NDM: Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

Main Task

1) Traditionally, police officers would try to make them look like the 'better person' in a situation like this and make the ones who are meant to be innocent, like criminals. They can do this as they have power over most people in the general public. Therefore, due to this power, they believed that whatever they say, is automatically true and whatever anyone else says is false. 
However, with the help of new/digital media, a New York Lawyer sent a video to the Guardian of what really had happened in the death of Ian Tomlinson. In comparison to the video and the statement that was given by the police officer, the officers statement was inaccurate to the footage and therefore, helped solve the crime and with the video, it was almost downgrading the police officers as they are meant to be honest and loyal to the public but in this case, they were shown as the criminal since the man who was killed, was killed for no reason.

2) In the MM article it talks about how in the 'pre-internet' day, no family that deserved the justice would've stood a chance. They gave the example of Blair Peach being murdered in 1979 but no one has been charged with his murder to this date. However, with the help of Web 2.0, the police officer that killed Ian Tomlinson, will be charged with manslaughter next year. In addition, the author talks about how without Web 2.0, nothing would've been taken to court and nothing would ever get solved. Furthermore, the author is almost encouraging the audience to take more user-generated content as they will look like as if they are helping the world depending on if they know something, which no one else knows about.

3) In my opinion, I believe that new and digital media challenges the dominant hegemonic views. Hegemony is all about the upper class being more dominant over the lower class. However, nowadays, the use of social media doesn't divide the different classes into their own categories but makes them as one unit. For example, on Twitter, everyone interacts with each other and the users of the social media sites don't bother asking their class rather than how people may have asked in the past. Therefore this isn't reinforcing the hegemony view.

4) In my opinion, I believe that the recent events such as Brexit and Donald Trump being elected as president of the US, are good examples of challenging the dominant hegemony views. Taking the Donald Trump story into account, this has got nothing to do with different classes. Before being elected as the president, Trump didn't have any experience with being in the army or anything within politics but the general public still wanted to vote him as the president because of the fact that he wanted to make a change to the country and therefore, the people listen. In addition, talking about Brexit, this is also challenging because everyone gets their say about it and it is also anonymous.