This article examines the dynamics of domestic video-on-demand (VoD) platforms in Brazil. While global streaming giants increasingly dominate the market, local platforms continue to emerge in response to specific cultural and economic contexts. Building on sectoral data and a qualitative case study, the paper analyses the strategies adopted by a local service called Filme Filme, seeking to compete with global players through curation, audience engagement and innovative features such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and gamification. Despite these efforts, Filme Filme ultimately ceased operations after four years of its launch, revealing the structural barriers that constrain the growth of domestic platforms in highly concentrated markets. By situating this case within the broader debate on platformization and the industrial organization of cultural industries, the study offers insight into the challenges of sustaining local streaming initiatives in emerging economies and discusses implications for public policy aimed at promoting digital sovereignty and cultural diversity.
Abstract This article advances the literature on media effects by examining how contrasting partisan narratives influence support for regulation after a real-world corporate scandal. Using both multi-wave observational and randomized experimental data, we show that self-selected media exposure and experimentally assigned information shape public opinion in distinct ways. While scandals are narratives of regulatory failure, partisan media environments differently attribute blame for that failure. In two separate observational waves, only Democrats exposed to news about the FTX bankruptcy increased their support for crypto regulation. In the experiment, only Republicans shifted in favor of regulation. Research on media effects needs to take into account not only media content, but also the partisan information environments that expose citizens to that content.
Katja Leifheit, Judith Pies, Hilde Van den Bulck, Alessandro D’Arma · 8 authors
This article presents a quality assessment of Web3 coverage in mainstream media across four European countries—Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom—as a starting point for discussing the standards of technology journalism that can meaningfully support an informed public. It begins with an overview of existing research on technology journalism and its role in fostering informed citizenry. This is followed by a mixed-methods content analysis, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, to examine how the complex topic of Web3 is reported in the four European countries. Insights from journalists and editors contextualize the analysis. The findings highlight three key challenges across all countries: an event-driven rather than process-oriented focus, a narrow thematic scope on the financial applications of Web3 technology (cryptocurrencies), and a relatively limited diversity of sources. The article concludes by exploring how these challenges—and the broader trends in Web3 reporting—shed light on the potential and pitfalls of technology journalism in contemporary societies.
This study examines the representation and evaluation of Web3 technology in the German music media from 2016 to 2022, focusing on its prevalence, framing, and acceptance in the context of the music sector. Utilizing framing theory and the Technology Acceptance Model, a quantitative content analysis was conducted on articles from various music magazines. The findings indicate a generally positive portrayal of Web3, with significant discussion peaks in 2019, 2021, and 2022. Notably, no coverage was found in music education magazines, suggesting a gap in Web3 engagement in pedagogy. Much of the coverage was in Musikwoche, highlighting Web3’s impact on business aspects like ticketing, copyright, and licensing. The overall positive depiction, juxtaposed with limited critical evaluation, points to the need for a more nuanced discourse. The study underscores implications for balanced media coverage, informed musician engagement with Web3, and the potential for incorporating this technology in music education. It highlights the importance for the music industry of capitalizing on Web3’s positive aspects while practising critical awareness, and it calls for further research to explore the depth of Web3’s influence in music.
The study focused on the discourses on cryptocurrency in national and international news articles. This study utilized a complementary research design to examine cryptocurrency's framing strategies, linguistic features, and ideologies. This study analyzed 50 news articles from leading National and International News outlets published from February 1, 2024, to June 15, 2024. Results revealed that economic consequence and conflict framing were dominant frames. Compounding and Derivation were common linguistic features, while clipping was evident in international news narratives. Moreover, no significant differences were found in economic consequence, conflict, and morality frames. However, there was a significant difference in the attribution of responsibility and human-interest frames. Moreover, there were no significant differences in compounding derivation, initialism, and acronym. However, there was a significant difference on clipping in linguistic features. The ideologies reflected habitus, field, capital, and doxa. Media and technology literacy and political preferences represent the Habitus. While the fields were government regulatory and cryptocurrency exchanges. Economic capital as Central Digital Currency and Bitcoin Etf. Social capital featured politically corrupt figures and influential individuals. Cultural capital represents the digital skills organization and educational background of individuals. The decentralized finance and Blockchain are represented as Doxa. KEYWORDS: Education, applied linguistics, framing strategies, linguistic features, cryptocurrency, Philippines
From the emergence of the printing press to the dominance of online games, the technology of communication has shaped what we communicate and how we communicate. This chapter explores the evolution of communication including the printing press, motion picture, television, and the internet. It explores how each new medium influenced society and informed the social structures of society. For example, although online communities promote user participation, they operate with only a small active core, which has given rise to the influencer economy. As the public seeks alternatives to corporate-controlled social media platforms, the potential of Web3 to democratize the online environment is far from certain.
