CYBERMIND CONFERENCE - CURTIN UNIVERSITY 1996

BREAKDOWN LANE:   MEDIA, SOCIAL REALITY AND THE INTERNET

ROB COVER


        Community.   Media.  These two words have an interconnection:
community and media as we know them in the late twentieth century are dependent on each
other at certain levels of existence.   Add Internet to the equation, and we
find that both words have several new levels of meaning, several new
arguments arising as to reality and responsibility.
        In the October issue of the Australian Net Guide, editor Jeremy Horey
stated the three main uses/purposes of the Internet:  information, business
and entertainment.  While these areas are legitimate uses of the Internet
services by the general community, by providing services to the elite
(educated, financially affluent) they are arguably in opposition to
community development and social change, and do little to assist the
development of a global village that crosses ‘class’ and ‘minority’ as much
as national and geographic boundaries.
        In terms of media, Internet has a dual cross-over point.  It is
discussed in the current and traditional media, but it is arguably a new form of media
unto itself.  A radical form.  A form in which the reader, listener,
audience-member has an opportunity to respond, where media becomes more
truly interactive.  Or does it?
        This paper - part-analysis, part-polemic - is meant to serve as an
introduction to the concept of Internet as media and informed by media, and
how that is to make change to the social realities of the late twentieth
century.  Looking first at the media response to the so-called Information
Superhighway, the paper discusses the potential end results of Internet as
independent or controlled media, and then at how such a new phenomenon can
be expected to change, adjust or re-shape society on local and global scales.

DRIVING THE FUTURE:

        The vast majority of my initial research on media response to the
Internet and to Computer technology comes from articles that have appeared over the
past two years in the West Australian newspaper.  There are three reasons
for this, the first being the obvious ease of research for a Perth-based
researcher and reader, the second and far more prominent involves the
interesting query on how the major newspaper of the most isolated capital
city in the world will respond to technology which more than ever allows
contact and communication and connectivity with other distant cities and
with non-urban centres of the region.   And thirdly, a greater degree of
objectivity on Internet discussions can be found away from the Internet.
        Although the national and international media hyped the Internet
bandwagon by chug-a-lugging down the superhighway metaphor, the local Western
Australian media took a less tokenistic view.  They avoided the social and
global change pointers by discussing the Internet in terms of revolution in
the standard household and the business world.
        West Australian Computers editor Nathan Cochrane, discussed in his
weekly column the usefulness of the PointCast news service adding a stock ticker
that tracks US share prices,  and the revolution in software sales now that
software can be paid for by credit card and downloaded from the net;   both
issues described as important for the average casual Internet user.  Other
articles in his pages discussed the various economic and financial
wranglings between the major software providers such as Novell, Microsoft
and Netscape.

        In other reportage, high emphasis is often placed on the Internet
in terms of employment and job prospects.  A state upper house member was reported as
criticising the government failure to connect all schools to the Internet,
stating that those "who were not conversant with the Internet could be
disadvantaged when applying for a job."   The same member took the statement
further, claiming that "the communications revolution as represented by the
Internet looks poised to make a significant contribution to both Australian
commerce and industry."   It is interesting to note that this parliamentary
member comes from a left-wing party, yet looks only to the contribution the
Internet could make to national business and to the employment figures.
        In another article the prospect of the banks using the Internet for
transactions and the belief that the banking industry will be utterly
transformed by new communications technology  adds a certain contrast to the
notion of Internet as promoter of the employment sector.   As Associate
Professor Chris Nash recently pointed out, banks are drastically reducing the number of branches and people are going to be
expected to do their electronic transactions from home.
The motivation for this move, says Nash, is not to improve services but to
cut costs.  And one of those costs is the staffing of branches.
        It is clear that the media analysis of the Internet follows what
Herman and Chomsky pointed out in their Manufacturing Consent: that members of the
traditional media are effectively looking after and discussing the interests
of society’s elites;  in the case of Australia, the controllers of funds and
the large corporate business interests.
        Rarely do media articles discussing the Internet look to an adequate
analysis of the proposed and likely effects of the Internet on social
structures and in the lives of non-commercially interested persons.  At
most, there are the occasional pieces which talk of Internet and computer
technology revolutionising the standard family home.
        But is discussing the media coverage of the Internet of use to an
ongoing analysis of the social response to the new communications technology?
Doubtful.  Professor Nash, in the same article, claims the news coverage of
the Internet is aimed at an informed audience of commercially interested
persons, not at the members of the general public.   The real recipients of
Internet news items are the communications industry and the computer
technology industry - those who need to keep up-to-date with the latest
technological advances and the new commercial applications of the Internet.
The readership of most Internet and computer magazines are expected to have
a certain fluency with and understanding of the current situation of the
Net; other magazines devoted to particular interests use the Internet merely
as a reference for information, a sort of ‘further reading’ list of web
sites and home pages.
        Despite this point, the hype is there, and the expectation of many who
discuss the Internet - academics, television reporters, users - believe the
Internet will revolutionise and restructure society in a very positive way
by severely affecting the means of information retrieval and the standards
in linear thinking patterns.

