The Medium Vanishes?
Authors: Downes Daniel M. 
Published: October 2020

Introduction
The recent AOL/Time-Warner merger invites us to re-think the
relationships amongst content producers, distributors, and audiences.
Worth an estimated $300 billion (US), the largest Internet transaction of
all time, the deal is 45 times larger than the AOL/Netscape merger of
November 1998 (Ledbetter). Additionally, the Time Warner/EMI merger, which
followed hard on the heels of the AOL/Time-Warner deal and is itself worth
$28 billion (US), created the largest content rights organisation in the
music industry. The joining of the Internet giant (AOL) with what was
already the world's largest media corporation (Time-Warner-EMI) has
inspired some exuberant reactions. An Infoworld column proclaimed:
The AOL/Time-Warner merger signals the demise of traditional media
companies and the ascendancy of 'new economy' media companies that will
force any industry hesitant to adopt a complete electronic-commerce
strategy to rethink and put itself on Internet time. (Saap & Schwarrtz)
This comment identifies the distribution channel as the dominant
component of the "new economy" media. But this might not really be much of
an innovation. Indeed, the assumption of all industry observers is that
Time-Warner will provide broadband distribution (through its extensive
cable holdings) as well as proprietary content for AOL. It is also
expected that Time-Warner will adopt AOL's strategy of seeking sponsorship
for development projects as well as for content. However, both of these
phenomena -- merger and sponsorship -- are at least as old as radio. It
seems that the Internet is merely repeating an old industrial strategy.
Nonetheless, one important difference distinguishes the Internet from
earlier media: its characterisation of the audience. Internet companies
such as AOL and Microsoft tend towards a simple and simplistic media-
centred view of the audience as market. I will show, however, that as the
Internet assumes more of the traditional mass media functions, it will be
forced to adopt a more sophisticated notion of the mass audience.
Indeed, the Internet is currently the site in which audience definitions
borrowed from broadcasting are encountering and merging with definitions
borrowed from marketing. The Internet apparently lends itself to both
models. As a result, definitions of what the Internet does or is, and of
how we should understand the audience, are suitably confused and opaque.
And the behaviour of big Internet players, such as AOL and MSN, perfectly
reflects this confusion as they seem to careen between a view of the
Internet as the new television and a contrasting view of the Internet as
the new shopping mall. Meanwhile, Internet users move in ways that most
observers fail to capture.
For example, Baran and Davis characterise mass communication as a process
involving (1) an organized sender, (2) engaged in the distribution of
messages, (3) directed toward a large audience. They argue that
broadcasting fits this model whereas a LISTSERV does not because, even
though the LISTSERV may have very many subscribers, its content is
filtered through a single person or Webmaster. But why is the Webmaster
suddenly more determining than a network programmer or magazine editor?
The distinction seems to grow out of the Internet's technological
characteristics: it is an interactive pipeline, therefore its use
necessarily excludes the possibility of "broadcasting" which in turn
causes us to reject "traditional" notions of the audience. However, if a
media organisation were to establish an AOL discussion group in order to
promote Warner TV shows, for example, would not the resulting
communication suddenly fall under the definition as set out by Baran and
Davis?
It was precisely the confusion around such definitions that caused the
CRTC (Canada's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator) to hold
hearings in 1999 to determine what kind of medium the Internet is.
Unlike traditional broadcasting, Internet communication does indeed
include the possibility of interactivity and niche communities. In this
sense, it is closer to narrowcasting than to broadcasting even while
maintaining the possibility of broadcasting. Hence, the nature of the
audience using the Internet quickly becomes muddy. While such muddiness
might have led us to sharpen our definitions of the audience, it seems
instead to have led many to focus on the medium itself. For example,
Morris & Ogan define the Internet as a mass medium because it addresses a
mass audience mediated through technology (Morris & Ogan 39). They divide
producers and audiences on the Internet into four groups:

