Marketplace of ideas: Currently under construction

Last week, Al Gore spoke at the We Media conference in New York about the state of the mass media. In his speech, Gore promoted not only his TV station, Current TV. He also said that marketplace was in grave danger, and with it American democracy. The reason, he said, was the still-no.1 medium in the U.S.: Television. Instead of enhancing political discourse, Gore said, television disables it because television "is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation."

Gore went on to say that the real purpose of television was the advertising of products. Viewer-created content played no role in the broadcasting world, although it is the foundation of individually satisfying media consumption.

Gore has got a point there. Clearly, there still are mass media left; the biggest being television. But the problem is: Television networks are owned by huge media conglomerates, and the hurdles individuals have to take to get their faces and opinions on the screen are basically insurmountable. The days of public discourse in the mass medium television are over. If they ever existed in the first place. With 4 hours and 28 minutes per day (according to a study Gore cites), television is still by far the most frequently used medium in America.

The Internet could be the way out of this critical situation. It is interactive and gives (almost) all users the same possibility of obtaining information and expressing their ideas. The significantly bigger impact of the Internet during the last presidential election -€“ compared to the one in 2000 -€“ indicates a positive change. Media consumers are now turning toward a medium that satisfies their diverse individual needs instead of delivering the same generic newscast to everyone.

Despite the widespread nervousness about the increasing influence of the Internet, I hope that 10 years from now the Internet, not TV, will be our most prevalent mass medium. If we use its capacities responsibly, the Web could help us to revive the open marketplace of ideas.