Needed: A growth spurt for online media

Globally, the situation is more complex and there has been a range of impressive publications spawned online from the New York Time's online service with its excellent customisable functions, to the Women's eNews a virtual newswire service for issues of interest to women. Slashdot's subversive technology coverage has resulted in the “slashdot” effect, boosting referrals to a range of smaller publications online, while at the P2P level we see some very interesting creative uses of bulletin boards to cut around government censorship in China, often at great risk to authors and readers alike.

But while we can talk about case examples there remains limited evidence of a wholesale impact on the quality of public discourse. The Iraq invasion shows how the subtlety and nuances of the online press can be undercut by a shock and awe campaign not run by the Pentagon, but by their primary allies in the newsrooms of News Corporation.

And the empire continues to strike back. Apple Corporation - long a darling of the “technati” - has recently launched legal action against some of its own alternative media press over leaks to their websites about new product offerings. This is a lawsuit that challenges the rights of online publications to conceal their sources of information - even though the White House has found that the proliferation of obscure online journals useful in masking republicans posing as journalists to ask “Dorothy Dixers” during media briefings.

In response to the integration of media management on the US Right, American liberal bloggers have begun actively caucusing strategies to manage their information outputs. The last federal election in Australia saw a proliferation of anti-candidate websites (such as www.johnhowardlies.com) run by anonymous authors.

The optimists need to recognise that where we have information, we also have disinformation. Democracy, as a practice, is messy. It's hard, and - for all that the power elites like to claim their adherence to its values - is often in contradiction to the desires and objectives of the governments of the day which see the mobilising of public consent as instrumental.

The control of media messages and the resulting creation of meaning, even through outright fabrication, mark the central tenet of political power in our post-industrial age. To butcher Baudrillard, “Simulation has replaced the real. White is black, black is white.” For every advance in open and democratic publishing, we must expect a response, a counter-manoeuvre and attempts at subversion and negation. It’s time for alternative media online to grow up, real fast.