eight pages (-87_

Chapter 1

Reinterpreting the internet

James Curran

In the 1990s, leading experts, politicians, public officials, business leaders and journalists predicted that the internet would transform the world.1 The internet would revolutionise, we were told, the organisation of business, and lead to a surge of prosperity (Gates 1995).2 It would inaugurate a new era of cultural democracy in which sovereign users – later dubbed ‘prosumers’ – would call the shots, and old media leviathans would decay and die (Negroponte 1996). It would rejuvenate democracy – in some versions by enabling direct e-government through popular referenda (Grossman 1995). All over the world, the weak and marginal would be empowered, leading to the fall of autocrats and the reorder- ing of power relations (Gilder 1994). More generally, the global medium of the internet would shrink the universe, promote dialogue between nations and foster global understanding (Jipguep 1995; Bulashova and Cole 1995). In brief, the internet would be an unstoppable force: like the invention of print and gun- powder, it would change society permanently and irrevocably.

These arguments were mostly inferences derived from the internet’s technol- ogy. It was assumed that the distinctive technological attributes of the internet – its interactivity, global reach, cheapness, speed, networking facility, storage capacity, and alleged uncontrollability – would change the world beyond all recognition. Underlying these predictions was the assumption that the internet’s technology would reconfigure all environments. Internet-centrism, a belief that the internet is the alpha and omega of technologies, an agency that overrides all obstacles, lies at the heart of most of these prophecies.

These predictions gained ever greater authority when, seemingly, they were fulfilled. From popular uprisings in the Middle East to the new ways we shop and interact, society is said to be changing in response to new communications technology. Only technophobes, stuck in a time warp of the past, remain blind to what is apparent to everyone else: namely that the world is being remade by the internet.

But as pronouncements about the internet’s impact became ever more assured, and shifted from the future to the present tense, a backlash developed. A straw in the wind was the apostasy of MIT guru Sherry Turkle. In 1995, she had celebrated anonymous online encounters between people on the grounds

that they could extend imaginative insight into the ‘other’, and forge more emancipated sensibilities (Turkle 1995).3 Sixteen years later, she changed tack. Online communication, she lamented, could be shallow and addictive, and get in the way of developing richer, more fulfilling interpersonal relationships (Turkle 2011).4 Another apostate was the Belarus activist Evgeny Morozov. His former belief that the internet would undermine dictators was, he declared, a ‘delusion’ (Morozov 2011). There were also others whose initial, more guarded hope in the emancipatory power of the internet turned into outright scepticism. Typical of this latter group are John Foster and Robert McChesney (2011: 17), who write that ‘the enormous potential of the Internet… has vaporized in a couple of decades’.

We are thus faced with a baffling contradiction of testimony. Most informed commentators view the internet as a transforming technology. Their predictions are now seemingly being confirmed by events. However, there is an unsettling minority who confidently decry the majority view as perverse. Who – and what – is right?

We will attempt to sketch an answer in this introductory chapter by identifying four key sets of predictions about the impact of the internet, and then check to see whether these have come true or not.5 We will conclude by reflecting upon the nature of the conditions that result in the internet having a larger or smaller effect.

Economic transformation

In the 1990s, it was widely claimed that the internet would generate wealth and prosperity for all. Typifying this prediction was a long article in Wired, the bible of the American internet community, written by the magazine’s editor, Kevin Kelly (1999). Its title and standfirst set the article’s tone: ‘The Roaring Zeros: The good news is, you’ll be a millionaire soon. The bad news is, so will everybody else’.

Speculative fever had infected mainstream media as early as 1995. ‘The Internet gold rush is under way’, declared the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (6 December 1995). ‘Thousands of people and companies are staking claims. Without a doubt there is lots of gold because the Internet is the beginning of something immensely important.’ Across the Atlantic Ocean, the same message was being proclaimed with undisguised relish. The ‘fortunes’ of ‘Web whiz-kids’, according to the Independent on Sunday (25 July 1999), ‘reduce National Lottery jackpots to peanuts and make City bonuses seem like restaurant tips … ’. Punters could become rich too, it was promised, if they invested in whiz-kids’ IPOs (initial public offerings). This invitation to personal enrichment was backed up by authoritative reports in the business press that the internet was a geyser of prosperity. ‘We have entered the Age of the Internet’, declaimed BusinessWeek (October 1999). ‘The result: an explosion of economic and productivity growth first in the U.S., with the rest of the world soon to follow’ (emphasis added).

4 James Curran

This forecast was reprised in the 2000s, accompanied by an explanation of why it had been wrong before but would soon be fulfilled. The 1990s repre- sented the internet’s pioneer phase, we are informed, when egregious mistakes were made. But the internet has now entered the full deployment phase, and is coming into its own as a transformative economic force (Atkinson et al. 2010).

Central to this resilient prophetic tradition is the idea that the internet and digital communication are giving rise to the ‘New Economy’. While this concept is amorphous and mutable, it usually invokes certain themes. The internet provides, we are told, a new, more efficient means of connecting suppliers, producers and consumers that is increasing productivity and growth. The internet is a disruptive technology that is generating a Schumpeterian wave of innovation. And it is contributing to the growth of a new information economy that will replace heavy industry as the main source of wealth in de-industrialising, Western societies.

At the heart of this theorising is a mystical core. This proclaims that the internet is changing the terms of competition by establishing a level playing field between corporate giants and new start-ups. The internet is consequently renewing the dynamism of the market, and unleashing a whirlwind force of business creativity. By bypassing established retail intermediaries, the internet is carving out new market opportunities. It is lowering costs, and enabling low-volume producers to satisfy neglected niche demand in a global market. The internet also favours, we are informed, horizontal, flexible network enterprise, able to respond rapidly to changes in market demand, unlike heavy-footed, top-down, Fordist, giant corporations. ‘Small’ is not only nimble but empowered in the internet-based New Economy. As Steve Jobs asserted in 1996, the internet is an ‘incredible democratiser’, since ‘a small company can look as large as a big company and be accessible … ’ (cited Ryan 2010: 179).

The concept of the New Economy is often cloaked in specialist language. To understand its insights, it is seemingly neccessary to learn a new vocabulary: to distinguish between portal and vortal, to differentiate between internet, intranet and extranet, to assimilate buzz concepts like ‘click-and-mortar’ and ‘data-warehousing’, and to be familiar with endless acronyms like CRM (customer relationship manage- ment), VAN (value-added network), ERP (enterprise resource planning), OLTP (online transaction processing) and ETL (extract, transform and load). To be part of the novitiate who understands the future, it is first necessary to master a new catechism.

Since the economic impact of the internet is cumulative and incomplete, it is difficult at this stage to make an assured assessment. But sufficient evidence has accumulated to enable formulation of certain cautious conclusions. The first is that the internet has modified the nerve system of the economy, affecting the collection of data, the interactions between suppliers, producers and consumers, the configuration of markets, the volume and velocity of global financial trans- actions, and the nature of communication within business organisations, as well as giving rise to major corporations such as Google and Amazon, and the launch of new products and services. However, the internet does not represent a complete

Reinterpreting the internet 5

rupture with the past, since it was preceded by the widespread corporate use of computers, and by earlier electronic data interchange systems (like the telex and fax) (Bar and Simard 2002).

The second conclusion is that the internet has not proved to be a geyser of wealth cascading down on investors and the general public. There was an enor- mous increase in the stock market value of internet companies between 1995 and 2000. But this was partly a bubble, like the subsequent US housing bubble, fuelled by the credit boom produced by financial de-regulation in the mid-1990s (Blodget 2008; Cassidy 2002). The bubble was exacerbated by financial incentives that encouraged investment analysts to recommend unsound investment in the internet sector (Wheale and Amin 2003). This was reinforced by group-think that encouraged a belief that conventional investment criteria did not apply to the New Economy, leading to speculative bets on the future profitability of dotcom ventures, many of which had ill-considered, unrealistic business plans (Valliere and Peterson 2004). In the event, the internet gold mine proved to be made of fool’s gold. Most dotcom start-ups that attracted heavy investment folded without ever making a profit, in some cases after burning through large quantities of money in less than two years (Cellan-Jones 2001). These losses were so severe that it tipped the US economy into recession in 2001.

There were clear signs that there was about to be another boom in internet stock in the mid-2000s. But this was overtaken by the credit crunch of 2007 and the financial crash of 2008. In the extended aftermath (still continuing over three years later), share prices fell; incomes in the West flat-lined or fell in real terms; and Western economic growth declined sharply. The internet was manifestly not the fount of a new era of prosperity.

The third conclusion is that the value of the ‘internet economy’ was probably oversold. Thus, a Harvard Business School study, using an employment income approach, concluded that the advertising-supported internet in America con- tributed approximately 2 per cent to GDP, or perhaps 3 per cent if the internet’s indirect contribution to domestic economic activity is taken into account (Deighton and Quelch 2009). An alternative calculation estimated that business-to-consumer e-commerce in Europe accounted for 1.35 per cent of GDP (Eskelsen et al. 2009), while a booster consultant report, commissioned by Google, claimed that the internet contributed 7 per cent of the UK’s GDP in 2009 (Kalapese et al. 2010). Even this last questionable estimate is modest by comparison with what was forecast in the late 1990s.

The fourth conclusion is that the internet has not revolutionised shopping. While over 40 per cent of Japanese, Norwegians, Koreans, Britons, Danes and Germans bought something online in 2007, fewer than 10 per cent did so in Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Mexico and Turkey (OECD cited in Atkinson et al. 2010: 22). Even in countries where online shopping is widespread, it tends to be concentrated on a limited range of products and services. In 2007, online sales accounted for 7 per cent of total sales turnover in the UK, and 4 per cent in Europe (European Commission 2009). However, the comparable figure for

6 James Curran

the UK in 2010 was 16 per cent, registering a big increase that was only partly the product of different methodology (Atkinson et al. 2010).

Online shopping will become more extensive in the future because internet access will increase, and security concerns will probably decline. But consumer resistance also derives partly from the pleasure that some people take in shopping in the real world, and their desire for immediate purchase, which are likely to persist. There is also a more fundamental obstacle: e-retail confers a large eco- nomic advantage only in sectors where warehousing and distribution costs are low. This is one reason why, so far, online selling has taken off in some sectors, like travel and insurance, but not in others, like automobiles and food.

