Jay Rosen: Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized– connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. And now that authority is eroding.
on Jan 13th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
A worthy hypothesis, the next step is to test it. One can review the data from Memeorandum or BlogPulse over the last few years, and find out how many stories the Press led on, followed on, or was absent from.
Of course, defining the Press (“MSM”) is tougher these days. Newspaper blogs and cable news affiliates have the ability to dip their toe into the “deviant” issues. Does this a triumph of the atoms, or their cooptation?
on Jan 13th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Sigh. Meta – If I criticize Jay Rosen’s post, he has the option of personally attacking me from “on high”, where I can’t reply, as he’s done in the past. This ought to show recursively just how much utter blithering nonsense he’s writing about who can “define the sphere of legitimate debate”.