Blogosphere and the Media

The topic of mass media is notoriously, one of those topic areas where textbooks and teachers come in for criticism for being out of date So I’ll do my little bit to help us all keep up with the pace of social change. In today’s Guardian, Lance Price, former spin doctor to Tony Blair, talks about the latest spin disaster.

Labour spinners have it seems, been up to no good, trying to smear senior Tories. But as Lance Price argues, it should come as no surprise - this is after all, what spin doctors do.

Price makes an interesting comment on the rise of political blogs: blogging will always be easier, he says, for those attacking the party in power. As Price continues, ” Anybody hoping to use the internet to boost Labour’s chances at the next election will have to be very careful what they say. If that feels like playing the blogosphere game with one hand tied behind your back, tough. It’s called being in government.”

Now, that’s quite useful, I think, to apply to both the pluralist and the marxist models about media power. Sure, anyone can set up a blog fairly easily. But it doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will be read in equal measure. And certainly, Marxists are right to point to the inequalities of power and access to the means of media production. As Price points out, Governments do have some important constraints on their power; if they are too crude in their spin, public opinion can go against them. That said, Marxists can point out that all this is so much trivia; the end result is that politics is turned into pantomime and the capitalist class benefit in the short and long run, as all this just helps the key questions about capitalism to be ignored.