The DeFi (decentralized finance) platforms that are coming up present a ground breaking chance in the crypto world. Here the analysis is based on ApexWolf, an Ethereum-only crypto exchange, and its collaboration with DeFi protocols. The system's evaluation uses a methodology that combines user feedback and transaction simulation to assess the security measures, features, and usability. Results are the proof of fast transaction execution, competitive costs, and the positive feedback from the users. The ApexWolf project despite the intrinsic blockchain limitations demonstrates great potential in supporting users to interact in a decentralized finance system. The study provides knowledge about the transformation process of cryptocurrency exchanges and DeFi platforms presenting both opportunities and difficulties for future development and widespread use.
Kobe De Keere, Martin Broholt Trans, Stefanía Milan
In less than two decades, cryptocurrency has transformed from being an object of interest for an obscure online community to becoming a globally desired digital asset. By acknowledging the importance of fictional expectations in the creation of economic value, this study delves into the various imaginative values that are being attributed to cryptocurrency. Through quantitative-qualitative coding of YouTube video transcripts (N: 1929), combined with Exploratory Factor Analysis, this article maps out which imaginaries on crypto are being disseminated by the YouTube algorithm. The latter is conceived not as a passive source of information but as a performative market device, steering consumer behavior. This study identifies four distinct imaginaries to which cryptocurrency consumers are exposed: investment, utility, digital metallism, and infrastructural mutualism imaginary. These shed light on the potential value consumers attribute to cryptocurrencies while opening new research avenues towards a better understanding of the different positions within the market.
This paper examines the rhetorical power of leadership speech in influencing cryptocurrency adoption. Leaders can use persuasive language to sway investment decisions. A leader’s rhetoric holds significant clout in shaping public interaction with cryptocurrencies, although many only recognized Bitcoin’s necessity after the 2020 pandemic. Lacan’s theory of effects and linguistic populism provides theoretical frameworks for understanding how leadership rhetoric psychologically affects decisions to invest in cryptocurrencies and which linguistic devices are most influential. Specifically, the analysis focuses on phrases in tweets from 2018-2022 to uncover the hyperbolic statements and emerging language themes used to portray cryptocurrencies and blockchain as transformative technologies poised to disrupt monetary policy. Ultimately, the findings suggest that presidents and leaders leverage such rhetorical devices to wield political power in the cryptocurrency era.
Kevin K.W. Ho, Dickson K.W. Chiu, C. H. Au, Francis Dalisay · 6 authors
This position article summarizes the panelists’ presentations and discussions at the panel “Fake News, Misinformation, and Privacy: How COVID-19 Pandemic Changed Our Society,” held at the 15th International Conference on Information Resources Management (Conf-IRM 2022) on October 18, 2022. The panel discussed their views on (1) how to stop the spreading of health misinformation; (2) how information sources affect online health information behavior; (3) how news literacy increases people's desire to seek out information by increasing their skepticism; and (4) how political beliefs, trust, and privacy concerns affect people's decisions during COVID-19. This article also discusses how blockchain and distributed ledger technologies can help tackle the fake news and misinformation problem.
In this study, I examine how an online cryptocurrency community discusses the issue of climate change. In particular, I examine distinctive themes present within discussions that occur on the r/CryptoCurrency forum hosted by reddit.com. Existing research has demonstrated that there are significant carbon emissions linked to cryptocurrency. However, cryptocurrency primarily exists as a peer-to-peer system, meaning that the individual perceptions of cryptocurrency adopters may provide insight into how to address the emissions problem. Using latent Dirichlet allocation and publicly available textual data from Reddit, I find that Reddit's cryptocurrency community engages in robust discussions pertaining to the energy needed to power cryptocurrency systems, most of which is generated from fossil fuels. Therefore, the discussions identified in this study suggest that the social aspect of cryptocurrency may be important when examining the links between cryptocurrency and climate change since they help identify what subjects related to climate change are important for this community.
