Traditional media are institutionalized and gatekept while social media are accessible and reciprocal

Evidence

[Clay Shirky’s] analysis showed that the blogosphere wasn’t a smooth ball where everyone had an equal voice. Rather, it was dominated by a handful of sites that pulled enormous numbers, followed by a looooo­ooooo­ng tail of sites with a few followers. The old pernicious topology had reasserted itself. We should have known that it would, and it took a while for the miserable fact to sink in. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 967 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

For the media structure of the public sphere, it is this platform character of the new media that represents the real novelty. It means that they dispense with the productive role of journalistic mediation and programme design performed by the old media; in this respect, the new media are not ‘media’ in the received sense. They radically alter the pattern of communication that has been dominant in the public sphere until now by empowering all potential users in principle to become independent and equally entitled authors. The ‘new’ media differ from their traditional counterparts in that digital companies make use of this technology to offer potential users the unlimited opportunities for digital networking like blank slates for their own communicative content. — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 32 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Online participation follows the same winner-take-all hierarchy the old media had — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 967; Digital platforms are not media in the traditional sense — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 32; The Internet is the first mass medium lacking gatekeepers — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 147 (+1 more)

Related

• Online participation follows the same winner-take-all hierarchy the old media had (similarity 0.88)
• Digital platforms are not media in the traditional sense (similarity 0.86)
• Traditional and social media differ by institutional gatekeeping versus open reciprocity (similarity 0.84)
• The Internet is the first mass medium lacking gatekeepers (similarity 0.83)
• The Internet ended editorial gatekeeping between content producers and audiences (similarity 0.81)
• Social media’s fragmentation and boundary-dissolution combine to undermine the national public sphere’s integrating power (similarity 0.80)
• Platforms replace asymmetry with reciprocity but lose editorial filtering (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Online participation follows the same winner-take-all hierarchy the old media had #contradicts (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 967
• Digital platforms are not media in the traditional sense #expands (0.75) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 32