One-to-one asynchronous communication (e-mail);
Many-to-many asynchronous communication (Usenet and News Groups);
One-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many synchronous communication
(topic groups, construction of an object, role-playing games, IRC chats,
chat rooms);
Asynchronous communication (searches, many-to-one, one-to-one, one to-
many, source-receiver relations (Morris & Ogan 42-3)

Thus, some Internet communication qualifies as mass communication while
some does not. However, the focus remains firmly anchored on either the
sender or the medium because the receiver --the audience -- is apparently
too slippery to define.
When definitions do address the content distributed over the Net, they
make a distinction between passive reception and interactive
participation. As the World Wide Web makes pre-packaged content the norm,
the Internet increasingly resembles a traditional mass medium. Timothy
Roscoe argues that the main focus of the World Wide Web is not the
production of content (and, hence, the fulfilment of the Internet's
democratic potential) but rather the presentation of already produced
material: "the dominant activity in relation to the Web is not producing
your own content but surfing for content" (Rosco 680). He concludes that
if the emphasis is on viewing material, the Internet will become a medium
similar to television.
Within media studies, several models of the audience compete for
dominance in the "new media" economy. Denis McQuail recalls how
historically, the electronic media furthered the view of the audience as a
"public". The audience was an aggregate of common interests. With
broadcasting, the electronic audience was delocalised and socially
decomposed (McQuail, Mass 212). According to McQuail, it was not a great
step to move from understanding the audience as a dispersed "public" to
thinking about the audience as itself a market, both for products and as a
commodity to be sold to advertisers. McQuail defines this conception of
the audience as an "aggregate of potential customers with a known social-
economic profile at which a medium or message is directed" (McQuail, Mass
221). Oddly though, in light of the emancipatory claims made for the
Internet, this is precisely the dominant view of the audience in the "new
media economy".
Media Audience as Market
How does the marketing model characterise the relationship between
audience and producer? According to McQuail, the marketing model links
sender and receiver in a cash transaction between producer and consumer
rather than in a communicative relationship between equal interlocutors.
Such a model ignores the relationships amongst consumers. Indeed, neither
the effectiveness of the communication nor the quality of the
communicative experience matters. This model, explicitly calculating and
implicitly manipulative, is characteristically a "view from the media"
(McQuail, Audience 9).
Some scholars, when discussing new media, no longer even refer to
audiences. They speak of users or consumers (Pavick & Dennis). The logic
of the marketing model lies in the changing revenue base for media
industries. Advertising-supported media revenues have been dropping since
the early 1990s while user-supported media such as cable, satellite,
online services, and pay-per-view, have been steadily growing (Pavlik &
Dennis 19). In the Internet-based media landscape, the audience is a
revenue stream and a source of consumer information. As Bill Gates says,
it is all about "eyeballs". In keeping with this view, AOL hopes to
attract consumers with its "one-stop shopping and billing". And Internet
providers such as MSN do not even consider their subscribers as
"audiences". Instead, they work from a consumer model derived from the
computer software industry: individuals make purchases without the seller
providing content or thematising the likely use of the software. The
analogy extends well beyond the transactional moment. The common practice
of prototyping products and beta-testing software requires the
participation of potential customers in the product development cycle not
as a potential audience sharing meanings but as recalcitrant individuals
able to uncover bugs. Hence, media companies like MTV now use the Internet
as a source of sophisticated demographic research. Recently, MTV Asia
established a Website as a marketing tool to collect preferences and
audience profiles (Slater 50). The MTV audience is now part of the product
development cycle. Another method for getting information involves the
"cookie" file that automatically provides a Website with information about
the user who logs on to a site (Pavick & Dennis).
Simultaneously, though, both Microsoft and AOL have consciously shifted
from user-subscription revenues to advertising in an effort to make online
services more like television (Gomery; Darlin). For example, AOL has long
tried to produce content through its own studios to generate sufficiently
heavy traffic on its Internet service in order to garner profitable
advertising fees (Young). However, AOL and Microsoft have had little
success in providing content (Krantz; Manes). In fact, faced with the
AOL/Time-Warner merger, Microsoft declared that it was in the software