This paper quantifies mainstream media coverage of Bitcoin to understand how a once niche interest entered public culture. From 2011 to 2022, five key narratives are identified as criminality, culture, politics, price and technology. Price, politics, and culture have become more prominent in coverage while the technology narrative has waned. Coverage that is more political or cultural is associated with subsequently lower returns whereas the criminality narrative is associated with higher returns. Together this suggests that as narratives have become more mainstream, they have created additional demand, despite the negative association with criminal activity.
Within the social sciences, there is growing interest in the ways in which cryptocurrencies are shaping interactions. The major approaches have been economic, sociological, legal, and technological...
Readers—collections comprised mainly of previously published scholarship—are by design a mixed bag. They stake out fields or topics established enough to merit targeted collections of foundational texts and attempt to be representative but not comprehensive. Their appeal is to accessibility—grounding the initiate and appeasing the seasoned scholar. To that end, most of us automatically assume that “readers” are for students. We look to them as a way to anchor an undergraduate survey course. Maybe we suggest one to a graduate student who needs a quick primer or refresher. For scholars, however, readers rarely provide more than casual strolls along well-worn paths. This is not the case, however, with Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz's Comedy Studies Reader, an expertly conceived collection that proves both familiar and new.Comedy studies is a patchwork field, composed of scholars from a range of disciplines, including (but certainly not limited to) literature, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, media studies, communications, rhetoric, and anthropology. It's a field born of nagging questions. Why do we laugh? Why do we laugh at things we probably shouldn't? A “comedy studies reader,” then, might prove more valuable than a generic reader. A comedy studies reader might provide a useful snapshot of a multifarious field. It might serve as a mission statement or a foundational testament. It might even serve ontological necessity. Marx and Sienkiewicz's collection doesn't lay claim to any of these, exactly. Instead, it “serves as a call to expand both the scope of comedic media that scholars and students consider and the tools they use to do so” (13). The collection “offers an opportunity to consider comedy as both a theoretical concept and a commercial product, while illustrating the ways in which these things are inevitably intertwined” (6). These statements of purpose reveal the editors' disciplinary homes (media studies and communication) and evince the book's preoccupation with film and television comedy (each chapter begins with an epigraph formatted as a film or television script). Although the text does, as its editors claim, probe “the history of Western thought about comedy, joking, and humor, in order to encourage its reexamination in the classroom,” the focus on comedy's commercial aspects tips the collection's hat more toward media studies than any of the other disciplines under the comedy studies umbrella (14). That said, it would be a mistake for us to consign the collection to media studies.The Comedy Studies Reader is expertly ordered. It consists of a clearly articulated (and accessibly written) introduction followed by eight chapters centered on key concepts. Each chapter has its own short introduction from the editors, excerpts from seminal authors, and essays that exemplify how “contemporary scholars have applied comedy theory to media texts” (15). Finally, each chapter includes a new essay that builds on the preceding materials. It is in these new essays that The Comedy Studies Reader achieves its most salient purpose. Students can take note of the scaffolding, how arguments are introduced, synthesized, and built; they can use the theoretical excerpts as foundations for further exploration, the representative and new essays serving as models. Scholars familiar with the theoretical frames, however, can find inspiration in the new essays. We can revisit old concepts in search of nuance and discover unexplored angles worth pursuing.Marx and Sienkiewicz begin chapter 1 with an excerpt by Mikhail Bakhtin, “The Carnivalesque,” which seems to suggest that the Russian philosopher and literary critic serves as an appropriate starting point for comedy studies theory. A contestable point, maybe. However, the Bakhtin excerpt is followed by Umberto Eco's “The Frames of Comic ‘Freedom,’” which both complicates (dismantles) and extends Bakhtin's position. “From antiquity to Freud or Bergson,” Eco writes, “every attempt to define comic seems to be jeopardized by the fact that this is an umbrella term … that gathers together a disturbing ensemble of diverse and not completely homogeneous phenomena, such as humor, comedy, grotesque, parody, satire, wit, and so on” (25). Reading this—after Bakhtin—alerts us to the constraints and affordances of comedy studies as a field. It puts us in a position to critically consider and thoughtfully engage all that is gathered under the umbrella of The Comedy Studies Reader. What we are in