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The Interrelation between Broadcast and Network Communication 101
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 everyone 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 very 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 formalized as 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