TRAFFIC

        On the other side of the screen, as it were, the Internet is its
own form of media.  It is a new and revolutionary media in which the audience are not
mere consumers of information but can take and play an active participatory
role in the reception of information.   As with broadcast and print media,
it is the reader or viewer’s responsibility initially to access the sites of
the media in order to receive that information.  If one wishes to remain
blind to the events occurring locally and globally, one avoids early evening
television and does not pick up a newspaper.  The same with the Internet: if
you wish to avoid playing a receptive role in the news chain, then you do
not log on to the net.
        But what happens when one does access the Internet?   Ignoring the
uses of email and Relay Chat, as they find their parallels outside of standard media
traditions but more in societal communication notions such as letter mail,
phone conferencing, café discussions, etc., we will look at the prominence
of web sites and news groups.
        Usenet news groups, although not originally part of the Internet,
are now defined as one of the most popular uses of the Internet, the majority of
users reading and/or taking part in newsgroup discussions.   Conceptually
the news groups are a new system for transferring information from creator
to reader; they allow the receptive role to be played.   The print media has
always allowed reader response in the form of letters to the editor,
broadcast news often conduct phone-in polls so that a viewer response is
possible, but Net newsgroups have finally allowed a reader to respond in
full, in a non-select and often non-moderated environment.  As media, this
is truly revolutionary; newsgroups, as with home pages, allow every
individual to be an electronic orator.
        Are there limitations?  Yes.  The first and most obvious one is who has
access to the Internet?   Most universities provide free access for their
students.  A number of large corporations and businesses will allow, with
time limitations, their staff to use the Internet and may not place
restrictions on newsgroups or web sites.  And many home users have access to
the Net for whatever purpose they have deemed it necessary, the most popular
being entertainment.    But how many persons can and do access the Internet
and thus play a role in this transgressional communications chain?  Perhaps
fewer than is often believed.   In Australia alone the cost of purchasing
computer equipment and connecting as a private user to the net can only be
borne by those on approximately average wages in the mid twenty thousands.
What about, for example, indigenous persons living in rural areas in
Australia?  Can an Aboriginal youth living just out of Meekatharra purchase
or at least access the necessary equipment and read and respond to
information?  It happens but it’s not as easy.  What about people living in
Sarajevo, persons who are starving in Somalia or South America?  Even if the
equipment is available, the costs are greater there than in the
industrialised western urban centres, and there is very little guarantee
that such prospective users will find a nearby Internet service provider.
Global village?  Yeah right.
        The second problem with allowing all members of society to be
recipient-creators of news is the proximity to a city.  In Western
Australia, despite a government commitment to place all state schools
on-line, rural areas have failed to be connected.   A casual user in a rural
district must either dial long-distance and therefore incur greater charges
for use, or do without accessing the Internet.   Thus the presumed news
chain allowing all persons on the planet to be recipient-creators is
discriminatory, and the culture that develops around this chain is merely an
urban one.
        The third barrier is expertise.  Despite the fact that no one with any
grasp on written language should have problems reading and providing
information in news groups, creating and maintaining a web site or setting
up a home page require certain skills and certain knowledge.   Microsoft, in
their profit-based wisdom, provide programs such as MS Frontpage to make the
task easier, but even this assistance has been criticised as requiring
dedication and causing certain frustration.
        There is also a fourth barrier: information.  Presuming that an
individual can overcome the first three hurdles to accessing the net and is capable of
creating a page or responding to newsgroup items, that individual requires
information of interest in order for the chain to be completed.  A creator
or provider of information will be ignored if that information is not
interesting or useful or new or providing insight into some aspect of some
subject.   Generally, the provider or creator of information has the initial
power in the distribution of that information and the limitations of that
distribution.  This is not to suggest that there ought be some level
of information elitism, particularly when one considers the fact that
current information elites have a background in tertiary education. The
recent growth of ethnography as a history sub-discipline is testament to the
fact that historiographically we are moving away from the concept of an
information store which supplies only news and history on and for European
and Northern American peoples.  The scope of the Internet as a store of the
oral histories of non-European cultures is vast.  But who gets to put that
information there?  Who gathers, collates, types, structures, disseminates?
Those with access, and they are generally those with a European or United
States background.  The subjects of such information are not taking part,
therefore, in the media chain, not as providers, not as recipients, but as
removed objectified commodities.
        But why these barriers?   The most obvious reasons have to do with
education and with economics.  It has always been costly to provide the same
services at the same time to rural and underdeveloped regions, whether that
be within Australia or internationally, transport costs being a major
factor.   The global culture is clearly an urban one.    The education
levels necessary for web site creation and maintenance will eventually peter
through to a younger generation who will have, from birth, known and taken
for granted the Internet.  Again, however, the education will depend on the
proximity to urban centres, the standards of education of the nation in
which such an individual is brought up and, of course, the financial and
economic factors that have always been connected with quality of education.