for, then, is not a chronological walkthrough of the tenets of comedy studies; rather, we are invited to consider how the diverse ensemble of not-so-homogeneous phenomena might usefully connect and overlap. The new essay, by Philp Scepanski, concludes the chapter by invoking Bakhtin. Scepanski's essay takes as its object of study the “notoriously base, self-consciously offensive, and largely critically reviled” animated sitcom Family Guy and mines the controversial text for answers to how irreverent comedy can provide us with “a better sense of how American comedy and culture respond to collective trauma in our time” (34). The essay serves as proof positive of the kind of scholarship Marx and Sienkiewicz invite us to engage with and produce.After Eco's citation of Freud and Bergson, it should come as no surprise that the central figures of the next two chapters are Henri Bergson (chapter 2, “Comedy Mechanics and Absurdity”) and Sigmund Freud (chapter 3, “Psychoanalyzing Comedy”). Chapter 2 pairs Bergson with an excerpt from Jerry Palmer's The Logic of the Absurd (1987) and Donald Crafton's 1995 piece on slapstick, “Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle, and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy.” These three foundational pieces lead to a truly fascinating essay by Evan Elkins on the shocking, antitalk show The Eric André Show. Elkins builds on Bergson and Palmer, as well as Bakhtin, exploring how the narrow-casting logic of postnetwork American television is drawing us into “darker, more absurd, aggressive, and avant-garde forms of comedy” (59). Chapter 3 begins with excerpts from Freud before presenting us with Paul Flaig's 2011 essay “Lacan's Harpo,” which proves a thorny though revelatory exploration of how Harpo Marx's absurdist comedy dissolves the arbitrary boundary between the symbolic and the real. Flaig's heady piece is followed by an essay from Andrew J. Owens who considers a much less controversial text than either Scepanski and Elkins do, opting to explore through a psychoanalytic approach CBS's extremely popular, though decidedly middle-brow, Big Bang Theory.For the most part, the remaining chapters cover expected but necessary bases: irony (chapter 4), genre (chapter 5), race and ethnicity (chapter 6), gender and sexuality (chapter 7), and nation and globalization (chapter 8). Like the first three chapters, each of the remaining chapters includes excellent texts that serve as foundations for the essays that follow. This review risks minimizing the value of these later chapters by not fully explicating them—something I am loathe to do, as the works collected here are just as strong as those in earlier chapters. What becomes clear as one navigates through The Comedy Studies Reader is that the dynamics of the field (comedy studies) make for wildly diverse, infinitely generative scholarship that has clear and useful connections across its myriad interests and domains. I'll confess that early on, I expected to skip through the chapters, reading only those essays whose titles piqued my interest. Yet with each chapter I found myself deeply invested in how all the pieces fit together—and before I knew it, I'd read the entire collection cover to cover, marking many of the selections with notes for work I hope to pursue in the near future.The Comedy Studies Reader meets its claim to be a wide-ranging introduction to comedy studies aimed at both scholars and students. While a majority of the primer is housed in media studies, this is not a bad thing. Marx and Sienkiewicz's selections and organization invite cross- disciplinary dialogue across issues that concern scholars of all fields. For instance, in chapter 5, we find ourselves reading about the features of the television sitcom. In the included excerpt from Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik's Popular Film and Television Comedy, amid discussion of shows like M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, we are met with a reference to Freud. In itself, this is not surprising, as recourse to Freud is part of comedy studies' DNA, but for the reader of the collection it triggers recall of earlier excerpts; it invites backward glances to how the themes and goals of earlier chapters, though occasionally embroiled in generic, disciplinary features, easily build on and influence each other. Owens's essay on The Big Bang Theory, included in the psychoanalysis chapter (3), can be pulled forward and considered in terms of genre (chapter 5). Ji Hoon Park, Nadine G. Gabbadon, and Ariel R. Chernin's essay on Rush Hour 2 (chapter 6, “Race and Ethnicity”) hearkens back to chapter 4 (“Irony”) and the excerpt from Linda Hutcheon. Alfred L. Martin Jr.'s essay (“Generic Closets: Sitcoms, Audiences, and Black Male Gayness”) from chapter 7 (“Gender and Sexuality”) connects to chapters 4 and 6, and the excerpt from Andy Medhurst's A National Joke, included in the book's final chapter, brings us full circle, recalling Bakhtin and Eco. So while there are those of us who might have liked a more wide-ranging selection of comedic texts (Medhurst's piece is the only one to really address stand-up comedy, for instance), The Comedy Studies Reader expertly follows through on its promise for scholars—providing a clear invitation to play, to revisit old streets and explore new territories under the sheltering sky of comedy studies.
