Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

A key reason why medium theory has rebounded is to do with the

fact that the Internet and CMC are so much more visibly seen to be a

social medium than is broadcast. From a McLuhanist perspective, this is

paradoxical insofar as he argues that new medium environments remain

unperceived ‘during the period of their innovation’ (McLuhan and Fiore,

2001: 17). However, it is precisely because, in an everyday sense, the

Internet is seen as a tool, or as a vessel/conduit ‘highway’ (see the discus-

sion below of Meyrowitz’s three metaphors of media), rather than an

environment, that it is seen as a medium much more so than is broadcast.

An appreciation of how the Internet might be a medium-as-environment

is less common in an everyday sense. Most studies of the Internet exam-

ine how it is a means of connection, a superhighway for virtual travel, or

a mode of association that makes possible virtual community defined

through connecting individuals who have similar interests.

In terms of the foregoing discussion of the different qualities of tech-

nological extension that are manifest in different communication medi-

ums, it is useful to outline some of the qualities of broadcast which are not

possible on the Internet – all of which have to do with the communication

event.

Broadcasting and ‘datacasting’

We have already suggested that broadcast needs to be considered as a

form of socio-communicative bond rather than a technical medium. In

this way, it is necessary to appreciate the fact that broadcast may or may

not be technologically extended. However, across the technologically

extended spectrum of broadcast, it is possible to distinguish different

types of broadcast event according to its visibility and the synchronicity

of its audience. In doing so, we can see how datacasting via digital broad-

casting services and on the Internet is not quite the same as conventional

broadcast.

• Datacasting is a service that has long been offered by digital television
  providers, but in this context its range of qualities is more variable:
  multiple kinds of audiences can be constituted within such a trans-
  mission platform. However, the fact that the ‘live’ forms of the trans-
  mission have subscribers, unlike ‘datacasting’ on the Internet, means
  that the digital television version of datacasting retains a ‘mass
  constitutive’ function.^12


• There are also more recent forms of ‘interactive’ datacasting which
  enable the streaming and caching of video and audio services that
  have found their most attractive application in ‘video-on-demand’.
  These services are ‘invocational’: the consumer chooses the time to call
  up the content, but not as part of an audience.

The Interrelation between Broadcast and Network Communication 103

Holmes-04.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 103