The fifth, and much the most important, conclusion is that the internet has not created a level playing field between small and large enterprise. The belief that it would was the principal evangelical component of the ‘New Economy’ thesis, and lay at the heart of its conviction that the internet would generate a surge of innovation and growth.6 This article of faith did not anticipate the dif- ficulty that small and medium firms would continue to have in penetrating foreign markets. As it turned out, the usefulness of the internet as a tool for securing foreign market access was constrained by language, cultural knowledge, the quality of telecommunications infrastructures and computer access (Chrysostome and Rosson 2004). More importantly, the New Economy thesis failed to take ade- quate account of the continuing economic advantage of corporate size.7 Large corporations have bigger budgets, and greater access to capital, than small compa- nies. Big corporations also have greater economies of scale, enabling lower unit costs of production; generally greater economies of scope, based on the sharing of services and cross-promotion; and concentrations of expertise and resources that assist the launch of new products and services. They can seek to undermine under-resourced competition by temporarily lowering prices and by exploiting their marketing and promotional advantage. In addition, they can try to ‘buy success’ by acquiring promising young companies – the standard strategy of conglomerates.

This is why, in the internet age, large corporations continue to dominate leading market sectors, from car manufacture to grocery supermarkets. Indeed, in the leading economy (US), the number of manufacturing industries, in which the largest four companies accounted for at least 50 per cent of shipment value, steadily increased between 1997 and 2007 (Foster et al. 2011: chart 1). There was also a truly remark- able increase between 1997 and 2007 in the market share of the four largest firms in leading sectors of the US retail industry (Foster et al. 2011: table 1). To take just two examples, the big four computer and software stores’ share soared from 35 per cent to 73 per cent, while the share of the big four merchandising stores rose from 56 per cent to 73 per cent, during this period. More generally, the gross profits of the top 200 US corporations as a percentage of total gross profits in the US economy very sharply increased between 1995 and 2008 (Foster et al. 2011: chart 3).

In brief, the triumph of the small business in the internet era never happened because competition remained unequal. Corporate Goliaths continued to squash commercial Davids armed only with a virtual sling and pebble.

Reinterpreting the internet 7

Global understanding

During the 1990s, there was a broad consensus that the internet would promote greater global understanding. ‘The internet’, declared the Republican politician Vern Ehlers (1995), ‘will create a community of informed, interacting, and tolerant world citizens’. The internet, concurred Bulashova and Cole (1995), offers ‘a tremendous “peace dividend” resulting from improved communications with and improved knowledge of other people, countries and cultures’. One key reason for this, argues the writer Harley Hahn (1993), is not just that the internet is a global medium but also that it offers greater opportunity for ordinary people to communicate with each other than do traditional media. ‘I see the Net’, he concludes, ‘as being our best hope … for the world finally starting to become a global community and everybody just getting along with everyone else’. Another reason for optimism, advanced by numerous commentators, is that the internet is less subject to state censorship than traditional media, and is thus better able to host a free, unconstrained global discourse between citizens. It is partly because ‘people will communicate more freely and learn more about the aspirations of human beings in other parts of the globe’, according to Frances Cairncross (1997: xvi), that ‘the effect will be to increase understanding, foster tolerance, and ultimately promote worldwide peace’. These themes – the internet’s international reach, user participation, and freedom – continued to be invoked in the 2000s as grounds for thinking that the internet would bond the world in growing amity.

These arguments have been given a distinctive academic imprint by critical cultural theorists. Jon Stratton (1997: 257) argues that internet encourages the ‘globalization of culture’, and ‘hyper-deterritorialization’ – by which he means the loosening of ties to nation and place. This argument is part of a well-established cultural studies tradition which sees media globalisation as fostering cosmopolitanism and an opening up to other people and places (e.g. Tomlinson 1999).

Critical political theorists advance a parallel argument (Fraser 2007; Bohman 2004; Ugarteche 2007, among others). Their contention is that what Nancy Fraser (2007: 18–19) calls the ‘denationalization of communication infrastructure’ and the rise of ‘decentered internet networks’ are creating webs of communication that interconnect with one another to create an international public sphere of dialogue and debate. From this is beginning to emerge allegedly a ‘transnational ethic’, ‘global public norms’ and ‘international public opinion’. This offers, it is suggested, a new basis of popular power capable of holding to account transna- tional, economic and political power. While these theorists vary in terms of how far they push this argument (Fraser 2007, for example, is notably circumspect), they are advancing a thesis that goes beyond the standard humanist under- standing of the internet as the midwife of global understanding. The internet is presented as a stepping-stone in the building of a new, progressive social order.

The central weakness of this theorising is that it assesses the impact of the internet not on the basis of evidence but on the basis of inference from internet technology. Yet, readily available information tells a different story: the impact

8 James Curran

of the internet does not follow a single direction dictated by its technology. Instead the influence of the internet is filtered through the structures and pro- cesses of society. This constrains in at least seven different ways the role of the internet in promoting global understanding.

First, the world is very unequal, and this limits participation in an internet- mediated global dialogue. Not only are there enormous disparities of wealth and resources but these seem to be increasing (Woolcock 2008: 184; Torres 2008). The richest 2 per cent of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth, with the richest 1 per cent of adults alone possessing 40 per cent of global assets in 2000 (Davies et al. 2006). Adults making up the bottom half of the world population own barely 1 per cent of global wealth. Davies et al. note that wealth is concentrated in North America, Europe and high-income Asia-Pacific countries; people in these countries hold almost 90 per cent of total world wealth.

These rich regions of the world have much higher internet access than poor regions. Thus, 77 per cent of North Americans have internet access, 61 per cent in Oceania/Australia and 58 per cent of Europeans (Internet World Stats 2010a). Yet, there are many developing countries with internet penetration rates that are less than 1/100th of those in wealthy countries (Wunnava and Leiter 2009: 413). The influence of per capita income on national internet penetration is corroborated by Beilock and Dimitrova (2003), who found that it is the most important determinant, followed by infrastructure and the degree of openness in a society.8 Economic disparity thus skews the composition of the internet com- munity. As Wunnava and Leiter (2009: 414) conclude: ‘to date, Europe and North America, which represent a mere 17.5 percent of the total world population, house close to 50 percent of worldwide internet users’.

This will be modified over time, as poorer countries become more affluent. But because the world is so unequal, it will be a very long time before poor countries even approach current levels of net penetration in affluent countries. Meanwhile, the internet is not bringing the world together: it is bringing pri- marily the affluent into communion with each other. The total proportion of population in 2011 who are internet users is 30 per cent (Internet World Stats 2011a). Most of the world’s poor are not part of this magic circle of ‘mutual understanding’.

Second, the world is divided by language. Most people can speak only one language, and so cannot understand foreigners when they communicate online. The nearest thing to a shared online language is English, which, according to the International Telecommunications Union (2010), only 15 per cent of the world’s population understands. The role of the internet in bringing people together is thus necessarily hampered by mutual incomprehension.

Third, language is a medium of power. Those writing or speaking in English can reach, in relative terms, a large global public. By contrast, those conversing in Arabic are able to communicate, potentially, to only 3 per cent of internet users (Internet World Stats 2010b); and those communicating in Marathi potentially

Reinterpreting the internet 9

reach a proportion of internet users so small as to be measurable only in decimal points. Who gets to be heard in the ‘medium of global understanding’ often depends on what language they speak.

Fourth, the world is divided by bitter conflicts of value, belief and interest. These can find expression in websites that foment – rather than assuage – animosity. Thus, race hate groups were internet pioneers, with former Klansman Tom Metzger, then leader of White Aryan Resistance, setting up a community bulletin board in 1985 (Gerstenfeld et al. 2003). From these cyber-frontier origins, racist websites have proliferated. The Raymond Franklin list of hate sites runs to over 170 pages (Perry and Olsson 2009), while the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (2011) documents 14,000 social network websites, forums, blogs, Twitter sites and other online sources in its Digital Terror and Hate report. Some of these websites have a large base: Stormfront, one of the earliest white-only websites, had 52,566 active users in 2005 (Daniels 2008: 134).

Detailed studies of hate sites conclude that they maintain and extend racial hatred in a variety of ways (Back 2001; Perry and Olsson 2009; Gerstenfeld et al. 2003). Race hate sites can foster a sense of collective identity, reassuring militant racists that they are not alone. Some foster a sense of community not only through features like an ‘Aryan Dating Page’ but also through more conven- tional content such as forums discussing health, fitness and home making. The more sophisticated are adept at targeting children and young people by offering, for example, online games and practical help. Race hate groups increasingly use the internet to develop international networks of support in which ideas and information are shared. And of course their staple content is designed to pro- mote fear and hatred, typified by warnings of the ‘demographic time bomb’ of alien procreation in their midst. These ‘white fortresses’ of cyberspace promote not just disharmony. There is a relationship between racist discourse and racist violence (Akdeniz 2009).

This illustrates one central point: the internet can spew out hatred, foster misunderstanding, and perpetuate animosity. Because the internet is both inter- national and interactive, it does not mean necessarily that it encourages only ‘sweetness and light’. Indeed, there is evidence that active terror groups have used the internet to win converts and extend international links, in addition to transferring and laundering money (Conway 2006; Hunt 2011: Freiburger and Crane 2008).

Fifth, nationalist cultures are strongly embedded in most societies, and this constrains the internationalism of the web. Nation-centred cultures have been built up over centuries, and are strongly supported by traditional media. Thus, in 2007 American network TV news devoted only 20 per cent of its time to foreign news, while even its counterparts in two internationalist Nordic countries allocated just 30 per cent (Curran et al. 2009). Insular news values also shape the content of the press in these and other countries (Aalberg and Curran 2012).

This cultural inheritance shapes the content of the web. Thus, a study of the leading news websites in nine nations, spread over four continents, found that

10 James Curran

these report mainly national news. In fact, these premier news websites are, in general, only slightly less nation-centred than leading TV news programmes.9

National cultures can also influence user participation on the net. Thus, China is a strongly nationalistic society. This is a consequence of national humiliations visited upon it by Western and Eastern imperial powers in the past; pride in the country’s remarkable economic success; and the product of the Communist regime’s deliberate cultivation of nationalism as a way of maintain- ing public support and social cohesion. Intense nationalism finds expression in Chinese websites and in online chat rooms. This can spill over into visceral hostility towards the Japanese in which not much understanding is displayed (Morozov 2011).10

Sixth, authoritarian governments have developed ways of managing the net and of intimidating would-be critics. These will be discussed more fully later.11 It is sufficient to note here that in many parts of the world people cannot, without fear, interact and say what they want online. Global internet discourse is dis- torted by state intimidation and censorship.