The new media occupies a wide range of different areas of our daily lives, one of that is the question of national identity and culture. If we focus on the development of the new media and the Internet, we will find that there are many questions and concerns about the Kurdish identity and its culture have come into being, with this development, ringing like bells of dangers, want to alert the media, educational and cultural institutions to do more scientific efforts to study those fears.
This bachelor thesis examines the language of cryptocurrencies in selected articles from traditional news covering websites and cryptocurrency-focused news covering websites. The thesis is divided into two parts, theoretical and analytical part. The theoretical part serves as an introduction to cryptocurrencies, jargon, word-formation processes and online journalism. The analytical part focuses on the analysis of the selected cryptocurrency-specific terms with the intention of identifying their origin, productivity in creating new words and ability to collocate.
Bitcoin is difficult to categorize and indeed has been associated with 112 different labels in the British media (e.g., “private money,” “commodity”) – most of which poorly describe bitcoin. Specifically, our analyses of 674 media articles, focusing on the relationship between labeling and categorization, identify classification inconsistencies at three levels: within clusters of labels, between labels and categories, and between category attributes. These inconsistencies hamper categorization based on attribute similarity, audience goals, and causal models, respectively. We identify four factors that nurture this categorical anarchy and conclude with a call for research on the socioeconomic revolution heralded by blockchain technology.
This paper is focused on the role of main social activities, as creating and sharing personal content. The reason is connected to the raise up, in last ten years, of User Generated Content as a system to allow people to be active on the Web3. In the first paragraph I analyze the Web-population through recent surveys, showing different ways to classify generations. I comment the Jenkins’ “convergence culture” [2006], the push and pull media definition of Negroponte [1995] and the difference between digital natives and digital immigrants [Prensky 2001]. The second paragraph deals with use and consumption of digital media between young and adults from the computer use to mobile-phone and portable gaming device. In particular the mobile-phone seems to be an important medium to be online in every place and every time: it allows people to take and share photos, video, text and so on. This brings us to the third paragraph where I discuss mobility and applications: following Anderson [2010] the desktop is replaced with the webtop or web-applications that do not require a browser to be used. This is particularly evident for recent mobile devices as iPhone and iPad. Convergence and mobility allow people to share content in every time: yet ten years ago people used to share digital information (file-sharing) as video, music and text, by illegal channels such as Napster, without knowing who uploaded that on the Web. The Web 1.0 phase was characterized by an “anonymous dimension”. Instead, the current Web allows people to share information about their own life, publishing on social media, freely, their own photo, video, text, with real name and surname (life-sharing). At the center of the Web is the “ego”, the user. In the fifth chapter I analyze three social media that are currently catching up people’s attention Facebook, YouTube, Twitter – and I try to explain how they make possible to users to share culture and frame of their life. At the end I spent some words about piracy and privacy issue that social media bring up.
“It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, for education, to be drowned in advertising chatter.” So spoke Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1922 commenting upon the uses to which the new broadcasting medium radio might be put. Today computer-mediated communication similarly is in its early stages of development and much the same thing is being said by early users of the Internet, that global interconnection of networks that offers great promise for the future. The onslaught of commercial activity threatens the vitality and nature of this new mode of communication. Given the momentum behind such commercialization, and the enormous public benefits at risk, the implications of current and future commercialization demand immediate exploration. The way a new communication medium develops and evolves is a complex process that includes technological, social, economic, and regulatory forces. These forces interact, pushing and pulling an innovation into obsolescence or maturity. In the United States, this interaction is strongly influenced by a media philosophy which favors private ownership and commercial exploitation. The development of U.S. media, therefore, is not completely unpredictable, as the process is controlled by profit-driven entities with predictable objectives and desires. Although individual media are unique and their fate not ultimately predetermined, this reliance upon commercialization and privatization helps direct U.S. media down a very specific path. Computer-mediated communication is the latest communication medium to enter this process of development. In the United States, the Internet is no longer the sole domain of an elite group of researchers and scientists. The Internet has attracted great interest in the private sector. It is now widely employed by profit-driven organizations as yet another tool of commerce. The commercial applications of the Internet continue to multiply as corporations and individuals in the pursuit of profits have found new ways to sell, market, promote and advertise goods and services via the Internet. Given the rapid expansion and significance of this recent commercialization, there are some important issues that require immediate exploration: What might be the effect of this growing commercialization? How will it impact the development and direction of the Internet? Can the Internet be protected against the possible negative effects of excessive commercialization? Will computer-mediated communication follow the well-traveled path of previous media or is it somehow inherently or fundamentally different? If overcommercialization