in the internet" it's all about control from the elite and convincing the masses that they have free will with stops the ideology of empowerment because their belief in empowered is all a calculated risk from the elite playing with the middle class like puppets. With the internet it does pose an immediate threat but not a dominant one it still have time to be control by the industry with "Top 5% of all websites accounted for 75% of user volume","57% of 9-19 year old have come into contact with pornographic material online" and "38% of UK Pupils aged 9-19 never question the accuracy of online information". So even when the public have an escape from the over controlling media with the internet who really controlling it, it's just another set of Media Cooperation's