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Electronic Networks and Civil Society 73

view. Therefore, mass communication has to remain impersonal; its
themes have to address an anonymous mass public. From this per-
spective, strategies which try to involve the receivers as communi-
cators in mass media events make little sense. They may open up
the possibility of a personal arrangement of media products but then
this is inevitably cancelled out at a later stage by the distribution
methods of the mass media, which are based on anonymous commu-
nicator mechanisms.

From an All-Inclusive Public to Partial Publics

In contrast with mass media, electronic networks have been de-
scribed as “individual media” which are used as a forum of non-
established personal opinions and discussions (compare, for example,
Rheingold 1994). By abolishing the communication and interaction
barrier between sender and receiver, electronic networks offer an un-
limited number of participants the opportunity to act as communica-
tors, and thereby circumvent the anonymity and one-sidedness of
mass media’s production of meaning. In the Internet there are nei-
ther criteria for preselecting information, nor an efficient control of
themes (except on the level of particular newsgroups or mailing lists).
While mass media restrict the user to an “exit option” (Hirschmann
1974), the user of electronic media has also a “voice option”—that is
to say, he or she can articulate his or her own opinion about a selected
theme. The difference between the “balcony” and the “stage”—to say
it metaphorically—which characterizes mass media, does not exist in
electronic networks because everybody is engaged in the process of
producing and spreading information. It is not only possible to get in-
formation from the Net, but furthermore, people may participate in
chat groups and present personal viewpoints and particular argu-
ments for discussion. Thus, participants are able to change between
the role of an active communicator and a passive consumer. If they
want to discuss a topic they may present their ideas suggesting a dis-
cussion about them. A priori, nobody and no topic are excluded. From
a more abstract point of view we can argue that in electronic net-
works the context of producing a message is no longer separated from
the context of its reception. Its interactive structure helps to over-
come the traditional dual role of producer and consumer. Accordingly,
the Internet shows a high diversity and plurality of themes.
Above all, the Internet is attractive because it presents the op-
portunity to produce thematically concentrated and specific com-
munication relationships (compare Wellman et al. 1996). Messages
on the network appear to be applicable to personal or group-related