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Political economy of the Internet 109

and services that continue to change and diversify rapidly but amongst these the
worldwide web remains most prominent. The web enables a wide range of
applications from static web pages to blogs, wikis and ‘social-software – mediated
platforms for large-scale conversations’ (Benkler 2006: 216). The Internet thus
combines ‘vertical’ communication, the production and distribution of institutionally
organised, one-to-many communications, with ‘horizontal’ communications,
networks of interactive, interpersonal and intergroup communications (Castells
2009: 65).
My focus, below, is on the relationship of the Internet with the forms and
organisation of mass media, and so primarily on ‘vertically’ organised public
communications that produce and circulate messages. Later chapters explore in
more detail ‘horizontal’ uses and capabilities in relation to democratic commu-
nication, media power and alternative media, as well as commercialism and
convergence culture. However, how the vertical and horizontal intersect, merge
and combine to transform communications is of concern throughout. This chapter
begins by tracing the history and influence of various claims and counterclaims for
the Internet and convergent media, commodification and information capitalism.
Focusing on the implications for mass media, in particular news media, the
chapter engages with contemporary debates on the reshaping of media busi-
nesses, markets, media power and participation. Political economy analysis was
relatively marginal in early ‘new media’ studies. To counter the speculation that
continues to shape the visions of Internet celebrants and sceptics alike we need
CPE analysis of ‘the overall social and economic dynamics of the production and
the consumption of new media’ (Mansell 2004: 96; McChesney 2013)

Reviewing claims and counterclaims
During the 1990s two starkly contrasting sets of claims were advanced. One
described the Internet as a technology of freedom, with no centres of authority,
providing open access to information, bypassing and subverting existing structures
of control, bringing greater freedom to individuals, enabling new social identities
and collectivities to form, and providing the basis for the renewal of citizen-based
‘digital democracy’. The other vision was of an Internet dominated by business
interests, in which a handful of giant multimedia corporations extended their
reach over a market-driven, privatised, e-commerce and advertiser-financed
system. Judged from the present, nearly two decades on, neither account will do.
Both extrapolate from utopian or dystopian visions – and are often also markedly
narrow – ignoring the heterogeneity and range of activities in cyberspace and
across geographical space. It is easy to point out deficiencies in mid 1990s
accounts and indeed any singular or unidirectional account of the Internet.
While emancipatory visions continue to energise online activities these are by no
means dominant, and for most Internet users are not expected to be. It is clear,
too, that for all its intense commercialisation the Internet is not entirely won for
business – let alone the global media giants – and involves uncertainty, risk,