Professional paper

The Internet as a Space of Free Social Communication

Bojan Basrak ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Zagreb

Abstract

Freedom of speech is perceived as one of the most important elements of modern democratic society but quite often we overlook the fact that freedom of speech doesn’t mean anything without freedom of communication – possibility of releasing speech in public sphere and making it equally available to everybody. Since the media mediate public sphere in modern civil society, it is the task of the media to ensure free communication. However, as Baudrillard and many other noticed, mass media, in which public sphere is actualized, with their basic structure disable free, two-way communication replacing it with one-way, monopolistic quasi-communication. Traditional mass media, such as radio, newspaper or television, are simply not capable to ensure free social discourse within their space regardless of ideology which monitors or controls them. However, the real danger to the freedom of society and individual lies in the fact that the mass media are under ideological control and that the exploitation of their one-way manner of operating is considered standard and desirable practice. Development of the Internet opens up the question of possibility to achieve, within the network space, truly free communication thus revitalising the public sphere. The Internet is structurally different from the traditional media and a fierce struggle is currently under go (which is held back by the media), over the control of the Internet on the infrastructural level. Is the Internet so inherently free as it cannot be restrained or it’s inevitable for it to be turned into yet another instrument of ideological terror? Can new forms of communication on the Internet, such as blog, offer sufficient grounds for optimism in the future?

Keywords

Internet; communication; mass media; public sphere; freedom of speech

Hrčak ID:

61655

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/61655

Publication date:

17.3.2009.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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