Page 250 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

WALLED GARDEN

(2002: 252). The proliferation of representations of violence may have
more do to with cross-cultural textual exchange than with the media
reflecting or creating a violent society.
See also: Content analysis, Effects, Methodology, Representation

Further reading: Barker and Petley (2001); Goldstein (1998b)

WALLED GARDEN

A metaphorical term used to describe strategies employed by Internet
service providers (ISPs) to encourage online users to stay within the
confines of their own or affiliated sites. As the metaphor suggests, a
walled garden is built to identify ownership of that area. The garden
itself (the ISP’s service) is an attractive closed environment that entices
you to stay; to leave you must actively seek out the gate.
Walled gardens are used in some cases to prevent users from certain
content, for instance, to keep library catalogue users from browsing
beyond catalogue use, or to protect children from content deemed
unsuitable, in which case they are protected by a ‘firewall’. But mostly
they are a business strategy used to promote use of an ISP’s services and
as a means for Internet business to form strategic partnerships with
other services by offering them their customers.
Aufderheide (2002) lists a number of such strategies including:

. monitoring the controls of information by privileging one provider
over another;
. controlling the first screen a user encounters;
. controlling the frame around the image;
. monitoring and controlling the speed, amount and kind of data a
user sends;
. providing content that discourages users from travelling outside
them or even from knowing about other options.
Salzer (1999) identifies further methods of gatekeeping, in the form
of ‘service bundling’. These are anti-competitive, and certainly at odds
with the Internet’s ‘End-to-End’ architectural principle. These
include:
. ISPs restricting customers from running their own Internet service;
. limiting the amount of video streaming the customer may use (a
means to prevent Internet TV services conflicting with existing
cable television services);

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