Seventh, inequalities within countries – not just between them – can distort online dialogue. This is not simply because a higher proportion of those on high incomes have home internet access than of those on low incomes (Van Dijk 2005; Jansen 2010). Those with cultural capital have a head start. Thus 81 per cent of writers of articles in the leading international e-zine, openDemocracy, in 2008 had elite occupations. They were also unrepresentative in other ways: 71 per cent lived in the Europe/Americas and 72 per cent were men. The context of the real world in which elites have greater time, knowledge and written fluency, in which men are better represented than women in politics, and in which knowledge of English tends to be geographically concentrated all shaped in this instance who got to hold forth (Curran and Witschge 2010). More generally, leading bloggers often come from elite backgrounds in Britain, America and elsewhere (Cammaerts 2008).

In short, the idea that cyberspace is a free, open space where people from different backgrounds and nations can commune with each other and build a more deliberative, tolerant world overlooks a number of things. The world is unequal and mutually uncomprehending (in a literal sense); it is torn asunder by conflicting values and interests; it is subdivided by deeply embedded national and local cultures (and other nodes of identity such as religion and ethnicity); and some countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes. These different aspects of the real world penetrate cyberspace, producing a ruined tower of Babel with multiple languages, hate websites, nationalist discourses, censored speech and over-representation of the advantaged.

Yet there are forces of a different kind influencing the development of society. Increasing migration, cheap travel, mass tourism, global market integration and the globalisation of entertainment have encouraged an increased sense of trans- national connection. Some of these developments find support in the internet. YouTube showcases shared experience, taste, music and humour from around

Reinterpreting the internet 11

the world that promotes a ‘we-feeling’ (revealing, for example, that stand-up comedy in Chinese can be enormously funny, overriding the deadening effect of subtitles).12 The internet also facilitates the rapid global distribution of arresting images that strengthen a sense of solidarity with beleaguered groups, whether these are earthquake victims or protesters facing repression in distant lands. The internet has the potential to assist the building of a more cohesive, under- standing and fairer world. But the mainspring of change will come from society, not the microchip.

One key way of effecting change is democracy. Is the prediction that the internet would spread and rejuvenate democracy borne out by what has happened?

Internet and democracy

It was regularly proclaimed that the internet would undermine dictators by ending their monopoly of information (e.g. Fukuyama 2002). What this forecast failed to anticipate was that the internet could be controlled. Take, for example, Saudi Arabia, where an internet connection was first established in 1994. Public access to the internet was deferred until 1999, to give the government time to perfect its censorship arrangements. This included funnelling of all international connections through the state-controlled Internet Services Unit, the pre-set blocking of proscribed websites, and the creation of a volunteer vigilante force to recommend further proscriptions (Boas 2006). During a similar period, a more sophisticated apparatus was established in China to cope with a much larger volume of internet traffic. This included blocking websites through the state- controlled International Connection Bureau and state-licensed internet service providers, the limitation of bulletin board discussions to government-approved topics, concerted pressure on intermediaries to regulate internet cafes, and software monitoring of web content (Boas 2006).

In normal conditions, state internet censorship in authoritarian countries was not comprehensive, but effective enough. Indeed, a comparative study of eight nations concluded that ‘many authoritarian regimes are proactively promoting the development of an Internet that serves state-defined interests rather than challenging them’ (Kalathil and Boas 2003: 3). As we shall see in the next chapter, censorship could be undermined when authoritarian regimes faced organised resistance. But, even in these circumstances, the internet did not ‘cause’ resistance but merely strengthened it.

Another prediction, especially fashionable in the mid-1990s, was that the internet would install a new form of democracy. ‘It will not be long’, Lawrence Grossman wrote in 1995, ‘before many Americans sitting at home or at work will be able to use telecomputer terminals, microprocessors, and computer- driven keypads to push the buttons that will tell their government what should be done about any important matter of state’ (Grossman 1995). This did not happen, which is just as well, since online direct democracy would have disen- franchised those without ready internet access, made up disproportionately of

12 James Curran

the poor and elderly in Western countries. The ‘e-government’ that emerged usually took the form of inviting the public to comment, petition or otherwise respond online to an official website. This could be useful: for example, in Britain, 30 per cent of online responses to a proposed new law in 1997 came from private individuals – a much higher proportion than in the era before online consulta- tion (Coleman 1999). However, the cumulative evidence suggests that online dialogue with government has, in general, three limitations. Citizens’ inputs are often disconnected from real structures of decision making; citizens tend not to take part in these consultations partly for this reason; and sometimes ‘e-democracy’ means no more than one-sided communication in which the government pro- vides information about services and promotes their use (Slevin 2000; Chadwick 2006; Livingstone 2010). In short, online consultation has added something to the functioning of democracy without making a great deal of difference.13

However, it has long been proclaimed that the internet will revitalise liberal democracy in other ways. The public will be better able to control gov- ernment through its unparalleled access to information (Toffler and Toffler 1995). The internet will also undermine elite control of politics because, according to Mark Poster (2001: 175), the internet is ‘empowering previously excluded groups’. Indeed, the internet will extend horizontal channels of com- munication between social groups while undermining top-down communication between elites and the general public. In this brave new world, it is hoped, the grassroots will reclaim power and inaugurate a ‘renaissance of democracy’ (Agre 1994).14

In America, some argued that the internet would dispense with the need for expensive television advertising and corporate funding, and create the conditions for a grassroots-driven politics that would take America in a new direction. For some, in 2008, Barack Obama embodied this dream. In fact, the internet did help Obama to raise substantial financial contributions from ordinary citizens and to win votes in the primaries and subsequent 2008 presidential election. Even so, the deepening economic crisis was probably the principal reason why Obama won the presidency.15 More significantly for our purposes, Barack Obama combined old and new methods of electioneering. His team spent $235.9 million on television political advertising and his campaign (winning the Marketer of the Year award) was guided by costly professionals. To bankroll this, Barack Obama had to secure large corporate donations in addition to citizen funding (Curran 2011). In the event, Obama’s administration employed numerous political and financial sector insiders and followed a liberal rather than radical agenda. The internet did not give birth, as it had been hoped, to a new kind of politics.

Nor does the internet seem to have ‘empowered’ low-income households (as distinct from high-income ones) in Western countries. Smith et al. (2009) dis- covered that, in the US, the advantaged tend to be the most active in politics, and this imbalance is reproduced in online activism. Similarly, Di Genarro and Dutton (2006) found that in Britain the politically active tend to be drawn from the higher socio-economic groups, the more highly educated and older people.

Reinterpreting the internet 13

Those engaged in political online participation were even more skewed towards the affluent and highly educated, though they were more often younger. Di Genarro and Dutton’s conclusion was that the internet seems to be promoting political exclusion rather than inclusion.

One reason why low-income groups are less politically active online is because an internet service costs money. However, a further reason has to do with poli- tical disaffection. In a comparative study of 22 countries, Frederick Solt (2008) found that economic inequality depresses political interest, political discussion and voting, save among the affluent. In very unequal societies (like the US), the privileged have a powerful incentive to participate in politics because they tend to do well out of it. By contrast, the disadvantaged have much less reason to engage in politics because they tend to obtain less advantage from participation. Low participation is thus presented by Solt as being, in a sense, a rational response to lack of influence. He is able to point out that extensive research does in fact corroborate that wealthy and powerful groups in the US, and elsewhere, have a disproportionate influence on public policy.

Poverty can marginalise and de-motivate in other ways. The UK Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power (2000: 4) highlights the way in which the repeated, bruising experience of being poor and not being treated with respect encourages a sense of powerlessness, while ‘long-term poverty can make people feel that it is impossible to change things’. Ruth Lister (2004) also points out that some on low incomes embrace individual deficiency explanations of poverty, making them oriented towards individual rather than collective, political solutions. Studies also show repeatedly that children of poor families in Britain can acquire low expectations and a diminished sense of confidence and entitlement through early socialisation (Hirsch 2007; Sutton et al. 2007; Horgan 2007). Emollient generalisations about the ‘empowering’ technology of the internet often fail to take into account the powerful influences in the real world that can keep people disempowered.

Of course, the internet places a cheap tool of communication in the hands of citizens. But an enhanced ability to communicate at low cost should not be equated with being heard.16 Activist groups have found it difficult to get the attention of mainstream media (Fenton 2010b). What they say can also be lost on the web. This is partly because their statements tend to get a low search engine listing. As Hindman (2009: 14) succinctly puts it, the internet is not ‘eliminating exclusivity in political life: instead, it is shifting the bar of exclusivity from the production to the filtering of political information’. Activist groups also face the additional problem that public interest in politics can be limited. Thus, a recent survey of American internet users found that on a typical day 38 per cent go online ‘just for fun’ or ‘to pass the time’, compared with 25 per cent who say that they go online for news or information about politics (Pew 2009a).

However, the internet is a very effective mode of communication between activists. It can link them together, facilitate interaction between them and mobilise them

14 James Curran

to assemble in one place at short notice. This can result in activity that wins both media and public attention.

For example, a group of around ten activists met in a north London pub in October 2010 and decided to set up a blog called UK Uncut. In a remarkably short space of time, they put corporate tax avoidance on the public agenda. They began by organising a public protest against Vodafone, a company that had negotiated an advantageous back-tax settlement and had been the subject of a recent exposé in the satirical magazine Private Eye. This was followed by protests against other named large corporations which, at the time of public spending cuts, were avoiding tax. In early 2001, the campaign group organised ‘teach-ins’ in publicly bailed-out banks to coincide with the announcement of large bank executive bonuses, under the slogan ‘bail-in’ to cuts. Within six months, UK Uncut had been reported in numerous TV and radio reports and had featured in 40 articles in leading newspapers.17 Without the internet, this pub group could not have made the impact that it did.

UK Uncut was helped by the fact that it connected to an undercurrent of public indignation. However, the next example illustrates the way in which the internet can help activists to huddle together when they are out of step with the national mood. MoveOn was set up in America in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist incidents to oppose militarism. Interviews and observations suggested that its online activity provided an anonymous safe haven for dissent at a time of inti- midating patriotism. The online campaign also helped to put sympathisers in touch with other like-minded people in their district, and spurred some armchair dissenters into becoming politically active. In a rapid expansion facilitated by the internet, MoveOn grew from 500,000 US members in 2001 to 3 million by December 2005 (Rohlinger and Brown 2008). A relative failure in terms of its campaign objectives, MoveOn nevertheless rallied and sustained dissent.