refers to a situation where the primary usage of a medium heavily favors the private interests of profit-driven corporations, to what degree will that situation obtain for the Internet? This article addresses these questions and finds both reason for concern and cause for action. If proactive measures are taken fairly soon, many of the negative consequences of over-commercialization may be avoided. This essay concludes with a set of suggested policies and safeguards which would alleviate some of the negative impacts. These safeguards would serve to protect the integrity of the online communications, and help ensure that unprofitable yet important and beneficial uses of this new form of communication do not get “drowned in advertising chatter.” Unlike many nations, the media philosophy in the United States reflects a long standing belief that “the media” and “the government” should remain distinct. Moreover, private ownership of media outlets is reflective of an economic philosophy favoring free enterprise. Although there exists a system of public broadcasting, it is fragile, constantly under attack, and increasingly dependent upon private-sector funding. Thus media in the United States are almost exclusively privately owned and controlled. This reliance upon private ownership and free enterprise is also based upon a belief that competition in the media industries will produce a diversity of resources and information – a marketplace of ideas. This objective is frequently compromised, however, as media organizations tend to eliminate competition through consolidation and mergers to achieve greater economic efficiency. When a medium is young, there are many small, independent players. As it matures, there is increasing consolidation. Historically, such concentration has been followed by government antitrust action aimed at stemming such monopolization or oligopolization. (For example: the Motion Pictures Patent Corporation or “the Trust” case, the Paramount decision, the splitting up of NBC and of the creation of ABC, the Modified Final Judgment and the split up of AT&T.) Recently, concentration of ownership has increased with considerable consolidation within and across media industries. Through horizontal and vertical integration, mergers, joint ventures, and buyouts, media behemoths are growing to unprecedented proportions not merely in the United States but worldwide. Ironically, while consolidation has been on the rise, antitrust intervention has receded. There has been a shift toward encouraging competition on a global rather than a national scale, and toward promoting large, strong and secure U.S.-based companies. As the Internet represents new unconquered territory for these expanding entities, corporate consolidation and government deregulation are important contextual factors that promise to have a major influence on the development of the Internet within the U.S. and elsewhere. Big or small, owners of U.S. media for the most part are permitted to employ whatever strategy they choose to generate revenue. The sale of “space and time” to other companies for advertising purposes has proven to be an effective means of generating generous profit margins for owners. Though not all U.S. media are supported by advertising, many are. Indeed, the line between those few media that are and those that are not has become blurred. Even the book publishing industry has sometimes resorted to an occasional advertising insert. The motion picture industry has also turned to nontraditional ways of supplementing the revenue generated by individual ticket sales. Commercials have made their way into U.S. theaters; on occasion they precede a feature released on a videotape. Indirectly, they appear in the subtle guise of take-home toys accompanying children's fast food. The history of U.S. media illustrates a parallel growth and increasing interdependence of the media and advertising industries. Newspapers in early Colonial America were produced by printers, not journalists, and many even acknowledged the predominance of advertising by including the word in their names. (Hiebert, Ungurait, and Bohn, 1991, pp. 220-221) Even the text of the Declaration of Independence, published in the July 6, 1776 edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, appeared alongside advertisements. (Hiebert, Ungurait, and Bohn, 1991, p. 185). The Penny Press in the 1830s, an idea that made newspapers an affordable mass medium, was driven by the then innovative strategy to increase circulation to attract sufficient advertising dollars to replace the money lost through the lower individual sales costs. In the early days of broadcasting, the radio industry relied upon sales of radio receivers as a primary source of revenue. As receiver penetration levels increased, this source of revenue began to dissipate. At the same time, audiences became more discerning, leading to increased production costs. The debate over radio advertising alluded to in the opening passage was short-lived. Advertising quickly became the accepted means of financial support for radio stations and networks. By the time television arrived, broadcasting had been heavily commercialized and the same organizations that had profited handsomely in radio quickly moved into television, bringing with them their established system of commercial support. The pervasive commercial interruption became a staple of broadcasting content. The rhetoric that surrounded the expansion of cable television in the 1970's promised a transformation of television, and was based upon the belief that it would provide an electronic forum that was both diverse and open to the public. Such optimism proved to be unwarranted. Public access channels have sat underfunded, underutilized, and generally unwatched, and the new channel capacity did more to increase the quantity of television than it did to improve the quality. From an advertising perspective, however, cable offered a clear advantage: it delivered targeted and prepackaged audiences. How has this reliance upon advertising revenue affected the direction, development and uses of existing media? Though it would be impossible to answer this question precisely, several broad generalizations can be offered. It should be conceded that advertising has affected U.S. media in several positive ways. For example, the sale of advertising time and space has helped to lower or eliminate the direct cost of information and entertainment