Epilogue: The Internet Age | 171eighteenth-century periodical market and ideological groupings that were
influenced by the party-affiliated and popular press of the late nineteenth
century. At first glance the Internet stands for a functional differentiation
of society and the formation of special interest groups. While television and
newspapers were once vehicles of nationwide communication, the Internet
later seems to have fragmented society because millions of people visited
different websites in a process. Yet new media technology has always left its
contemporaries with an impression of confusing fragmentation – whether it
was the countless single-page leaflets of the sixteenth century, films around
1900, the numerous American radio stations of the 1920s, or commercial
television of the 1980s. Indeed, it was only a matter of time before a few
highly visible media unfailingly stood out from this multiplicity by virtue of
their scope and the number of people they could reach, and this enabled fol-
low-up communication. Hollywood and the big press syndicates are typical
examples. Yet on the Internet, too, dominant search engines, online commu-
nities and hierarchic websites are increasingly asserting themselves, enabling
follow-up communication and the formation of new communities. Another
argument against the idea of isolation in the private sphere is that the Inter-
net has gone hand in hand with an ever-larger number of huge public events.
Moreover, new media often contributed to changing power structures.
Discourse was media-based, and changes in the latter gave new groups of
spokespersons the opportunity to shift the framework of power via new forms
and rules of expression. This did not apply merely to the political sphere per
se, but to many social systems and fields of knowledge whose hitherto legit-
imate spokesmen the media now challenged. Thus printing made it possible
for laymen to discuss matters of religion in the vernacular, and newspaper and
television have enabled people to form their own opinions about science, poli-
tics, the economy, and current affairs in general. Consequently, future scholars
of cultural and social history will be called to examine the ways in which the
Internet has called social structures into question.
Since new media have always been credited with the power to alter
society, those in authority have invariably attempted to control or direct
them, whether by monitoring film releases, regulating radio and television or
sponsoring the press. On the other hand, the Internet is perceived as a market
of opportunities, particularly free from control and censorship. Yet a glance
at China demonstrates that restrictions are still a reality for many people in
the world. Be that as it may, the analysis of media history has shown that
controls were only partially effective and that new media made subversive
communication possible. The use of Internet communication during the
protests in Egypt in 2011 seems to confirm this trend. Yet although new
mass media often support communicative forms of participation, this does
not necessarily lead to democratisation. But at least new media forced rulers