JasonMorrison.net

This thesis paper was originally written for a journalism course at Ohio Wesleyan University in 2001.

Introduction

Discussions about the Internet are dominated by colorful and often ill-defined metaphors.  One is expected to surf the information superhighway over to the infobahn, on the way to the digital town hall in the global village to peruse the marketplace of ideas.  This last metaphor, the market where ideas are offered, considered and either accepted or rejected like so much fruit, is more than just a colorful image.  Media and cultural studies often examine the marketplace of ideas theory and the public sphere when examining how mass media work in a democracy.  The Internet seems a natural place to look for both.

Often discussions about the marketplace of ideas and the public sphere are confined the question to whether or not they are worthwhile goals- many critics see them as impossible or rife with flaws.  The marketplace of ideas notion of traditional mass media seems out of sync with reality.  High entry costs into the mass media, central ownership by large corporations, the popular media’s tendency to marginalize radical and little-known ideas, etc., all act as barriers to a free flow of ideas.

The Internet, however, could theoretically create or function as a public forum.  Every media consumer can become a media producer on the Internet, and in some ways (newsgroups and mailing lists, for example) the line between consumers and producers of media are blurred.  Unlike other media, the cost of making a web site viewed by millions is not necessarily larger than a web site viewed by only a handful.  Communication is instantaneous and choice is not limited to what is provided by a few large companies.  Radical groups in every subject from terrorism to literary theory are able to publish as easily as mainstream political parties.

But is the Internet the true public forum, or even a real marketplace of ideas?  A quick look at Internet usage statistics shows relatively few large producers dominating traffic.  According to Nielsen/Netratings, for example, AOL Time Warner recorded 65,954,683 unique visitors in March, out of an estimated 101,965,365

active Internet users that month.¹ With well over one billion web sites on the web to visit and the average user only visiting 10 unique sites a month, most of the traffic is going to a limited number of places-just as most readership goes to a limited number of magazines, newspapers, television stations, etc.

But why are web sites with less money and fewer corporate ties having a harder time getting viewers?  What barriers have arisen to make it hard to get a large audience, and why has the Internet followed the lead of central corporate ownership like the rest of the mass media?  How is the Internet like a public forum and how is it not?

Thesis

The Internet does not function as a de facto public sphere or marketplace of ideas but it does have enormous potential.  Barriers such as the Digital Divide and website funding problems keep the Internet from being a completely free forum while most users most of the time seem to have no interest in entering the public sphere at all.  A few notable examples, however, prove that the Internet has the power to allow public communication, debate, and opinion formation to flourish when users take advantage of it.

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In Doyle and Lacombe’s “Porn Power: Sex, Violence and the Meanings of Images in 1980s Feminism,” they argue feminists in the 80s who saw pornography as violence against women and their chief rivals, the Feminists Against Censorship, both missed an important point-many women use pornography for positive purposes.  Though the latter group argued the sexist images of porn came from sexist society, not men’s violent desires to use women, they still implicitly disapproved of it.

The authors argue that this agreement that mainstream porn could not be positive as well as their unwillingness to listen to women who enjoyed porn or worked in the sex industry meant that although the sides fought bitterly, their stance was effectively the same.  In the 80s, the only point of view allowed by feminists was that porn is bad, is against women, and cannot be enjoyed by women without harming them.  Doyle and Lacombe argue this simply is not the case.  They cite a Time poll that showed 40 percent of x-rated video renters were women.  More importantly, both sides failed to get above conventional ideas about power.  For example, some women find mainstream porn to be empowering in that it often breaks class barriers and shows women pursuing pleasure guiltlessly.  The lines between porn and art are often blurred, and most porn actresses do not find their work unpleasant at all-despite the assumption by most feminists that they are forced to do this demeaning thing by circumstances.  Porn created with a male audience in mind arouses even liberated women, and many porn workers consider themselves feminists.

I think they’re bringing up a valid point.  I truly doubt that 40 percent of porn consumption is done by women, and other studies I’ve read about Internet porn viewership usually place the number lower.  But it is true that modern mainstream pornography (which isn’t that different from 80s or 70s porn) is created and used by women who are not being deluded into victimization by the patriarchy.  As a fairly strong supporter of the First Amendment, I am against the efforts to ban obscenity altogether, but I’m not sure the Feminists Against Censorship can be so easily disregarded.  Their notion of resisting sexism in porn and perhaps creating a new kind of porn I think is admirable so long as they keep in mind it’s their opinion.  One thing I’m not sure I completely buy is the recent notion (reflected by many of the sex workers in this piece) that “acting” in porn and using your body for profit is real empowerment.  First of all, many of these performers are not valued for their performance, skill, artistry, and certainly not for their personality or worth as people.  They are valued as disposable objects by 15-year-olds with modems and creepy old men in quarter-fed viewing booths.  Empowerment is having the ability to choose to do anything and if you work hard enough, to succeed.  The fact that you are paid well is not empowerment in any sense outside catalogue shopping.  Second, they are doing nothing to change society’s basic attitudes that such women are sluts and such men are studs.  The overall effect is not as negative as many feminists think, but I doubt it’s very positive.