If one democratic use of the internet is to connect activists, another is to make a ‘blind’ appeal to consumer power. Thus, an internet-aided campaign was initiated against Nike in the 1990s on the grounds that its expensive trainers were being made by workers who were employed for long hours in unsafe con- ditions and earned subsistence wages. In response, the company argued that it was not responsible for conditions in factories that it did not own. Under public pressure, Nike shifted its position in 2001 and gave a public undertaking that it would exert ‘leverage’ on contractors if they were bad employers. The campaign then focused on publicly assessing Nike’s claims to greater corporate responsi- bility (Bennett 2003).

Similarly, a part-time British DJ, Jon Morter, and his friends decided to launch a protest against the commercial manipulation of pop music. They chose as their target the way in which the media’s saturation coverage of the television talent contest X Factor in the UK regularly propels the show’s winner to head the Christmas music chart. Through Facebook and Twitter, they launched a counter- campaign for Rage against the Machine, selecting the track ‘Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me’ as their Christmas choice. The campaign took off,

Reinterpreting the internet 15

securing celebrity endorsements and extensive media publicity. The protest track secured the No. 1 Christmas spot in 2009, in a collective expression of resent- ment against commercial control.

The internet can also enable citizens to hold the media to account. Thus, in the much-cited Trent Lott saga, an indignant blogosphere objected in 2002 to the failure of mainstream media to report prominently, and condemn, a speech by a leading Republican politician, Senator Trent Lott, who referred nostalgi- cally to the race-segregation politics of the past. Bloggers’ protests were endorsed by a New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, and were then investigated by the TV networks, which discovered that Senator Lott had made similar remarks in the past. In the ensuing political row, Trent Lott was forced to stand down as Senate majority leader. Through the internet, individuals – both Republicans and Democrats – successfully challenged conventional news values and a tacit understanding of the boundaries of the politically acceptable (Scott 2004).

Above all, the international reach of the internet makes it an effective agency for coordinating NGOs in different countries. An early example of this is the launch of the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines in 1992. Its founder, Jody Williams, had been alerted to the terrible injuries that left-behind land- mines could inflict when she visited Nicaragua. She started an educational campaign in the United States, but made little progress. Realising that there were numerous anti-landmine organisations around the world, she concluded that the way forward was to link them together. Armed with the internet, phone and fax, Jody Williams and her colleagues brought together more than seven hundred groups in a concerted campaign for an international treaty. Their efforts were rewarded with the signing of the 1997 [anti-personnel] Mine Ban Treaty by 120 states, leading to the award of a Nobel Peace prize (Klotz 2004; Price 1998). However, both the United States and China refused to sign.

Similarly, an internet campaign was launched in 1997 against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) prepared for ratification by OECD countries. Progressive activists around the world received e-mails warning that MAI would lead to an international race to the bottom in terms of labour, human rights, environmental and consumer regulation. The ensuing NGO agitation found a champion in the French socialist government, which successfully opposed MAI’s adoption (and also publicly saluted the internet campaign) (Smith and Smythe 2004). This was followed by mass protests organised at the World Trade Orga- nisation meeting in Seattle (1999) and at the G8 summit at Genoa (2001), greatly assisted by the internet (Juris 2005). Both these occasions were marked by violence, in contrast to the peaceful protests at the G8 meeting at Gleneagles (2005), when debt relief measures for poorer countries were publicly announced. However, some of these debt relief commitments were not, in fact, honoured.

These case studies leave little doubt that the internet has increased the effec- tiveness of political activists. Yet, despite the very selective case-study agenda of internet researchers, there is nothing particularly left-wing about the internet. Indeed, American conservatives became better organised, earlier, on the net

16 James Curran

than liberals (Hill and Hughes 1998), while the internet seems to have played a significant role in the more recent rise of the right-wing Tea Party Movement (Thompson 2010).

The utilisation of the internet by people of different persuasions has strengthened the infrastructure of democracy. But this positive input has been offset by negative trends in the wider political environment. Since the 1980s, there has been an enormous increase of investment in corporate and state public relations (Davis 2002; Dinan and Miller 2007). This was accompanied by a drift towards populist politics, supported by focus groups, private polling and political con- sultants (Crouch 2004; Marquand 2008; Davis 2010, among others). Meanwhile political parties became in many countries increasingly hollowed-out organisa- tions with shrinking memberships – a trend almost caricatured by Berlusconi’s very successful launch of Forza Italia, a ‘plastic party’ with few members (Ginsborg 2004; Lane 2004). All these developments contributed to a growing centralisation of political power.

The role of the internet in coordinating international political protest also needs to be put into perspective. The development of a global system of governance became closely aligned to the ascendant neoliberal order (Sklair 2002). Major institutions like the World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund are relatively unaccountable (Stiglitz 2002). As Peter Dahlgren (2005) notes, ‘there are simply few established mechanisms for democratically based and binding transnational decision making’. The international forces galvanised by the net are still relatively weak, with little purchase for influencing global policy.

The major public institution most accessible to democratic influence, at least by comparison with intermediate and global structures of governance, is the nation-state. Yet, the nation-state has been rendered less effective by the rise of deregulated global financial markets and mobile transnational corporations. This has weakened the democratic power of national electorates (Curran 2002).

In short, the internet has energised activism. But in the context of political disaffection, increasing political manipulation at the centre, an unaccountable global order and the weakening of electoral power, the internet has not revitalised democracy18.

Renaissance of journalism

The internet, according to Rupert Murdoch, is democratising journalism. ‘Power is moving away’, he declares, ‘from the old elite in our industry – the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors’, and is being transferred to bloggers, social networks and consumers downloading from the web (Murdoch 2006). This view is echoed by the leading British conservative blogger Guido Fawkes, who proclaimed that ‘the days of media conglomerates determining the news in a top-down Fordist fashion are over … Big media are going to be disintermediated because the technology has drastically reduced the cost of dissemination’ (Fawkes cited Beckett 2008: 108). The radical academic

Reinterpreting the internet 17

lawyer Yochai Benkler (2006) concurs, arguing that a monopolistic industrial model of journalism is giving way to a pluralistic networked model based on profit and non-profit, individual and organised journalistic practices. The radical press historian John Nerone goes further, pronouncing the ancien régime to be a thing of the past. ‘The biggest thing to lament about the death of the old order [of journalism]’, he chortles, ‘is that it is not there for us to piss on any more’ (Nerone 2009: 355). Numerous commentators, drawn from the left as well as the right, and including news industry leaders, citizen journalists and academic experts, have reached the same conclusion: the internet is bringing to an end the era of media moguls and conglomerate control of journalism.

The second related theme of this euphoric commentary is that the internet will lead to the reinvention of journalism in a better form. The internet will be ‘journalism’s ultimate liberation’, according to Philip Elmer-Dewitt (1994), because ‘anyone with a computer and a modem can be his own reporter, editor and publisher – spreading news and views to millions of readers around the world’. One version of this vision sees traditional media being largely displaced by citizen journalists who will generate ‘a back-to-basics, Jeffersonian conversa- tion among the citizenry’ (Mallery cited Schwartz 1994). An alternative version sees professional journalists working in tandem with enthusiastic volunteers to produce a reinvigorated form of journalism (e.g. Beckett 2008; Deuze 2009). This is a view now coming out of the heart of the news industry. ‘Journalism will thrive’, proclaims Chris Ahearn, Media President at Thomson Reuter, ‘as creators and publishers embrace the collaborative power of new technologies, retool production and distribution strategies and we stop trying to do everything ourselves’ (Ahearn 2009).

The dethroning of traditional news controllers and the renewal of journalism are thus the two central themes of this forecast. Superficially at least, it looks as if some elements of this forecast are coming true. In certain circumstances, citizen journalists have made an impact. Thus, the bystanders who, in 2009, caught on camera the killing of Nada Soltan in a Tehran demonstration and the man- slaughter of Ian Tomlinson in a London demonstration recorded news stories that went around the world. Similarly, participants’ footage of the uprisings in the Middle East, and of repressive attempts to contain them, was widely used by news organisations in 2011.

There has also been an outpouring of self-communication, with an estimated 14 per cent of adults in the US in 2010 writing a blog (Zickuhr 2010). This has been accompanied by a spectacular increase in social media traffic (Nielsen 2011), though most social media content has little to do with journalism. In addition, new independent online publications, such as Huffington Post,19 Politico and openDemocracy, have made their mark.

But the millenarian prophecy of death and renewal is wishful thinking. One reason for thinking that the old order persists is that television is still the most important source of news in most countries. Thus, in all six countries surveyed – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, United States and Japan – more respondents said that

18 James Curran

they relied on television than the internet as the main source of news about their country (Ofcom 2010b).

More importantly, leading news organisations colonised the news segment of cyberspace. To pre-empt competition, they set up satellite news websites. These quickly became dominant because they were heavily cross-subsidised; and exploited the news-gathering resources and established reputations of their powerful parent companies. Thus, Pew (2011) found that in 2010, 80 per cent of the internet traffic to news and information sites was concentrated on the top 7 per cent of sites. The majority of these sites (67 per cent) were controlled by ‘legacy’ news organisations from the pre-internet era. Another 13 per cent were accounted for by content aggregators. Only 14 per cent of these top sites were online-only operations that produced mostly original reportorial content.

In other words, the rise of the internet has not undermined leading news organisations. On the contrary, it has enabled them to extend their hegemony across technologies. In concrete terms, this means that the ten most-visited news websites in the world in 2010/11 included only one online independent (Huf- fington Post); the remaining nine were leading news organisations, like the New York Times and Xinhua News Agency, from the pre-internet era (Guardian 2011). The top ten news websites in the US in March 2011 included only one online independent (again the Huffington Post); the remainder were four leading TV organisations, three leading newspapers and two content aggregators (Moos 2011). In Britain, there was no online independent among the top ten news sites in 2011: all the top spots were filled by leading ‘legacy’ television and newspaper organisations and content aggregators (Nielsen 2011).

Content aggregators do not usually give prominence to alternative news sources. Thus Joanna Redden and Tamara Witschge (2010) examined Google’s and Yahoo!’s listing of content, over time, in relation to five major public affairs issues, only to find that ‘no alternative news sites were returned in the first page of search results’. This prioritisation matters, they point out, because research shows that the first page is much more likely to be sampled than subsequent pages. Redden and Witschge also found that Google and Yahoo! tended to privilege leading news providers, reproducing their ascendancy.

