ABSTRACT
The stories we tell about the media often include in their narratives an assumption that the media are empowering for us, as audiences and as citizens. The ‘mass’ in mass media, we are told, has historically meant media for the masses. According to liberal theory, the development of the printed press was assumed to have been empowering for citizens and publics; it enabled them to have direct knowledge (news) of the behaviour of political and other elites who ruled their societies (this was later complemented by advances in radio and TV). In this view, empowerment was also possible indirectly through entertainment, via the educative function performed by the arts. In literature and theatre (and more recently film) authors of texts challenged and pushed the boundaries of the social norms of the day. The message that media are empowering of the people is something regularly asserted with the introduction of new media technologies, most recently this has been evidenced through the growth in ‘social’ media.