to the consumer. By subsidizing costs, advertising has helped make the media more accessible. For example, “free” (advertiser-supported television) is universally available to all who own a television set. The U.S. system of advertising also supports an economic system which is based upon the promotion of competing goods in a marketplace. The money generated by advertising revenues has also benefited the media by enabling the production of high quality content. Ironically, it can also be argued that the increasing reliance upon advertising has lowered the quality of media-delivered information and entertainment in several ways. In a hierarchy of artistic value, media that are dependent upon advertising are placed several notches below those that are not advertising-dependent, i.e., film and literature. With most advertiser-supported media, the emphasis traditionally has been placed on quantity of audience rather than quality of product, and these two do not always go hand-in-hand. In serving two sets of masters, advertisers and consumers, media organizations often have placed their own interest in profits over the public interest. By providing a supportive environment conducive to the insertion of sales pitches, owners repeatedly have compromised the quality of media content. Perhaps the most concise and compelling summation was offered by Gloria Steinem in explaining the decision to hike the individual copy costs of MS. magazine and publish sans advertisements (Steinem, 1990). In sum, the optimism that has surrounded the early years of all U.S. media has been quashed by the negative influence of commercialism. The origins of the Internet have been recorded in many places by many people. (See, for example, Gopher://gopher.isoc.org/11/internet/history) These historical of a that began as a system by and for a group of early as a to and information for and it was not long applications were found for this new of It is to the very time the Internet was to a or commercial as of Internet In two and a advertising their services for the U.S. government the The is a of electronic It is available through the Internet, sometimes with the Internet but merely an on the Internet. Though this commercial activity was not it as a to many users and an followed and there was no immediate onslaught of commercial on the Internet. The of the had for and the early was not Recently, however, the growth of the has an enormous increase in commercial The companies with a and it has also attracted new users to the Internet. of the of the the Internet has As of there were an on the Internet. (For a more commercial applications of the have both and and direct sales are but a few of the more of commercial the commercial applications of the have found the to be and for example, at the future impact of this growing commercialization, to the nature of the Internet Such an will help the degree to which it is or by The of offered by offers a set of the Internet the of this will be Internet is The word “free” has several The most are and and who the as have their access For example, many can their of the source of to for their their are they their that it is not an free of even advertising, is but with costs, it is not free of the information is available for but this will as for their In of and the Internet has been but this is in the of The the most of such Internet is For on the Internet and For many of the same of that in are in might to with who the same of and online as they do in interaction for to the is not available in of or The are and are even more on the Internet is generally For example, networks have helped to and In of many now horizontal over vertical do not and universally they do This is of the of that can at the same thing but at Internet is a means of the of the that the Internet be to access for and the became more in in the form of and Such is now being by a of enormous of is by large, organizations and is by a group of The as a form of but it is also a and it as a is Internet is The Internet, all media, is users even a strong to radio of the current on the of the Internet are great of this is being driven by private interests who commercial on their This will also make the more other media in of the it can therefore, a more for commercial is At the time, there is no of the Internet. not to information on the Internet and there is no government however, an access who and for users its as public concern over such of and as corporations to over this new media the nature of the Internet will be is an Although the Internet a and free in many even those who the word by also on to – a form of As more users and more money the will as in for example, the by and Commerce in the in this In these a and of the Internet in its form and an even of what the Internet will in the future. have been offered to the Internet other have that the Internet is unique it is a applications or places the are This of has helped the for example, is a and are a forum for there are often more than In other is to specific is to channel via the and most of the future activity on the will of this The Internet is fast other media, a where most of the information is by and by The Internet is also as unique it is global in The Internet national providing a enabling users to and and across national This is unique and the for some for the however, it should be that a great of other media television is by and by by many media are global The that the Internet is and by has the of another Such a online communication not as a but as an What lost in the of this is that such within a specific be it the the the and within a specific Public concern over the of illustrates that online are not the When to other media, the Internet is an it is both and existing communication It is part it will many of the of and such a is such also it to it as a new The the way the users the Internet. of the Internet this medium as In the nature of online many users of the Internet have become the of For a more of what online communication it is to the electronic environment the of From their perspective, the Internet, and the offers a new and means of to other media, it has It is It can provide a direct between a and a in ways that the media can of information can be often prepackaged specific or they to the The is not the for and advertising, but it is to some In the the make it an and for advertisers and commercial Given the of users of the Internet