The leading news brands’ successful defence of their oligopoly has been helped by the weakness of their challengers. Independent online news ventures have failed to develop a business model that works. Most have found it difficult to build a subscription base because the public has become accustomed to having free web content. And because these online independents have generally attracted small audiences, they have low advertising returns. A Pew Research Center study (2009b) in the US concluded that ‘despite enthusiasm and good work, few if any of these are profitable or even self-financing’. Similarly, a 2009 Columbia Journalism Review study concluded that ‘it is unlikely that any but the smallest of these [web-based] news organisations can be supported primarily by existing online revenue’ (Downie and Schudson 2010). Often with skeletal resources, their most pressing priority has usually been to stay alive.

Reinterpreting the internet 19

Nor has the internet connected the legion of bloggers to a mass audience. In Britain, for instance, 79 per cent of internet users in 2008 had not read a single blog during the previous three months (ONS 2008). Most bloggers lack the time to investigate stories. They are amateurs, who need their regular day job to pay their way (Couldry 2010). This reduces their ability to build a large audience.

What about the claim that the quality of journalism is being improved by the internet? This seems eminently persuasive, at first sight. After all, as a consequence of the internet, journalists have faster access to more information and to a wider range of news sources. This should make it easier to verify stories and to give expression to different viewpoints. Journalists can also draw more easily upon feedback and input from their audiences.

However, what this optimistic expectation leaves out of account is the devastating consequences of lost advertising. In economically advanced countries, the internet now reaches a large audience; it is cheap, and good at targeting specific con- sumers (which is why ‘search’ is the internet’s biggest category of advertising). After a slow start, these strengths generated a meteoric increase of internet advertising at the expense of television and the press. In the US, advertising on the internet overtook that in newspapers in 2010 (having earlier overtaken cable TV) (Gobry 2011). In Britain, internet advertising already took a larger share (25 per cent) of advertising expenditure in 2010 than the newspaper press (18 per cent) (Nielsen 2011). The scale of redistribution that was involved is perhaps most dramatically illustrated in relation to classified advertising. In the UK, the internet’s share of classified expenditure soared from 2 per cent to 45 per cent between 2000 and 2008, while that of the local and regional press plummeted from 47 per cent to 26 per cent. The classified advertising share of national papers fell from 14 per cent to 6 per cent during the same period (Office of Fair Trading 2009).

This loss of advertising has led to closure and contraction. In Britain, 101 British local newspapers folded between January 2008 and September 200920, while in the US some major newspapers like the Christian Science Monitor ceased print publication. Numerous local TV channels in the US now no longer originate local news, while the main commercial TV channel (ITV) in the UK wants to discontinue local news coverage. The number of journalists employed in the US declined by 26 per cent between 2000 and 2009 (Pew 2011), while those employed in the UK’s ‘mainstream journalism corps’ shrank by between 27 per cent and 33 per cent between 2001 and 2010 (Nel 2010). News budgets were cut, with the result that even the large metropolitan dailies and television network news in the US have been forced to economise on high-cost investiga- tive and foreign journalism.

A major study of British journalism also concludes that a more profound and pervasive process of deterioration is taking place, in marked contrast to hyped predictions of regeneration (Fenton 2010a; Lee-Wright et al. 2011). It found that fewer journalists are being expected to produce more content, as a consequence of newsroom redundancies, the integration of online and offline news

20 James Curran

production, and the need to update stories in a 24-hour news cycle. This is encouraging journalists to rely more on tried-and-tested, mainstream news sources as a way of boosting output. It is also fostering the lifting of stories from rivals’ websites as a way of increasing productivity, even to the extent of using the same news frames, quotes and pictures. Depleted resources are contributing in general to increased reliance on scissors-and-paste, deskbound journalism. To judge from an Argentinian study, a very similar trend towards imitative, office- centred journalism is also taking place elsewhere (Boczkowski 2009).

In brief, the dominant news organisations have entrenched their ascendancy because they have gained a commanding position in both the offline and online production and consumption of news. In addition, the rise of the internet as an advertising medium has led to budget cuts, increased time pressure on journalists and, sometimes, declining quality in mainstream journalism. This has not been offset by new independent news start-ups because these have been mostly too small and with too little firepower to ride to the rescue.

That said, there are significant variations between countries. For example, internet-based citizen journalism has been a relative flop in Britain, whereas it has been a great success in South Korea. We need to take a closer look at this not least because it illustrates the way in which the external context affects the internet’s impact.

Different contexts/different outcomes

At the turn of the century there was little demand for radical political and cul- tural change in Britain. The 2002 general election witnessed the lowest turnout ever, registering public disaffection with politics (Couldry et al. 2007). The left was disoriented by the neoliberal trajectory of the Labour government and its decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A youth-based cultural revolt lay in the past, having taken place more than a quarter of a century earlier. So when the website openDemocracy (OD) started in 2001, it was in a relatively becalmed period in which the winds of change had died down in Britain. It was also an international project, only partly connected to a British base. With sub- stantial foundation support, an able team at the centre, and drawing upon a talented network of contributors, the website became the leading British venture of its kind. But its total, gross number of visitors per month peaked at 441,000 in 2005 before falling rapidly thereafter. Indeed, the venture went into financial crisis in 2007 from which it has never fully recovered (Curran and Witschge 2010).

In sharp contrast, there was a pressure-cooker build-up in favour of political and cultural change in South Korea. The short-lived attempt to create a par- liamentary democracy in 1960 had been overtaken by a military coup. However, the democracy movement gained increased momentum in the subsequent period, securing major constitutional reforms in 1987. A civilian president was elected in 1992, and this opened the way to further liberalisation. The number

Reinterpreting the internet 21

of civil society organisations doubled in the 1990s, having doubled in the previous decade (Kim and Hamilton 2006: 553, table 5). There was a long-running campaign for greater media independence from government that gained support from increasingly disaffected journalists (Park et al. 2000). Public attacks were also made on collusion between big business and government, the neoliberal policies pursued in the wake of the Asian 1997–98 economic crisis, and the continued presence of a large, unaccountable American army in the country. The politician Moo-hyun Roh came to represent this gathering tide of opposi- tion, and was elected President in 2002. This upsurge of political radicalism was accompanied by a cultural revolt against authoritarian conformity.

OhmyNews (OMN), launched in 2000, became the focal point of this political and generational protest.21 It was different from the three dominant national dailies, all of which were closely identified with the establishment and became associated with the political mobilisation that led to the election of President Roh. It also became a vehicle of cultural dissent, giving space to views that did not conform to the precepts of Confucian civility and obedience.

In these very special circumstances, OMN took off like a balloon. Established by a young, radical journalist, Yeon Ho Oh, in 2000 with a modest launch fund of $85,000, OMN had initially a skeletal staff of four, supported by 727 volunteer ‘citizen journalists’ (Kim and Hamilton 2006). The website’s registered citizen journalists grew to 14,000 in 2001, 20,000 in 2002, 30,000 in 2003 and 34,000 in 2004, while its core staff increased to 60 people by 2004 (of whom 35 were full-time journalists). This expansion in the number of volunteers was accompanied by a meteoric growth in readership. A survey undertaken for an independent investor company estimated that OMN had, in 2004, 2.2 million visitors a month. Winning this volume of young, mostly affluent users solved the perennial problem of independent web publishing – lack of income. OMN became profitable by 2003 because it attracted substantial online advertising. By contrast, the donations and voluntary subscriptions from users remained low, very much less than the modest proceeds of its print edition (Kim and Hamilton 2006: 548, table 1).

OMN ‘reinvented’ journalism by skilfully harnessing professional and amateur inputs. By the mid-2000s, its core group of professional journalists wrote only about 20 per cent of website content. However, they selected and edited the articles sent in by ‘citizen journalists’ that were published in the main sections of the website. Space was created beside articles for readers’ responses, and the website hosted chat rooms on different topics. Citizen journalists received a token payment if their articles were accepted in the main section. Articles, unpaid and unedited, were also published in the ‘kindling’ sections of the website. The whole operation was overseen by a committee made up of both professionals and representatives of citizen journalists. By 2004, OMN published between 150 and 200 articles each day, becoming in effect a website ‘daily’.

This remarkable achievement – attracting volunteers, building a mass audience, achieving solvency and influencing public life – was only possible because there

22 James Curran

was a ground-swell of progressive support behind the website. However, this ground-swell declined because there was growing disappointment with President Roh’s government. Anticipated reforms were not enacted, or were discontinued in the face of determined political and business opposition. The Korean economy also underperformed on Roh’s watch. In the next presidential election (2007), the conservative (GNP) candidate won in a very low poll. In 2009, former President Roh – facing the prospect of criminal charges for bribery and corruption – committed suicide.

OMN suffered as a consequence of its close association with a ‘failed’ President, and from the decline of the left. The proliferation of new websites meant also that OMN ceased to be the natural home of cultural dissent. It also became apparent that its volunteer base was relatively narrow: in 2005, registered volunteers were heavily concentrated in greater Seoul, almost entirely under the age of 40, and 77 per cent were male (Joyce 2007: ‘exhibit’ 2). The website ceased to be profitable in 2006, and ran into increasing financial difficulty. The glory days of OMN now seem to be over.

In hindsight, it is clear that new technology was crucial to OMN’s success because it lowered costs, facilitated contributions from volunteers and enabled lively interactions on its website. But without a strongly prevailing wind, OMN would never have lifted off in the way that it did. And when that wind subsided, OMN lost momentum.

The importance of the external context in enabling or disabling the realisation of the technological potential of the internet can be illustrated in another way. When OMN was launched in Japan in 2006, it had substantial resources because it went into partnership with a telecommunications corporation. But Japan, a deeply consensual corporatist society, did not provide fertile soil for the new venture. OMN Japan found it difficult to recruit good disaffected journal- ists; its more professionally oriented staff had running conflicts with voluntary contributors (who objected to heavy editing). Web traffic stayed low, and voluntary contributors to OMN Japan remained fewer than a tenth of their counterparts in Korea (Joyce 2007). An attempt was made to save the website by giving it a softer, lifestyle focus, but to no avail. The venture closed in 2008, a failure from the very outset, in contrast to its sister paper.

OMN also set up in 2004 an English-language, international website. Again there was not the same political momentum behind it as there was for the domestic website. OMN International attracted a relatively small number of contributors and users. This detracted from its quality (reflected in its very erratic and uneven coverage of news and issues around the world), and saddled it with financial problems that seem unlikely to be resolved (Dencik 2011).

