Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

a fine tool for an ‘electronic public journalism’ that is independent from

professional media organizations. However, these new opportunities

involve problems that former media critics really did not face. How attrac-

tive is the content of such a Web page compared to the highly produced

content of broadcast? Communication and participation alone do not mean

much in terms of quality and value of content. Also, communication can

remain without any significant effects as long as it is not transformed into

communicative power and effective decisions .... Eventually, there is a

seemingly trivial but most important consideration: the greater the number

of communicators, the less time ever yone has to listen to others; the

smaller the size of interacting groups, the smaller their significance for

society as a whole. This is one of the reasons why one must doubt whether

Internet enthusiasts are right in their belief that the end of traditional insti-

tutions of politics and media has come. They suggest that a new elite of

‘netizens’ is going to take over society .... But on what integrational foun-

dations is the alleged net community grounded? There seem to be few

apart from an individualistic rhetoric of free information and a euphoria

about thousands of subcommunities to which no one can belong at the

same time anyway, not even in bodiless cyberspace. After all, attention is

one of the most valuable resources in the new era .... Economists would

call it a ver y scarce commodity. With a growing number of information and

communication forums, some central sources may become more impor-

tant. They can reduce complexity, help users make judgements about what

is important, and build shared beliefs. (207)

Understanding broadcast communication in the context of network

communication

By far the greatest contribution of the second media age thesis is that it

acts as a powerful lens for analysts of media to understand something

about broadcast which has, up until now, been difficult to see – its char-

acter as a medium. The mere fact that ‘television’ as the standout techno-

cultural form of broadcasting has recently become formalizedas a distinct

domain of analysis is significant in this regard (see Casey, 2002; Corner

and Harvey, 1996; Geraghty and Lusted, 1998; McNeill, 1996; Newcomb,

2000).^10 Television studies, as a sub-discipline of media studies, has

acquired a new positivity. Television has come to mirror the way in which

the Internet either has become a distinct technology of communication, or

is posited as a stand-in for broadcast-in-general, just as the Internet

emblematizes the rise of the network society.

Throughout most of the period in which media studies thrived in its

analysis of broadcast, by looking at ownership and control, media insti-

tutions, media content (from semiotics to ideology and hegemony) and,

latterly, audience studies, the one area that was left the most neglected

was that of broadcast as medium. With the exception of a small burst of

medium theory in the 1960s and 1970s, linguistic and semiotically based

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