Page 90 - Culture Technology Communication

Electronic Networks and Civil Society 75

global communication systems with exclusion criteria, so that no
common body of networked communication can be formed. Thus, the
public that is produced through the Internet service is always par-
ticular, in spite of its global range (compare Fassler 1996, 440). Net-
works offer neither any centralized assistance or criteria of selection,
nor do they have any sort of general thematic references, as seen in
mass media: rather they open up a communication space with a mul-
titude of decentralized selection channels of equal status, whose
products are only destined to reach a special public.
The lack of economic and other regulative conditions often is re-
garded as one of the main reasons why the global communication
society based on the new media has not already taken place. How-
ever, such conditions may only affect the diffusion and the scope of
the new information technologies. Differences in the information
habits and attitudes towards different sorts of media are also not a
satisfactory explanation as to why the hope of an unlimited inclu-
sive communications society has, up until now, remained unful-
filled. Thus, the very nature of the media and of its social function
should be taken into consideration. From this point of view it has to
be assumed that new electronic media should not be expected to
constitute a new mass media. Instead it is much more likely that
they constitute and support partial public arenas. Such partial pub-
lic arenas can be defined as social networks of users mutually com-
municating and informing one another on a particular theme
(“special issue”).
Electronic networks provide a forum for opinions beyond the of-
ficialdom of public reportage as distributed by the mass media (Ay-
cock and Buchignani 1995). Thus, Internet communication is more
characterized by presenting personal opinions, rumors, and individ-
ual comments on events which have been previously reported in the
mass media. Mass media tend to suppress the significance of local
background conditions and specific contexts. Communication on the
Internet, however, tends to encourage these subdivisions by catering
to the explicit preferences and interests of their subscribers. Public
arenas produced by electronic networks are only partially public are-
nas. They open up a communication space between the level of the
public as produced by mass media, and the level of public arenas
which are constituted solely from the medium of the normal language
in the form of encounters and assemblies. This intermediate public is
in need of new communication technologies, because it is often char-
acterized by a global spread of its communications on the one hand,
and by a strict focusing on selected themes on the other hand.