Empowered by communication technology in the age of digital contents, the communication media reach has been expanded ever before. The emergence of new communication methods concurrently influence the culture and technology of the network society, creating what the author called, “mass-self-communication”. Consequently, the birth of “active audience” was inevitable (Castells, 2007).
The intriguing aspect is that the author posits a noncompeting relationship between mass-self communication and conventional media because new media can facilitate content distribution of conventional media and generate additional traffic for the contents. Nevertheless, it is rather a narrow-scoped idea because it assumes user-generated contents are inherently inferior.
Wilson (2011) introduced an intriguing concept, a fragmented heterogeneity. While network society increases information dispersion and user-content creations, we cannot assume that the audience base for certain information expands because each audience only accommodates their highly personalized preferences with customized media channels. Although the size of pie got bigger, media channels may only be able to grasp smaller piece of the pie of audience for their media content consumption. Previously, mass media news was the primary source of information. Whatever contents came out of TV news and reputable newspapers were considered to the truth. However, due to more active and fragmented audience, they no longer accept mass media contents blindly.
While new media can disburse information in a global scope, reach a bigger audience base, and accommodate highly personalized preferences, it may not function as it is speculated, or it is simply, “not there yet”. Loveland and Popescu (2011) investigated the occurrences of political deliberation in the online environment. Although similar political deliberation could occur in the online setting, they found that the deliberation qualities of online interactions were debatable. Given the lack of interactive communication and reciprocal norms of discussion, the authors speculated that anonymity of online communication and immediacy of communication might be in blame for hindering face-to-face like deliberation process. Nevertheless, while I succinctly agree with the authors’ attempt to quantify research question, the study did not account for indirect effect of online forum. As much as people define their political views from deliberation, they can also shape their views progressively via passive evaluation of others’ views. While active participation is not necessarily a critical indicator of deliberation, the whole premise of the study assumes that active, interactive, and reciprocal participations in organized manners are antecedents for optimal deliberations.
On the other hand, Gerodimos (2012) investigated youth civic attitudes and found that young people are still willing to engage with civic websites in an exchange for meaningful engagement. The benefit of civic action should be tangiblized, the purpose of action must be clear and relevant, the action should not exhaust their resources, and the clear-cut directions should be given. Hence, their preferences on interactive communication on website and visual media usages are not coincident.
Communication is no longer one directional. Content creations are no longer the God-given privilege for established media industry (Castells, 2007; Wilson 2011). For example of Egypt’s example, social media functioned as an information source that even oppressed government could not control (Tufekci & Wilson 2012). Interactive element is slowly becoming a norm, and mass-self communication can virtually counterbalance geographical limitations. Abundant contents are created by users and shared contents are no longer limited to certain digital mediums or formats. Anything can be shared in a global scale.