rather than the content business (Trott). In short, they are caught
between a broadcasting model and a consumer model and their behaviour is
characteristically erratic.
Similarly, media companies such as Time-Warner have failed to establish
their own portals. Indeed, Time-Warner even abandoned attempts to create
large Websites to compete with other Internet services when it shut down
its Pathfinder site (Egan). Instead it refocussed its Websites so as to
blur the line between pitching products and covering them (Reid; Lyons).
Since one strategy for gaining large audiences is the creation of portals -
- large Websites that keep surfers within the confines of a single
company's site by providing content -- this is the logic behind the
AOL/Time-Warner merger though both companies have clearly been
unsuccessful at precisely such attempts. AOL seems to hope that Time-
Warner will act as its content specialist, providing the type of
compelling material that will make users want to use AOL, whereas Time-
Warner seems to hope that AOL will become its privileged pipeline to the
hearts and minds of untold millions. Neither has a coherent view of the
audience, how it behaves, or should behave. Consequently, their efforts
have a distinctly "unmanaged" and slighly inexplicable air to them, as
though everyone were simultaneously hopeful and clueless.
While one might argue that the stage is set to capitalise on the audience
as commodity, there are indications that the success of such an approach
is far from guaranteed. First, the AOL/Time-Warner/EMI transaction, merely
by existing, has sparked conflicts over proprietary rights. For example,
the Recording Industry Association of America, representing Sony,
Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI, recently launched a $6.8 billion lawsuit
against MP3.com -- an AOL subsidiary -- for alleged copyright violations.
Specifically, MP3.com is being sued for selling digitized music over the
Internet without paying royalties to the record companies (Anderson). A
similar lawsuit has recently been launched over the issue of re-
broadcasting television programs over the Internet. The major US networks
have joined together against Canadian Internet company iCravetv for the
unlawful distribution of content. Both the iCravetv and the MP3.com cases
show how dominant media players can marshal their forces to protect
proprietary rights in both content and distribution.
Since software and media industries have failed to recreate the Internet
in the image of traditional broadcasting, the merger of the dominant
players in each industry makes sense. However, their simultaneous failure
to secure proprietary rights reflects both the competitive nature of the
"new media economy" and the weakness of the marketing view of the
audience.
Media Audience as Public
It is often said that communication produces social cohesion. From such
cohesion communities emerge on which political or social orders can be
constructed. The power of social cohesion and attachment to group symbols
can even create a sense of belonging to a "people" or nation (Deutsch).
Sociologist Daniel Bell described how the mass media helped create an
American culture simply by addressing a large enough audience. He
suggested that on the evening of 7 March 1955, when one out of every two
Americans could see Mary Martin as Peter Pan on television, a kind of
social revolution occurred and a new American public was born. "It was the
first time in history that a single individual was seen and heard at the
same time by such a broad public" (Bell, quoted in Mattelart 72). One
could easily substitute the 1953 World Series or the birth of little Ricky
on I Love Lucy.
The desire to document such a process recurs with the Internet. Internet
communities are based on the assumption that a common experience "creates"
group cohesion (Rheingold; Jones). However, as a mass medium, the Internet
has yet to find its originary moment, that event to which all could
credibly point as the birth of something genuine and meaningful. A recent
contender was the appearance of Paul McCartney at the refurbished Cavern
Club in Liverpool. On Tuesday, 14 December 1999, McCartney played to a
packed club of 300 fans, while another 150,000 watched on an outdoor
screen nearby. MSN arranged to broadcast the concert live over the
Internet. It advertised an anticipated global audience of 500 million.
Unfortunately, there was such heavy Internet traffic that the system was
unable to accommodate more than 3 million people. Servers in the United
Kingdom were so congested that many could only watch the choppy video
stream via an American link.
The concert raises a number of questions about "virtual" events. We can
draw several conclusions about measuring Internet audiences. While 3
million is a sizeable audience for a 20 minute transmission, by
advertising a potential audience of 500 million, MSN showed remarkably
poor judgment of its inherent appeal.
The Internet is the first medium that allows access to unprocessed
material or information about events to be delivered to an audience with
neither the time constraints of broadcast media nor the space limitations
of the traditional press. This is often cited as one of the