Empowerment/disempowerment

The importance of context can also be illustrated in another way by comparing two countries. Both Malaysia and Singapore seem at first glance rather similar.

Reinterpreting the internet 23

They are authoritarian democracies, whose ruling parties have been in power ever since national independence. Both countries have illiberal laws, including the licensing of traditional media outlets and the annual licensing of civil society organisations. Yet, they both have adopted a liberal policy towards the internet in order to further their economic modernisation programmes. While Singa- pore’s internet policy is notionally more restrictive, since it entails formal website licensing, in actual practice it is little different from that in Malaysia.

Internet penetration is higher in Singapore than inMalaysia. In 2011, 77 per cent of the Singapore population were internet users, compared with 59 per cent in Malaysia (Internet World Stats 2011b). This might lead us to expect that the rise of a relatively free internet would be more empowering in Singapore than Malaysia. In fact, the reverse is the case, due to crucial differences in the political environment of the two countries.

The ruling elite are less cohesive in Malaysia than in Singapore. Malaysia is run by a coalition of parties within which there have been perennial tensions. These became dysfunctional when the Prime Minister, Dr Mohamad Mahathir, turned on his deputy, Ibrahim Anwar, following extensive disagreements over economic policy. Anwar was sacked, beaten up by the police, and jailed on what were widely suspected to be trumped up charges of corruption and sodomy. This led to the creation of the opposition reformasi movement in 1998, which won support both from within and outside the political establishment (Sani 2009).

Malaysia has a more developed civil society than Singapore (George 2007). Malaysia’s civil society includes active civil rights, constitutional reform and impor- tant Islamic groups. Its political opposition also became increasingly outspoken in the 1990s, partly because Malaysia was worse hit than Singapore by the 1997–98 Asian economic crisis, and took longer to recover. The tiger of Islamic funda- mentalism in Malaysia – for which there is no equivalent in Singapore – also showed signs of slipping its government leash.

Against this background, the internet developed as an increasingly important space of dissent and criticism in Malaysia. Civil society groups set up independent websites. A dissenting minority press that had survived in Malaysia also developed an online presence. By the mid-2000s, internet activists became organised, and developed strong links with each other, in a way that did not happen in Singapore. Cherian George (2005) found that Malaysian websites more frequently updated their content, were better resourced, more critical and reached a very much larger audience than their counterparts in Singapore.

Malaysian political websites gained an increasing audience partly because mainstream media came to be distrusted. As opposition to the government grew (though in a discontinuous way), independent websites became a focal point of public criticism. This contributed in turn to the cumulative erosion of support for the governing bloc (Kenyon 2010). In 2008, the newly formed opposition coalition made substantial gains, winning nearly 37 per cent of federal lower house seats. For the first time since independence in 1957, the governing coalition ceased to have a two-thirds majority.

24 James Curran

By contrast, Singapore is ruled not by a coalition but by a single, united party (PAP). The opposition is so little supported that it regularly secures the election of only a handful of MPs. Underpinning the ruling party’s dominion are not only coercive laws but also a hegemonic national ideology that stresses Asian values, public morality and social harmony (Worthington 2003; Rodan 2004; George 2007). This hegemony is also underwritten by the city-state’s economic success that encourages pragmatic acceptance of the regime. So great has been the ruling elite’s domination of Singaporean society that the internet was largely neu- tralised as a space of dissent (Ibrahim 2006). Indeed, when Andrew Kenyon (2010) undertook a comparative analysis of critical reporting in three countries – Australia, Malaysia and Singapore – he had to omit Singaporean online content because there were too few critical articles to constitute an adequate sample.22

In brief, the wider political context encouraged the development of the internet as an agency of dissent in Malaysia, but of co-option and control in Singapore. This illustrates our concluding point: different contexts produce different out- comes, something that is repeatedly obscured by overarching theories of the internet centred on its technology.

Notes 1 My thanks for the exceptional research assistance of Joanna Redden on Chapters 1 and 2. My thanks go also to Nick Couldry for his insightful comments on a draft version of Chapters 1 and 2.

2 The Harvard reference system turns multiple citations into rebarbative obstructions between sentences. In this opening paragraph, only one publication per theme has been cited, usually for the sake of accessibility. Numerous other examples of these arguments will be encountered later in this chapter.

3 A central theme of this book was anticipated in a satirical 1993 New Yorker cartoon featuring a dog sitting in front of a computer, with the caption: ‘On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog’ (reproduced in Anderson 2005: 227).

4 Sherry Turkle did not change tack by 180 degrees, since what she wrote in both her optimistic and pessimistic phases was hedged with qualifications.

5 This approach differs from that of Vincent Mosco (2005), who examines internet prophecies as a discourse that illuminates the assumptions and contexts that produced them. This leads him to describe these prophecies as ‘myths’ without empirically investi- gating whether they became true or false. Our approach differs also from that of Anderson (2005), who looks at internet predictions in a more historically descriptive way.

6 In passing, it should be noted that a subsidiary theme of this thesis is that companies whose structure and functioning exploited to the full the interactivity of the internet would flourish in the New Economy. Thus, Castells (2001: 68) presents Cisco Systems as ‘the pioneer of the [network] business model characterizing the Internet economy’ that exemplified its dynamism. Yet, in 2000–01, Cisco’s shares declined by 78 per cent, and the company laid off 8,500 workers. In 2011, Cisco announced further mass lay-offs, and its CEO, John Chambers, wrote: ‘we are disappointed for our investors, our employees are confused. Basically, we lost some of … [our]success based on credibility, we must win back reputation’ (Solaria Sun 2011). The company’s rollercoaster history underlines the simple point that skilled structural utilisation of new communications technology is only one ingredient, among many, of economic success.

Reinterpreting the internet 25

7 The literature on this is vast. For useful introductions, see Porter (2008a and b); Dranove and Schaefer (2010); and Ghoshal (1992).

8 Fuchs (2009) offers a similar but slightly different analysis that stresses internal inequality within nations, level of democracy and degree of urbanisation as variables influencing the level of national internet take-up.

9 The results of this ESRC co-funded comparative study will be published in 2012. 10 The way nationalist cultures can shape the web and internet use is discussed further in

the next chapter, page 57. 11 See page 5, and pages 49–51 and 53 in Chapter 2. 12 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iailMSUVenA (accessed 15 August 2011). 13 Coleman and Blumler (2008: 169 ff) argue eloquently that online consultation could

make more of a difference if a publicly supported ‘civic commons in cyberspace’ is created that is linked to political decision making.

14 For more predictions in this vein, see Anderson (2005). 15 For more on the limits of internet influence in the 2008 US election, see Chapter 5. 16 For more on this, see Chapter 5. 17 See http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/press/coverage?articles_page=5 (accessed 4 April 2011). 18 For discussion of the role of the internet in ‘spreading democracy’, see the next

chapter. 19 In 2011 Huffington Post ceased to be independent, and was acquired by AOL. 20 Information supplied by the Newspaper Society, UK, in e-mail correspondence, 19

February 2010. 21 My thanks to Elisabeth Baumann-Meurer for researching the historical context of

OhmyNews. 22 In the 2011 general election, PAP sustained a small loss, perhaps influenced by

increased online criticism. But PAP still won all but six seats.

References Aalberg, T. and Curran, J. (2012) (eds) How Media Inform Democracy, New York: Routledge. Agre, P. (1994) ‘Networking and Democracy’, The Network Observer, 1 (4). Online. Available HTTP: <http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/tno/april-1994.html> (accessed 4 May 2011).

Ahearn, C. (2009) ‘How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?’, Reuters, 11 Decem- ber. Online. Available HTTP: <http://blogs.reuters.com/from-reuterscom/2009/12/ 11/how-will-journalism-survive-the-internet-age/> (accessed 10 June 2011).

Akdeniz, Y. (2009) Racism on the Internet, Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Anderson, J. (2005) Imagining the Internet, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Atkinson, R., Ezell, S. J., Andes, S. M., Castro, D. D. and Bennett, R. (2010) ‘The Internet Economy 25 Years After .Com: Transforming Commerce and Life’, The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Online. Available HTTP: <http:// www.itif.org/files/2010–25-years.pdf> (accessed 2 February 2011).

Back, L. (2001) ‘White Fortresses in Cyberspace’, UNESCO Points of View. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.unesco.org/webworld/points_of_views/back.shtml> (accessed 4 June 2011).

Bar, F. with Simard, C. (2002) ‘New Media implementation and Industrial Organization’, in L. Lievrouw and S. Livingstone (eds) The Handbook of New Media, London: Sage.

Bartels, L. M. (2008) Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Beckett, C. (2008) Supermedia, Oxford: Blackwell.

26 James Curran

Beilock, R. and Dimitrova, D. V. (2003) ‘An Exploratory Model of Inter-country Internet Diffusion’, Telecommunications Policy, 27: 237–52.

Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks, New Haven: Yale University Press. Bennett, L. W. (2003) ‘Communicating Global Activism’, Information, Communication & Society, 6 (2): 143–68.

Blodget, H. (2008) ‘Why Wall Street Always Blows It … ’, The Atlantic Online. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/12/why- wall-street-always-blows-it/7147/> (accessed 12 February 2011).

Boas, T. C. (2006) ‘Weaving the Authoritarian Web: The Control of Internet Use in Nondemocratic Regimes’, in J. Zysman and A. Newman (eds) How Revolutionary Was the Digital Revolution? National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technology, Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books.

Boczkowski, P. (2009) ‘Technology, Monitoring and Imitation in Contemporary News Work’, Communication, Culture and Critique, 2: 39–59.

Bohman, J. (2004) ‘Expanding Dialogue: The Internet, the Public Sphere and Prospects for Transnational Democracy’, Sociological Review, 131–55.

Bulashova, N. and Cole, G. (1995) ‘Friends and Partners: Building Global Community on the Internet’, paper presented at the Internet Society International Networking Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, June.

Cairncross, F. (1997) The Death of Distance, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Cammaerts, B. (2008) ‘Critiques on the Participatory Potentials of Web 2.0’, Communication, Culture and Critique, 1 (4): 358–77.

Cassidy, J. (2002) Dot.con: How America Lost its Mind and Money in the Internet Era, New York: Harper Collins.