        So much for the Internet being open access to all.   When discussing the
Internet as media there is a parallel argument, a parallel problem, and a
discernible future for Internet as news and information medium.  The
background for this comes from the existing traditional media: print and
broadcast.
        Newspapers were first distinguishable from handbills, pamphlets and
newsletters about two hundred years after the invention of printing.   By
the early twentieth century, newspapers were generally organised as
professional and bureaucratic in form.    Commercially run newspapers are
able to maintain wide distribution, reliant on advertisers’ funds, and
clearly supersede alternative and political media in terms of
professionalism and distribution.  While political print is in decline
throughout much of the developed world, the Internet has been occasionally
hailed as the new access to an alternative.    As with print media,
broadcast media has gone from something which was clearly a community and
public project to a commercial one.  Gaining advertiser’s funds is the main
purpose for the commercial radio stations and television networks.   What
began as a community project is now clearly very commercial, while at the
same time community television organisations struggle for funding and for
survival.
        Herman and Chomsky identified four limitations on media which
dis-allow a truly free and unbiased media system: the limitation on ownership of media
on grounds of cost and governmental restrictions on the number of media
outlets,  the economic viability of commercial media through its access to
advertising funds,  the ability of large media organisations to adequately
organise the sourcing of news and information,  and finally the ability of
individuals and institutions with affluence and resources to create flak
towards unfriendly media outlets.
        Given that these restrictions create a mass-media system which does not
allow the general and fringe communities to have an adequate public voice
via print and broadcast, the Internet is the supposed solution to all of
these problems.   However, as has already been stated, the cost and other
necessities of Internet access marginalise individuals and minorities, and
fail to allow global, inclusive access to information and to voice.
        Further, what is the future of the Internet as information medium?  The
Marxian view on media in general is a negative one: Marx identified the
print media as styled on capitalist industry, information as raw material,
the requirement of technology and labour; the relations of production, all
under the rule of a capital-owning class.    More recent Marxian analysts
have added to the negative image of media.  Althusser identified the media
as legitimating the dominance of a capitalist hegemony and the subordination
of the working class by the process of ideological socialisation.   In the
case of the Internet, the Marxist view falls apart - the Internet is not
formally owned nor operated directly by a societal elite.   On the other
hand, Professor Nash has put forward the view that eventual government
regulation and intervention will allow the Net to be controlled by a duopoly
of government and large commercial organisations.   The traditional owners
and controllers of media.  The analyses I have already given based on
newspaper discussions of the Internet point towards the on-set of these
controls.  So too do the attempts by governments to censor the Internet
against pornography (and it should be noted that the same has occurred in
every other medium - an infiltration by the pornographic industries, and
government regulations to restrict that infiltration).  And of course once a
system which adequately censors is in place, restrictions of other material
is not only possible, but highly plausible.   On IRC a channel operator has
a police and censorship role - an ‘op’ can kick off an obnoxious or nuisance
user,  perhaps a user who promotes views with which the channel operator
does not agree.  And there is always the constraint of self-censorship,
which, as Chomsky pointed out is conducted by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media
organisational requirements and by people at higher levels within media
organisations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalised,
the constrains imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental
centres of power.
The Internet in those circumstances will not be a free and unrestricted
alternative medium for the flow of interactive information, however limited
the numbers of players in that medium are.

