engleski

Socializing the Internet: Global Developments and Policy Issues

The Croatian media policy is currently dominated by the restructuring of public service broadcasting through the Croatian Radio Television Act. However, global developments reflected in digitalization and media convergence push the media environment towards multiplying media platforms with varied sources of national and international content and information. This brings forth the need to reconsider theoretical as well as policy bases. While from the consumer culture point of view this is sometimes regarded as culturally democratic through enabling wider choice, others express fears of declining public sphere and the rise of consumerism. The public sphere is especially fragmented through numerous web-based platforms. Regarding the Internet the democratic impact of technology should be reassessed with stronger emphasis on social factors that determine its usage. The social and technological poles are however somewhat hard to set apart, especially when it comes to Web 2.0, user-generated content and social media. This ˝socialization of the World Wide Web˝ redefines the role of communication in democratic societies. As opposed to vertical forms of communication in mass media, these horizontal forms of communication change the dominant ways of producing, sharing and disseminating information. The questions of information privacy and the trust in information sources become crucial. How can policy cope with these horizontal forms of communication? How can regulation be established for users who are accustomed to flexible usage of international and national web-platforms? These issues cannot be addressed at present time since we are not yet certain of the broader social or democratic implications these developments will have. There is however, significant potential and media policies should reorient themselves towards communication polices and observing the fluctuating power relations within these developments. More empirically orientated analyses should investigate the motives for using or not using social media.

Internet; Web 2.0; public sphere

nije evidentirano