Events across the Muslim world in the past week and a half, with angry protests leading to multiple deaths, have only underscored how easy it is for anyone with a camera to send the world a virulent message. All this over “Innocence of Muslims,” a buffoonish, cheap-looking video that insults the prophet Mohammad in the most juvenile manner imaginable?

Believe it and get used to it. It is easier than ever to get a message, innocuous or incendiary, in front of the world’s eyeballs, whether through movie theaters that used to play only Hollywood releases or by taking one’s case to YouTube.

“Innocence” is one of two recent — and radically different — developments that illustrate the new accessibility and potential impact of partisan media. Right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America,” a documentary that parses what the filmmaker believes is the president’s hidden agenda, has grossed $32 million in movie theaters since late August, making it the most successful conservative film in box-office history.

“2016” is serious, if one-sided, filmmaking; “Innocence” is crackpot hate-mongering at its most wretched. Neither work, one could argue, would have enjoyed wide distribution only a half decade ago, nor would the many films now streaming online and unspooling in theaters that play to core constituencies while hoping to create converts. They include Christian movies like last year’s “Courageous” ($34.5 million in ticket sales), this year’s prolife drama “October Baby” ($5.3 million), and the patriotic barn-burner “Last Ounce of Courage,” an impassioned defense of Christmas by writer-director-star Darrel Campbell that’s currently in limited theatrical release.

Many of these independent movie-house releases are coming from the right side of the spectrum and are produced by small studios with names like Veritas, Harbinger, Gravitas, Mercy Creek Entertainment, and Sherwood Pictures, whose 2008 release “Fireproof” was the highest-grossing independent film of the year and a water­shed for Christian cinema. Another touchstone that year was the right-wing documentary “Hillary: The Movie”; when it was planned for video-on-demand release, the federal government blocked it, leading to the “Citizens United” ­Supreme Court case.

While liberal polemicists and documentarians to the left of center have historically had a distribution pipeline that can lead from the film festival circuit to established small distributors to independent art-house theaters — and directors like Michael Moore and ­Morgan Spurlock can become brands with mainstream ­impact — films on the right have traditionally had to scramble for exposure.

What has changed? The revolutions wrought by digital technology upon the production, distribution, and exhibition of films. For decades, those three areas were controlled by the major movie studios, but with the switch from analogue to bits and bytes and with the rise of the Internet, anyone with a point of view has become empowered. Low-cost digital video cameras and editing software have opened the gates of production to thousands of newcomers. The instant connection of online social media means you can reach out to ­potential viewers and funders in the next state, country, or hemisphere. Alternate channels of communication have created alternate methods of publicity, focusing word of mouth among true believers and building support for screenings. Filmmakers have found they don’t need to court mainstream critics or media outlets; just schedule the movie in a church basement or a suburban multiplex, and alert the faithful.

Movie theaters and exhibition chains, in turn, have found these ready audiences irresistible in a drastically changing landscape. In a very real sense, they have to: One result of ­media digitization has been the boom in streaming and on-demand video, which is rapidly turning American moviegoers into stay-at-home button pushers. According to a 2012 study by the research group comScore, over 100 million Americans watched online video content in 2011, up 43 percent over the previous year.