SIDEWALKS:

        Social reality and the Internet.  How does one discuss realities in
relation to a phenomenon that can be described as a bubble of virtuality.
As Dean Kiley put it in his almost-novel, and that’s final,
I come rushing back to my self, my body, in this chair here now with all its
virtual realness and uncomforting specificity.  1, 2, 3, 4, 5  my bearings
missing   6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11  depressurising-diver bends    12, 13, 14, 15,
16   as I return from four-dimensional space to two-dimensional place   17
and my one-sided life.  Computer, lamp, coffee mug-   yep, I live here.
Sigh.  :(
What this points out is the sometimes sad fact many of us are familiar with.
We have to log off, exit, shut down.  No individual can exist within the
Internet alone.  A user must log off and return to the community that exists
virtually here, virtually really truly tangible.    Reality.

CLASS-
        Part of that reality is a social system which discriminates on the
basis of class and financial affluence.  Although this concept is not agreed upon by
all, we will take it as a given for the point of this exercise.  How does
the Internet relate to the reality of a global class-structured society?
        Taking a Marxist point of view on the destruction of class structure, we
know that the only means towards that goal is through a collectivised unity
of the proletariat, the working class.   As we have already argued, the
less-affluent are not able to access or benefit from the Internet on grounds
of requiring education and good financial stability.  So the lower classes
and the under classes are not being enriched by the Internet’s existence.
Instead, they are in a position to be detrimentally further oppressed as a
result of the way the Internet forms a community.   It might be valuable to
mention at this point that while we sit here discussing the Internet in
terms of the whole of humanity, about half of the population on the planet
are yet to make their first telephone call.           In the terms of the
media future of the Internet as we have just discussed, John Sutton pointed
out recently that class consciousness is no longer prevalent as it once was…the media’s
rampant, individualist ethos has a lot to do with this…
He furthered this notion by stating that people who would once have drawn
collectivist ideas from, say, a political party’s branch meeting are now
more likely to sit at home in front of a television, video recorder or computer:
the fact that the ruling class more than ever controls the means of
communications and ideas means they will always perpetuate the idea that…it
is the individual who is important…
Without that ability to collect and organise, the Marxist project of ending
oppression of the working class is unlikely to occur, and it seems
Althusser’s ideological socialisation was correct in terms of the media.
Instead of assisting the oppressed, the Internet, which breaks the global
and geographic boundaries for those affluent enough to gain access, allows a
collectivisation at the level of the ruling and bourgeois classes. A United
Nations Human Development Programme report, released in July 1996, points to
a rather alarming gap between the affluent and the poor.   Responsible for
putting the report together, programme administrator James Speth, stated
that the gap is widening rapidly, and that an emerging global elite, mostly urban-based and interconnected in a variety
of ways is amassing great wealth and power, while more than half of humanity
is left out.
That inter-connection is not just aided, but promoted by the Internet.   The
educated and financially affluent world-wide are drawn closer together, able
to use the Internet for closer contact.  The global village is thus really a
township of oppressors with (purportedly) common interests in further
marginalising and oppressing those who cannot join the Internet club.