Castells, M. (2001) The Internet Galaxy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cellan-Jones, R. (2001) Dot.bomb: The Rise and Fall of Dot.com Britain, London: Aurum. Chadwick, A. (2006) Internet Politics: States, Citizens and New Communication Technologies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chrysostome, E. and Rosson, P. (2004) ‘The Internet and SMES Internationalization: Promises and Illusions’, paper delivered at Conference of ASAC, Quebec, Canada, 5 June. Online. Available HTTP: <http://libra.acadiau.ca/library/ASAC/ v25/articles/ Chrysostome-Rosson.pdf> (accessed 23 October 2011).

Coleman, S. (1999) ‘New Media and Democratic Politics’, New Media and Society, 1 (1): 62–74. Coleman, S. and Blumler, J. (2008) The Internet and Democratic Citizenship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power (2000) ‘Listen Hear: The Right to be Heard’, Report of the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power, Bristol: Policy Press. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/listen-hear-right- be-heard> (accessed 10 January 2011).

Conway, M. (2006) ‘Terrorism and the Internet: New Media – New Threat?’, Parliamentary Affairs, 59 (2): 283–98.

Cook, E. (1999) ‘Web Whiz-kids Count Their Cool Millions’, Independent, 25 July, p. 10. Couldry, N. (2010) ‘New Online Sources and Writer-Gatherers’, in N. Fenton (ed.) New Media, Old News, London: Sage.

Couldry, N., Livingstone, S. and Markham, T. (2007) Media Consumption and Public Engagement, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Crouch, C. (2004) Post-Democracy, Cambridge: Polity. Curran, J. (2002) Media and Power, London: Routledge.

Reinterpreting the internet 27

——(2011) Media and Democracy, London: Routledge. Curran, J. and Witschge, T. (2010) ‘Liberal Dreams and the Internet’ in N. Fenton (ed.) New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age, London: Sage.

Curran, J., Lund, A., Iyengar, S. and Salovaara-Moring, I. (2009) ‘Media System, Public Knowledge and Democracy: A Comparative Study’, European Journal of Communication, 24 (1): 5–26.

Dahlgren, P. (2005) ‘The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation’, Political Communication, 22: 147–62.

Daniels, J. (2008) ‘Race, Civil Rights, and Hate Speech in the Digital Era’, in A. Everett (ed.) Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 129–54.

Davies, J., Sandström, S., Shorrocks, A. and Wolff, E. (2006) ‘The World Distribution of Household Wealth’, United Nations University, World Institute for Development Econom- ics Research. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/ 2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/> (accessed 10 January 2011).

Davis, A. (2002) Public Relations Democracy, Manchester: Manchester University Press. ——(2010) Political Communication and Social Theory, London: Routledge. Deighton, J. and Quelch, J. (2009) Economic Value of the Advertising-Supported Internet Ecosystem, Cambridge, MA: Hamilton Consultants Inc.

Dencik, L. (2011) Media and Global Civil Society, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Deuze, M. (2009) ‘The People Formerly Known as the Employers’, Journalism, 10 (3): 315–18.

Di Genarro, C. and Dutton, W. (2006) ‘The Internet and the Public: Online and Offline Political Participation in the United Kingdom’, Parliamentary Affairs, 59 (2): 299–313.

Dinan, W. and Miller, D. (2007) Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy, London: Pluto. Downie, L. and Schudson, M. (2010) ‘The Reconstruction of American Journalism’,

Columbia Journalism Review. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.cjr.org/reconstruction/ the_reconstruction_of_american.php> (accessed 10 January 2010).

Dranove, B. and Schaefer, S. (2010) Economics of Strategy, 5th edn, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Edmunds, R., Guskin, E. and Rosenstiel, T. (2011) ‘Newspapers: Missed the 2010 Media Rally’, The State of the News Media 2011, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Online. Available HTTP: <http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/newspapers- essay/> (accessed 20 August 2011).

Ehlers, V. (1995) ‘Beyond the Cyberhype: What the Internet Means to the Congressman of the Future’, Roll Call, 1 October.

Elmer-Dewitt, P. (1994) ‘Battle for the Soul of the Internet’, Time, 144 (4): 50–57. Eskelsen, G., Marcus, A., and Ferree, W. K. (2009) The Digital Economy Fact Book, 10th edn, The Progress and Freedom Foundation. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www. pff.org/issues-pubs/books/factbook_10th_Ed.pdf> (accessed 2 April 2011).

European Commission (2009) Eurostat. Online. Available HTTP: <http://epp.eurostat.ec. europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/> (accessed 14 August 2011).

Fenton, N. (2008) ‘Mediating Hope: New Media, Politics and Resistance’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11: 230–48.

——(ed.) (2010a) New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age, London: Sage.

——(2010b) ‘NGOs, New Media and the Mainstream News: News from Everywhere’ in N. Fenton (ed.) New Media, Old News, London: Sage.

28 James Curran

Foster, J. and McChesney, R. (2011) ‘The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism’, Monthly Review (March). Online. Available HTTP: <http://monthlyreview.org/ 110301foster-mchesney.php> (accessed 4 June 2011).

Foster, J., McChesney, R. and Jonna, R. (2011) ‘Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism’, Monthly Review, 62: 11.

Fraser, N. (2007) ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World’, Theory, Culture and Society, 24 (4): 7–30.

Freiburger, T. and Crane, J. S. (2008) ‘A Systematic Examination of Terrorist Use of the Internet’, International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 2 (1): 309–19.

Fuchs, C. (2009) ‘The Role of Income Inequality in a Multivariate Cross-National Analysis of the Digital Divide’, Social Science Computer Review, 27 (1): 41–58.

Fukuyama, F. (2002) Our Posthuman Future, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Gates, B. (1995) ‘To Make a Fortune on the Internet, Find a Niche and Fill it’, Seattle

Post-Intelligencer, 6 December, p. B4. George, C. (2005) ‘The Internet’s Political Impact and the Penetration/Particpation

Paradox in Malaysia and Singapore’, Media, Culture and Society, 27 (6): 903–20. ——(2007) Contentious Journalism and the Internet, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Gerstenfeld, P. B., Grant, D. R. and Chiang, C. (2003) ‘Hate Online: A Content Analysis of Extremist Internet Sites’, Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 3 (1): 29–44.

Ghoshal, S. (1992) ‘Global Strategy: An Organizing Framework’, in F. Root and K. Visudtibhan (eds) International Strategic Management: Challenges and Opportunities, New York: Taylor and Francis.

Gilder, G. (1994) Life After Television, New York: Norton. Ginsborg, P. (2004) Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony, London: Verso. Gobry, P.-E. (2011) ‘It’s Official: Internet Advertising is Bigger than Newspaper Advertising’, Business Insider, 14 April. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www. businessinsider.com/internet-advertising-bigger-than-newspaper-advertising-2011-4> (accessed 15 August 2011).

Grossman, L. K. (1995) The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age, New York: Viking.

Guardian (2011) ‘The World’s Top 10 Newspaper Websites’, 19 April. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2011/apr/19/worlds-top-10-news- paper-websites?intcmp=239> (accessed 20 August 2011).

Hahn, H. (1993) Voices from the Net, 1.3, 27 October. Online. Available HTTP: <http:// www.spunk.org/library/comms/sp000317.txt> (accessed 7 November 2010).

Hill, K. and Hughes, J. (1998) Cyberpolitics, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Hindman, M. (2009) The Myth of Digital Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hirsch, D. (2007) ‘Experiences of Poverty and Educational Disadvantage’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/experiences- poverty-and-educational-disadvantage> (accessed 5 January 2011).

Horgan, G. (2007) ‘The Impact of Poverty on Young Children’s Experience of School’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/ impact-poverty-young-childrens-experience-school> (accessed 20 January 2011).

Hunt, J. (2011) ‘The New Frontier of Money Laundering: How Terrorist Organizations use Cyberlaundering to Fund Their Activities, and How Governments are Trying to Stop Them’, Information & Communications Technology Law, 20 (2): 133–52.

Ibrahim, Y. (2006) ‘The Role of Regulations and Social Norms in Mediating Online Political Discourse’, PhD dissertation, LSE, University of London.

Reinterpreting the internet 29

International Telecommunications Union (2010) ‘ITU Calls for Broadband Internet Access for Half of the World’s Population by 2015’, ITU News, 5 June. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2010/05/pdf/201005_12.pdf> (accessed 10 January 2011).

Internet World Stats (2010a) ‘Internet Usage Statistics, the Internet Big Picture’, Mini- watts Marketing Group. Online. Available HTTP: <http:www.internetworldstats.com/ stats.htm> (accessed 10 January 2011).

——(2010b) ‘Internet World Users by Language: Top 10 Languages’, Miniwatts Mar- keting Group. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.Internetworldstats.com/stats7. htm> (accessed 10 January 2011).

——(2011a) ‘Internet World Stats: Usage and Population Statistics’. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm> (accessed 14 August 2011).

——(2011b) ‘Asia Internet Usage’. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.internet worldstats.com/stats3.htm> (accessed 21 August 2011).

Jansen, J. (2010) ‘The Better-Off Online’, Pew Research Center Publications, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 24 November. Online. Available HTTP: <http://pewresearch. org/pubs/1809/internet-usage-higher-income-americans> (accessed 7 June 2011).

Jipguep, J. (1995) ‘The Global Telecommunication Infrastructure and the Information Society’, Proceedings ISOC INET ’95. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www. isoc. org/inet95/proceedings/PLENARY/L1–6/html/paper.html> (accessed January 2010).

Joyce, M. (2007) ‘The Citizen Journalism Web Site “OhmyNews” and the 2002 South Korean Presidential Election’, Berkman Center for Internet and Society of Harvard University. Online. Available HTTP: <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law. harvard.edu/files/Joyce_South_Korea_2007.pdf > (accessed 24 July 2011).

Juris, J. (2005) ‘The New Digital Media and Activist Networking within Anti-Corporate Globalization Movements’, The Annals of the American Academy, 597: 189–208.

Kalapese, C., Willersdorf, S. and Zwillenburg, P. (2010) The Connected Kingdom, Boston Consulting Group. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.connectedkingdom.co.uk/ downloads/bcg-the-connected-kingdom-oct-10.pdf> (accessed 14 August 2011).

Kalathil, S. and Boas, T. C. (2003) Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule, Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Kelly, K. (1999) ‘The Roaring Zeros’, Wired, September. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.09/zeros.html> (accessed 10 December 2010).

Kenyon, A. (2010) ‘Investigating Chilling Effects: News Media and Public Speech in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia’, International Journal of Communication, 4: 440–67.

