The rise of the internet and social media has been accompanied by optimistic claims that the new technologies are leading to a great democratization of the media. After all, now anyone can report the news or share their opinion on Twitter. For many commentators, the 2017 UK general election results signalled the toppling of the press baron and the news corporation. Leftwing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn did better than anyone expected (though Labour did not win). While much of the press branded him a terrorist sympathiser, he managed to generate a lot of positive chatter on social media.
However, the proliferation of voices online doesn’t automatically mean democratization or real pluralism. In the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, it is the mainstream brands like the BBC, CNN, ABC News, CTV News and the Mail Online that still dominate the media landscape, both off- and online (see the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, Ofcom’s News Consumption in the UK Report (2015), and ‘The Modern News Consumer’ from the Pew Research Center).