to advertising and the for by commercial interests now to online in great there is a for that to be so that the of the might be while the of the new a is to its are a group process of debate based upon and offered by who serve as Thus there some specific with offered for There is a accompanying this for and which may be with There are that to be and protected by The addresses two of the most the possibility that commercial will public and the benefits of a much public and the possibility that commercialization will to an of the of It would be to to advertising and commercial activity on the Internet. Advertising and commercialization should not be to however, to the of The offers not it may be into – some where advertising and commercial is and some where it is not In the we have to set where advertising is or but have been and we have become increasingly of the of advertising into many public and private and ensure that the in the are more For we ensure that electronic do not become the of that have Though few to advertisers that it is an and proven means of a to In where to have their by the however, it is more than a are for that they did not and do not There is over the nature or the of commercial that may be delivered into a of over online clear and to be established electronic to commercial From a perspective, this is as it issues as as both an to the of this private space should be on is for some might to Such an might in help online access for individuals so For example, those who make their available to commercial do so in for however, should not have to to commercial be to action to not to The of has by the that the is to sales have been set by who have their own of and These on an of Internet in and (For more the of Internet at The of such and is not and such as the same their with magazine at is such be a to Such of have some will not it to The of such is fast as a greater of online and the who have established the may be by In the and targeted at may they might be as of the of the public will be in the support to as as to forces with users to for In such would be as and in a public they would on these rather than and the that p. in the and of advertisements in an may the of users for over their own while online The mode of advertising on the the a means of a commercial The information is by them the to so are to upon advertising as a way of free services for Advertising may appear the the the broadcasting sales may appear With more on the users may be with commercial be this The are for and for many advertisements appear is an even more than to where they will be will upon an and ultimately a through a process both users and As advertisers greater resources in online advertising as a to they will more information who is The medium is an for a means of and a of and and provide the most effective and audience tool What would be a for however, would a considerable for Such a for information threatens both and and to be in It is important to the to not information being it will be Perhaps some will to in on the economic of information and it for and online content. and are they will be effective they are a commercialization of online communication will Such to be a are of of government the government has the to As many government are and are Moreover, the of and the issues the of would make it impossible and for a government to all of the not all the would be and under government and to be in a private and entities be established online as a where be Such a with a but widely commercial would help the and by the of Such will help to the of or that will make such to and a activity be by this group and be to the government for action. Such will help make the more The online not be There can be a to may the of the would that is it is more in with the of they would to it would the of the the that there is no on commercialization, and by all users of what is and not with to commercial will make advertisers of the their and help them that commercial is not the of a few but the of of the commercial and they will be will be and we will to the support of access there is a great of competition in the we will a and consolidation in this which will make it to these players. of and should be in by users access to the Internet. This will also help to established established is an important part of the It will be as U.S. mass media, the major for information in U.S. are owned by private companies who have a future of the and who have traditionally those that commercial the Internet, it is to but the that exists it almost impossible to a of important information to the of the the debate over the of such would be public to generate of both the specific as as the behind what a is an information The word to the and refers to an open or where to their goods and to ideas. the existing media are effective at providing a for advertisers to they are effective as open and public Advertising dollars are As some of this money is to online the media may be even more to make to attract those lost dollars or they may more of the economic on individual by increasing their direct costs. to this the of public broadcasting and the and possible of the public and broadcasting as as the to allow the marketplace to and the situation to be than an effective public forum is not within the United States but worldwide. The to be to provide such a global In sum, computer-mediated communication is not a new It is a of as as a new and important means of As a global medium, however, it develops within national and is by and media and economic therefore, of its both within specific national as as on a global This article has on the Internet as it is within the United States of The of a is based upon a and diverse communication system which have the of the Internet as a public by forces. These have the benefits of but such an objective be providing access to the has that is toward There will always be some free information available on the but its may be The more and information will be to and The will and will be for but might to part of the to The of online communication is its of For example, to for sans for the supported and improve the and of the content. Advertising become an in promoting the and development of the but its to beneficial uses and be and its effects become that they are not of online information but also with for How the new will will upon answer the to action to the future in their public interest.