characteristics that sets the Internet apart from other media. This feeds
the idea of the Internet audience as a participatory, democratic public.
For example, it is often claimed that the Internet can foster democratic
participation by providing voters with uninterpreted information about
candidates and issues (Selnow). However, as James Curran argues, the very
process of distributing uninterrupted, unfiltered information, at least in
the case of traditional mass media, represents an abdication of a central
democratic function -- that of watchdog to power (Curran). In the end,
publics are created and maintained through active and continuous
participation on the part of communicators and audiences.
The Internet holds together potentially conflicting communicative
relationships within the same technological medium (Merrill & Ogan).
Viewing the audience as co-participant in a communicative relationship
makes more sense than simply focussing on the Internet audience as either
an aggregate of consumers or a passively constructed symbolic public.
Audience as Relationship
Many scholars have shifted attention from the producer to the audience as
an active participant in the communication process (Ang; McQuail,
Audience). Virginia Nightingale goes further to describe the audience as
part of a communicative relationship. Nightingale identifies four factors
in the relationship between audiences and producers that emphasize their
co-dependency. The audience and producer are engaged in a symbiotic
relationship in which consumption and use are necessary but not sufficient
explanations of audience relations. The notion of the audience invokes, at
least potentially, a greater range of activities than simply use or
consumption. Further, the audience actively, if not always consciously,
enters relationships with content producers and the institutions that
govern the creation, distribution and exhibition of content (Nightingale
149-50).
Others have demonstrated how this relationship between audiences and
producers is no longer the one-sided affair characterised by the marketing
model or the model of the audience as public. A global culture is emerging
based on critical viewing skills. Kavoori calls this a reflexive mode born
of an increasing familiarity with the narrative conventions of news and an
awareness of the institutional imperatives of media industries (Kavoori).
Given the sophistication of the emergent global audience, a theory that
reduces new media audiences to a set of consumer preferences or behaviours
will inevitably prove inadequate, just as it has for understanding
audience behavior in old media. Similarly, by ignoring those elements of
audience behavior that will be easily transported to the Web, we run the
risk of idealising the Internet as a medium that will create an illusory,
pre-technological public.
Conclusion
There is an understandable confusion between the two models of the
audience that appear in the examples above. The "new economy" will have
to come to terms with sophisticated audiences. Contrary to IBM's claim
that they want to "get to know all about you", Internet users do not seem
particularly interested in becoming a perpetual source of market
information. The fragmented, autonomous audience resists attempts to lock
it into proprietary relationships.
Internet hypesters talk about creating publics and argue that the
Internet recreates the intimacy of community as a corrective to the
atomisation and alienation characteristic of mass society. This faith in
the power of a medium to create social cohesion recalls the view of the
television audience as a public constructed by the common experience of
watching an important event. However, MSN's McCartney concert indicates
that creating a public from spectacle it is not a simple process. In fact,
what the Internet media conglomerates seem to want more than anything is
to create consumer bases.
Audiences exist for pleasure and by the desire to be entertained. As
Internet media institutions are established, the cynical view of the
audience as a source of consumer behavior and preferences will inevitably
give way, to some extent, to a view of the audience as participant in
communication. Audiences will be seen, as they have been by other media,
as groups whose attention must be courted and rewarded. Who knows, maybe
the AOL/Time-Warner merger might, indeed, signal the new medium's coming
of age.

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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:

Daniel M. Downes. "The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass
Audience in the New Media Economy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture
3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php>.
Chicago style:

Daniel M. Downes, "The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass
Audience in the New Media Economy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3,
no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php> ([your date of access]).
APA style:

Daniel M. Downes. (2000) The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the
Mass Audience in the New Media Economy. M/C: A Journal of Media and
Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php> ([your date of access]).