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The Interrelation between Broadcast and Network Communication 105
Table 4.1 The broadcast event
Regular-visibility broadcast Irregular-visibility broadcast
Synchronous audience Public speech Media stunt
Television Newsflash
Radio Baudrillard’s ‘obscene’
Daily newspaper (see p. 107)
Asynchronous audience Magazine Datacasting
Novel Computer virus
Billboards

• The characterization of Knowles as ‘ordinary’ already reaffirms a basic
binary upon which the symbolic inequality of broadcast operates,
between high and low visibility.
• It is a real-life example supposedly because it did not occur via ‘the
image’, but in fact Knowles’ attention was achieved entirely by trading
in images, and the system of images, for which he became an agent.
• Knowles’ ‘fame’ is entirely parasitic on the Hollywood personality
system, which is the basis of his site being ‘interesting’. It is not because
Knowles is hairy, twenty-something or parodying another dominant
genre – news.
• In turn, Gauntlett publishes Knowles’ URL, which may receive more
visits as a result of people reading Gauntlett’s mass-produced book.

Moreover, a website’s popularity will vary over time depending on
its synchronicity with events managed by the mass media, and made
visible by mass media, for which it can only ever be a mirror, or an anti-
site (a site which reaffirms the power of a broadcast text in its efforts to
parody or criticize it).
Table 4.1 classifies forms of broadcast by their synchronicity and visi-
bility. A broadcast event may be asynchronous but have high visibility,
such as magazines and billboards. They tend to have a regular but not
very immediate visibility. The impact of the content of such forms tends
to build up over time. A broadcast event might also be synchronous but
have irregular visibility, such as a media stunt. Such stunts, sometimes
attempted by social movements, tend to be highly irregular, but, just for
that reason, acquire high visibility and a synchronous audience when
they do appear. Some broadcast ‘mega-events’ exhibit a dramatic concen-
tration of both visibility and synchronicity (see Garofalo, 1991; Real, 1984).
No event collapses more of the positive features described above than do
the Olympic Games – the most ‘widely shared regular event in human
history’ (Real, 1984: 222).
Whilst there are these variations in kinds of broadcast media, the way
broadcast differs from interactive media is far more significant in under-
standing contemporary media. By such a contrast, a host of qualities of
broadcast media come into view which were previously difficult to see.