MINORITY-
A more interesting argument arises from the concept of other minorities and
relations with the Internet.  One area of particular importance is how
minorities of race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity are affected by the
Internet.  In an article dealing with community and social issues observed
through Internet Relay Chat or IRC, Elizabeth Reid stated that IRC allows
users to transgress the gender boundaries by actually switching gender while
chatting.    This allows a unique and important opportunity for transgender
persons to behave as members of the sex they are not while avoiding the
complex and difficult procedures of gender reassignment operations.  In
other cases, users can hide their physical appearance, lose a few kilos, cut
a decade from their physical age, be white-skinned not black, lose their
Asiatic features or gain them.   While these transgressional opportunities
might be useful, amusing or even necessary to certain individual users, such
acts are retrogressive in terms of defeating racism, agism, sexism and other
forms of discrimination.  Such users are obeying the dominant hegemonic
attitudes of the influential Western culture by agreeing to pretend.  While
the term ‘closet’ is most often used when discussing openness about both
sexuality and alcoholism, IRC allows a new closet to develop for those who
fear discriminatory attacks and thus hide whatever feature or aspect of
their lives against which they would normally be discriminated.
Another minority that is easily and detrimentally affected by the Internet
is that of those persons who do not identify or socialise their lives on the
basis of the standard family structure.    Several service providers have
been promoting and selling on the basis of Internet being a product for "the
whole family" - referring chiefly to the western style nuclear family.
While in itself the ‘family’ is perceived as an acceptable social construct,
the rampant sale of computers marketed to ‘family’ is not breaking any
boundaries nor is it promoting the wholesale acceptance of those community
members who do not wish to exist in a standardised nuclear family lifestyle.

END OF THE ROAD?

So how can the Internet be made socially aware?  What can be done to allow
the Internet to remain unfettered by the constraints that have struck every
previous form of media?   As usual it comes down to the fact that very
little can be done on the Net for these purposes, other than maintaining it
as a freely communicative device, keeping the blindfolds of censorship away,
and maintaining the purpose of the Internet as an educational tool and
entertainment activity.  Corporate businesses’ involvement on the Internet
should be maintained at the level of general community members, ie. that
they do not own, run, influence the Internet, that they do not use it as an
advertising medium, that they restrict their involvement - as businesses -
to the use of email and to being non-interactive recipients of information.
As for the other constraints on the Internet as a socially developing tool,
the changes must be made away from the Internet.  Perhaps the geographical
inter-connectivity of the medium will be useful in promoting greater global
awareness of the less-affluent, particularly in the developing nations.
Unlikely given the class status of those currently involved in the
creative-recipient process, though it is plausible that ideological changes
can occur through greater and more freely shared information.
The drawbacks that I have set out for the future of the Internet need not
occur, but it is a necessity that those who want to maintain a freely
accessible, non-commercial information medium push and struggle against the
increasing commodification and commercialisation of the Internet, and become
aware of the current discriminatory and oppressive aspects of that medium.


ENDNOTES:

   West Australian Newspapers (hereinafter abbreviated to WAN), 17.09.96, p. 53.
   WAN, 05.11.96, p. 52.
   WAN, 29.10.96, p. 49.
   WAN, 23.03.96, p. 38.
   Ibid.
   Sunday Times, 17.03.96, p. 51.
   as cited by L. Hopkins, ‘Utopia or Dystopia: What Price the Net?’ The
Australian Net Guide, No. 7, September 1996, p. 74.
   E.S. Herman, & N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, New York: Pantheon
Books, 1988, p. 2.
  ???
   Hopkins, op. cit., p. 72.
   Falk, B., The Internet Roadmap, Sybex, 3rd Edition, 1996, pp. 160-2.
   J. Horey, The Australian Net Guide, No. 8, October 1996, p. 2.
   WAN, 23.03.96, p. 38.
   WAN, 30.04.96, p. 54.
  G. Kress, Communication and Culture: An Introduction, Kensington: New
South Wales University Press, 1988, p. 13.
   McQuail, D., Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction, 1983, 3rd ed.
London, 1994, p. 13.
   Ibid., p. 12.
   Herman and Chomsky, op. cit., p. 4, 6.
   Ibid., p. 14.
   Ibid., p. 18.
   Ibid., pp. 26-7.
    McQuail, op. cit., p. 76.
    Ibid., pp. 76-8.
    Hopkins, op. cit., p. 72.
    E. Reid, ‘Electronic Chat: Social Issues on Internet Relay Chat’, Media
Information Australia, no. 67, Feb 1993, p. 68.
    Herman & Chomsky, op. cit., p. xii.
    D. Kiley, and that’s final…, Sydney: BlackWattle Press, 1995.
    Hopkins, op. cit., p. 77.
    R. Neill, ‘What Does Working Class Mean Now?’, The Australian Magazine,
July 27-8, 1996.
    Ibid.
    WAN, 18.07.96, p. 43.
    E. Reid, op. cit.
    WAN, 01.05.96, p. 29.
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