Bloggers have not reinvented the public sphere

The hope that blogs will break down the dominance of the large media has proved false, writes Viktor Mayer-Schönberger in the blog Carta: "The truth of the matter is that a very small number of blogs attract the most attention, while most others have very few readers, if any at all. ... What the old and new media landscapes have in common is the relatively limited number of players. ... With the old media this was the result of the lack of resources: the high investment costs of a customised dissemination infrastructure and the finiteness of available frequencies. With the Internet this focus has shifted: it's not the frequencies that are in short supply, but the attention span of recipients. For that reason we've seen a regulative shift from one public good to another. The upshot, however is that the hope that - as an alternative to the solution proposed by [philosopher Jürgen] Habermas - we could reinvent the public sphere of the 18th century by means of the Internet and the new media ... has proved false."

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