Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

power of broadcast media is one that is most forcefully put by second

media age theorists.

In film, radio and television, a small number of producers sent information

to a large number of consumers. With the incipient introduction of the infor-

mation ‘superhighway’ and the integration of satellite technology with televi-

sion, computers and telephone, an alternative to the broadcast model, with

its severe technical contraints, will ver y likely enable a system of multiple

producers/distributors/consumers, an entirely new configuration of commu-

nication relations in which the boundaries between those terms collapse.

A second age of mass media is on the horizon. (Poster, 1995: 3)

As discussed in the Introduction, unlike theories of broadcast, which

have been around for some time, theories of cybersociety or the second

media age are, for the most part, very new. Because the Internet, as the

most spectacular technology of electronic network communication, has

only really globally existed in domestically available form since 1991,

communication studies remains in a process of formalizing this new

domain of research. The array of theories, from journalistic to academic,

has been burgeoning. Like the Internet Revolution itself, the rate of

growth in literature about new communication technologies has been dra-

matic. And as with the pure acceleration of technological change, the

literature is characterized by an urgent impulsiveness which produces

many generalizations and knowledge claims which become redundant at

about the same rate as information technologies themselves.

As noted in the Introduction, since 1991, we have seen a massive

growth in computer-related literature. Prognoses of the paperless society

and the end of the book have not materialized. Instead, book sales have,

if anything, increased, with the weight on each shelf now redistributed to

a flourishing computer section.

Apart from the very short history of cyberspace analysis, there is also

a much larger body of theory relevant to the second media age from pre-

Internet days – theories whose time, it could be argued, has arrived. Of

the broadcast media thinkers, the most prominent to bridge the first and

second media age are probably Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis and

Joshua Meyrowitz, discussed in the previous chapter. Because content is

of far less importance in studying cyberspace, it is not surprising that the

medium theorists are able to come to the fore.

On the linguistic side there is the work of Derrida, who, in my view,

is the only thinker from the semiotic tradition, apart from Baudrillard,

whose work lends itself to a medium theory. The import of the thought

of these writers will be dealt with later in the present chapter. But first it

is necessary to examine in more detail the claims of the second media age

thinkers.

Theorists of the second media age argue that both broadcast and

interactive communication apparatuses have together constituted the

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