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FOUR

THE INTERRELATION BETWEEN BROADCAST

AND NETWORK COMMUNICATION

Thus far, we have looked at broadcast media and network media as
distinct fields of enquiry for contemporary communication theory. As
foreshadowed in Chapter 1, there are two principal ways in which this
can be done: by taking up the ‘media age’ thesis, or by seeing broadcast
and network forms of communication and association as making possible
distinct forms of social integration.
In this chapter we will attempt to theorize the interrelation between
these two forms, both in terms of the ‘first and second media age’ and in
terms of ‘social architectures’ of media form. In both models, the way in
which individuals find connection with the different media forms can be
shown to be interdependent – network communication becomes mean-
ingful because of broadcast, and broadcast becomes meaningful in the
context of network. But the oscillation between these forms is not an
entirely new phenomenon, and, as we shall see, predated the arrival of a
‘second media age’ by many years. It is just that in contemporary times
this dynamic has visibly attained much more of a ‘technological’ and
commodified separation.
As suggested in Chapter 1, my critique of cyber-utopianism is whether
an historical distinction between the first and second media age can be
made at all. I am strongly in agreement with the idea that broadcast and
network communication mediums offer different possibilities of connect-
edness in information societies and that to contrast them is highly instruc-
tive, but to say that the latter has eclipsed the former is extravagant.
Rather, I am going to argue, when other social contexts, such as the urban
realities of their consumption, are considered, the two are mutually con-
stitutive, and the mutuality of these dynamics was evident long before the
Internet, as we shall see.

The first and second media age as mutually constitutive

As previously argued, the historical distinction between the first and
second media age is the primary foundation upon which utopian claims