Kim, E.-G. and Hamilton, J. (2006) ‘Capitulation to Capital? OhmyNews as Alternative Media’, Media, Culture and Society, 28 (4): 541–60.

Klotz, R. J. (2004) The Politics of Internet Communication, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Lane, D. (2004) Berlusconi’s Shadow, London: Allen Lane. Lauria, J. (1999) ‘American Online Frenzy Creates Overnight Billionaires’, Sunday Times,

26 December. Lee-Wright, P., Phillips, A. and Witschge, T. (2011) Changing Journalism, London: Routledge. Lister, R. (2004) Poverty, Cambridge: Policy Press. Livingstone, S. (2010) ‘Interactive, Engaging but Unequal: Critical Conclusions from Internet Studies’, in J. Curran (ed.) Media and Society, 5th edn, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

30 James Curran

Mandel, M. J. and Kunii, I. M. (1999) ‘The Internet Economy: The World’s Next Growth Engine’, BusinessWeek Online, 4 October. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.busi- nessweek.com/1999/99_40/b3649004.htm?scriptFramed> (accessed 2 February 2011).

Marquand, D. (2008) Britain since 1918, London: Phoenix. Moos, J. (2011) ‘The Top 5 News Sites in the United States are. … ’, Poynter Institute. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/128994/ the-top-5-news-sites-in-the-united-states-are/> (accessed 5 August 2011).

Morozov, E. (2011) The Net Delusion, London: Allen Lane. Mosco, V. (2005) The Digital Sublime, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Murdoch, R. (2006) ‘Speech by Rupert Murdoch at the Annual Livery Lecture at the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers’, News Corporation, 3 March. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_285.html> (accessed 1 September 2010).

Negroponte, N. (1995; 1996) Being Digital, rev. edn, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Nel, F. (2010) Laid Off: What Do UK Journalists Do Next? Preston: University of Central Lancashire. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.journalism.co.uk/uploads/laidof freport.pdf> (accessed 20 August 2011).

Nerone, J. (2009) ‘The Death and Rebirth of Working-class Journalism’, Journalism, 10 (3): 353–55.

Nielsen (2011) ‘Media and Information Sites Thrive in Popularity as Consumers Seek the “Real World” on the Web’, Nielsen Press Room. Online. Available HTTP: <http:// www.nielsen.com/uk/en/insights/press-room/2011-news/media_and_information-sites- thrive.html> (accessed 2 August 2011).

Ofcom (2010a) ‘Perceptions of, and Attitudes towards, Television: 2010’, PSB Report 2010 – Information Pack H, 8 July. Online. Available HTTP: <http://stakeholders.of com.org.uk/binaries/broadcast/reviews-investigations/psb-review/psb2010/Perceptions. pdf> (accessed November 2010).

Ofcom (2010b) International Communications Market Report, London: Ofcom. Online. Available HTTP: <http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/753567/icmr/ ICMR_2010.pdf> (accessed 23 August 2011).

Office of Fair Trading (2009) Review of the Local and Regional Media Merger Regime. Online. Available HTTP: http://www.oft.gov.uk/news/press/2009/71–09 (accessed 23 December 2009).

Olmstead, K., Mitchell, A. and Rosenstiel, T. (2011) ‘Navigating News Online’, Pew Research Center, Project for Excellence in Journalism. Online. Available HTTP: <http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1986/navigating-digital-news-environment-audience> (accessed 20 August 2011).

ONS (2008) Internet Access 2008: Households and Individuals, London: Office of National Statistics.

Park, M.-Y., Kim, C.-N. and Sohn, R.-W. (2000) ‘Modernization, Globalization and the Powerful State: The Korean Media’, in J. Curran and M.-Y. Park (eds) De-Westernising Media Studies, London: Routledge.

Perry, B. and Olsson, P. (2009) ‘Cyberhate: The Globalization of Hate’, Information & Communications Technology Law, 18 (2): 185–199.

Pew (2009a) Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, State of the News Media 2009, Pew Research Center Publications, 16 March. Online. Available HTTP: <http:// www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_overview_intro.php?cat=0&media=1> (accessed 10 December 2009).

Reinterpreting the internet 31

——(2009b) ‘Trend Data’, Pew Internet & American Life Project. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Trend-Data/Online-Activities- Daily.aspx> (accessed 2 April 2010).

——(2011) ‘The State of the News Media 2011: An Annual Report on American Jour- nalism’, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Online. Available HTTP: <http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/newspapers-essay/#fn-5162-39> (accessed 20 August 2011).

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2011) ‘Internet Gains on Television as Public’s Main News Source’, 4 January. Online. Available HTTP: <http://pew research.org/pubs/1844/poll-main-source-national-international-news-internet-television- newspapers> (accessed 7 January 2011).

Porter, M. (2008a) On Competition, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. ——(2008b) ‘The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy’, Harvard Business Review, January: 79–93.

Poster, M. (2001)What’s the Matter with the Internet, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Price, R. (1998) ‘Reversing the Gun Sites: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines’, International Organization, 52 (3): 613–44.

Redden, J. and Witschge, T. (2010) ‘A New News Order? Online News Content Examined’, in N. Fenton (ed.) New Media, Old News, London: Sage.

Rodan, G. (2004) Transparency and Authoritarian Rule in Southeast Asia, London: RoutledgeCurzon. Rohlinger, D. and Brown, J. (2008) ‘Democracy, Action and the Internet after 9/11’,

American Behavioral Scientist, 53 (1): 133–50. Ryan, J. (2010) A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, London: Reaktion Books. Sani, A. (2009) The Public Sphere and Media Politics in Malaysia, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Schwartz, E. I. (1994) ‘Power to the People: The Clinton Administration is Using the Net in a Pitched Effort to Perform an End Run Around the Media’, Wired, 1 January. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/whitehouse_pr. html> (accessed 10 January 2010).

Scott, E. (2004) ‘“Big Media” Meets the “Bloggers”: Coverage of Trent Lott’s Remarks at Strom Thurmond’s Birthday Party’, Kennedy School of Government Case Study C14- 04-1731.0, Cambridge, MA: John Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Scott, T. D. (2008) ‘Blogosphere: Presidential Campaign Stories that Failed to Ignite Mainstream Media’, in M. Boler (ed.) Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Simon Wiesenthal Centre (2011) ‘2011 Digital Terrorism and Hate Report Launched at Museum of Tolerance New York’. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.wiesen thal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4441467&ct=9141065> (accessed 8 July 2011).

Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and its Discontents, London: Penguin. Stratton, J. (1997) ‘Cyberspace and the Globalization of Culture’, in D. Porter (ed.) Internet Culture, London: Routledge, 253–76.

Sklair, L. (2002) Globalization, 3rd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slevin, J. (2000) The Internet and Society, Cambridge: Polity. Smith, A., Schlozman, L., Verba, S. and Brady, H. (2009) ‘The Internet and Civic Engagment’, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 1 September Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/15–The-Internet-and-Civic-Engage ment.aspx> (accessed 10 May 2010).

32 James Curran

Smith, P. and Smythe, E. (2004) ‘Globalization, Citizenship and New Information Technologies: from the MAI to Seattle’, in M. Anttiroiko and R. Savolainen (eds) eTransformation in Governance, Hershey, PA: IGI Publishing.

Solaria Sun (2011) ‘Cisco Systems Financial Crisis’, 4 August. Online. Available HTTP: <http://solariasun.com/3521/cisco-systems-financial-crisis/> (accessed 12 August 2011).

Solt, F. (2008) ‘Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement’, American Journal of Political Science, 52 (1): 48–60.

Sutton, L., Smith, N., Deardon, C. and Middleton, S. (2007) ‘A Child’s-eye View of Social Difference’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation: The Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP), Loughborough University. Online. Available: <http://www.jrf.org.uk/ publications/childs-eye-view-social-difference> (accessed 10 January 2011).

Taubman, G. (1998) ‘A Not-so World Wide Web: The Internet, China, and the Challenges to Nondemocratic Rule’, Political Communication, 15: 255–72.

Thompson, D. (2010) ‘The Tea Party Used the Internet to Defeat the Internet President’, The Atlantic, 20 November. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.theatlantic.com/business/ archive/2010/11/the-tea-party-used-the-internet-to-defeat-the-first-internet-president/ 65589/> (accessed 22 August 2011).

Toffler, A. and Toffler, H. (1995) Creating a New Civilization, Atlanta: Turner. Tomlinson, J. (1999) Globalization and Culture, Cambridge: Polity. Torres, R. (2008) ‘World of Work Report 2008: Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization’, International Institute for Labour Studies, International Labour Office, Geneva. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.ilo.org/public/eng- lish/bureau/inst/download/world08.pdf> (accessed 9 December 2010).

Turkle, S. (1995) Life on the Screen, New York: Simon and Schuster. ——(2011) Alone Together, New York: Basic Books. Ugarteche, O. (2007) ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: A Critique of Fraser’, Theory,

Culture and Society, 24 (4): 65–69. Valliere, D. and Peterson, R. (2004) ‘Inflating the Bubble: Examining Investor Behaviour’, Venture Capital, 4 (1): 1–22.

Van Dijk, J. (2005) The Deepening Divide, London: Sage. Volkmer, I. (2003) ‘The Global Network Society and the Global Public Sphere’, Development, 46 (1): 9–16.

Wheale, P. R. and Amin, L. H. (2003) ‘Bursting the Dot.com “Bubble”: A Case Study in Investor Behaviour’, Technological Analysis, 15 (1): 117–36.

Witschge, T., Fenton, N. and Freedman, D. (2010) Protecting the News: Civil Society and the Media, London: Carnegie UK. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.carnegieuktrust. org.uk/getattachment/1598111d-7cbc-471e-98b4-dc4225f38e99/Protecting-the-News– Civil-Society-and-the-Media.aspx> (accessed 9 June 2011).

Woolcock, M. (2008) ‘Global Poverty and Inequality: A Brief Retrospective and Pro- spective Analysis’, Political Quarterly, 79 (1): 183–96.

Worthington, R. (2003) Governance in Singapore, London: RoutledgeCurzon. Wunnava, P. V. and Leiter, D. B. (2009) ‘Determinants of Intercountry Internet Diffusion Rates’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 68 (2): 413–26.

Zickuhr, K. (2010) ‘Generations 2010’, Pew Internet and American Life Project. Washington: Pew Research Centre. Online. Available HTTP: <http://pewinternet. org/Reports/2010/Generations-2010.aspx> (accessed 20 August 2011).

Reinterpreting the internet 33