Information gapsA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWof cultural expression, believes Bollier. He cites
McDonald’s threatening ‘every food business
that uses “Mc” in their names’ or Mattel threat-
ening ‘legal action against art photographers
who use images of Barbie dolls to comment on
American beauty ideals’. See culture: copy-
righting culture; new media.
Information gaps Many scholars have focused
their studies on the inequality in the distribution
of information among diff erent groups in societ-
ies. Such inequalities are mostly the result of
educational or social class diff erences, with the
advantage being enjoyed by the better-educated
and those in the higher-status groups. Th e role of
the mass media in creating, widening or narrow-
ing information gaps has prompted widespread
concern.
Th ere are diff ering kinds of gaps depending on
the nature of the information.
Gaps – between information-rich and infor-
mation-poor – may close or widen with time.
It had been thought that the increasing fl ow of
information from the mass media might help
to narrow such gaps, but the evidence here is
mixed. Whilst the media may have the potential
to close gaps, it seems that an advantage remains
with those with most communication potential
and that new gaps open as old ones are closed.
Gaps exist between groups within the same soci-
eties, but the greatest inequalities are between
developed and less developed nations, most of
the channels of global communication being
controlled by the former.
Th is means that not only have the developed
nations the potential to acquire and dissemi-
nate more information, but they also have the
potential for considerable control of the fl ow and
content of the information going to less devel-
oped nations. Th us the majority of information
flowing from info-disadvantaged countries is
raw, compared with the mediated information
that flows in the other direction. Informa-
tion gaps can also be generated, reinforced or
modifi ed through patterns of interpersonal
communication.
Current research interest focuses on the
contribution the internet makes to traditional
information gaps. In theory and much practice,
the Net and the possibilities brought about
by networking, both informational and social,
represent powerful forces for bringing about
access to information as well as participation in
the exchange of information worldwide – not
the least of the potential contributors to gap-
closure being the mobile phone. See diffusion;
discursive gap; information surplus;tion on which to base decisions and choices;
yet by the late twentieth century, that position
appeared to have been reversed: nowadays
there is too much information – blizzards of
it – and the result is not undernourishment
but confusion. John Keane in Th e Media and
Democracy (Polity Press, 1991) writes, ‘The
world seems so full of information that what is
scarce is citizens’ capacities to make sense of it.
Th e release of new opinions through the media
rarely shatters unaccountable power. Publicity
better resembles the throwing of snowballs
into a blizzard – or the blowing of bubbles into
warm summer’s air.’
The term ‘blizzard’ has also been used to
describe the multiple and interacting images we
encounter daily, brought to us with ever-new
associations by the media (see text). For the
French cultural critic Jean Baudrillard, the sheer
volume of signifi ers in the contemporary world
of mass communication, so readily and regularly
detached from their original signification,
results in meaning itself being too lost in the
blizzard to be worth the trouble of attempting
to defi ne it. Consequently in this cultural bliz-
zard, anything can be made to mean anything.
See Chapter 5, ‘Baudrillard’s blizzards’ in Nick
Stephenson’s Culture, Social Th eory and Mass
Communication (Sage, 1995), in which Baudril-
lard’s ‘irrationalism’ is challenged. See informa-
tion surplus.
Information commons Equivalent to ‘common
land’, that is space or territory accessible, by
right, to the public, without charge; thus infor-
mation commons relate to public space, or the
public domain, with regard to information and
expression. Some commentators fear that the
public domain as typifi ed by our shared culture
has long been subject to a process of enclosure,
or privatization, in which cultural artefacts
and practices, once part of the information
commons, have been turned into private prop-
erty accessible only as commodity.
A particular area of concern is copyrighting,
which has extended far beyond the protection of
the works of writers, artists, musicians, etc. into
images, sounds, acronyms and names. In a tom.
paine.com online article (1 August 2002) entitled
‘Stopping the privatization of public knowledge:
the endangered public domain’, David Bollier
of the Annenberg School of Communications,
Philadelphia, talks of ‘content autocrats’ dedi-
cated to copyright enforcement operating in an
atmosphere of ‘fully fl edged cultural pathology’.
Th e enforcement of copyright in the courts has
proved a serious intrusion upon the freedoms