Posts: 42
"You must unlearn what you have learned." - Yoda
|
posted by
gravity_hole_7
Any notion of the web as a democratic medium is dubious at best. A web-based communication system seems just as likely to accentuate overly ambitious advertisments just as traditional forms of media often do. Once upon a time, the major media conglomerates possessed the only access to millions of Americans. Now, the argument goes, anyone with a few dollars can launch a Web site and compete with the media titans. Robert McChesney wrote last year in The Progressive that "proponents of the Internet act as though it is a massive comet crashing into the Earth that will drive media giants into extinction."
It's not happening, he says. The Internet may be changing the nature of the media, but in five years it has yet to produce a competitive marketplace. The dinosaurs still hold all the cards: the programming, the brand names, the advertisers, the promotional prowess and the capital to rule the Internet. By 1999, he writes, "notions of the Internet providing a new golden age of competitive capitalism were quickly fading from view in the business press." Worse, he argues, the Internet is swiftly being co-opted by the corporate communication system.
|