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Introduction
Discussing the development of long-distance communication technologies at the turn of thetwentieth century, sociologist Paul Starr postulated a link between patterns of governance andmodes of public address facilitated by various media. Glibly, he contrasted the United States’investment in telephone infrastructure with the Soviet Union’s push for “another newtechnology – the loudspeaker,” conflating the political ideologies and concomitanttechnological mythologies surrounding new media into a single issue.
1
Roughly one hundredyears removed, we find that popular “democratic” media such as newspapers, radio, andtelevision surprisingly resemble loudspeakers, obscuring diversity, discouraging dissent, andsubstituting passive entertainment for conversation and community.In a sense agreeing with Starr’s suggestion that media forms contain implicit ideologies andmay lend themselves to particular forms of communicative interaction, scholars such as CassSunstein, Allucquère Stone, Mark Taylor, and others suggest that technological developmentshave the potential to reconfigure hierarchical producer / consumer relationships by invitingaudiences into the media creation process. This essay situates a new set of technologiescollectively called “Web 2.0” in a historical context, explores associated utopian and dystopiannarratives, provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the convergence of sociology andtechnology, and offers a practical assessment of the democratic implications of participatoryonline communities through a case study of Newsvine.com.
The Rise of Web 2.0: “One Man’s Dream…”
Prior to entering this discussion, a brief history of the rise, fall, and resurrection of the notionof the web-as-democratic-space will be helpful. Following the debut of the “World WideWeb” in 1990, many suggested that the Internet had the potential to vivify the nation’sdormant public culture, promising an electronic world in which all can maintain a privatespace, offer perspectives, and converse or debate with like-minded others at very little cost.Looking toward Y2K with extreme anxiety, it seemed unlikely that the “dot-com crash” would
1
On The Media, 2004.
 
result from poor investment practices rather than the much-hyped technical error. Yet as thevirtual economy crumbled in the fourth quarter of 2001 along with hopes for the web as astable community space, a new Internet was rising from the ashes.
2
Sensing fertile soilfollowing the failure of its predecessor, “Web 2.0” took root and began to grow.Web 2.0 can be understood as an emerging phenomenon that is as much a new technology asit is a computing paradigm, lifestyle, ideology, and even epistemology. Unlike the oldInternet, Web 2.0 promises organic content, distributed processing and interaction, andconverging media formats. Within this conceptual framework, “the Internet” is no longer amedia delivery system by which individual users (as “consumers”) request content from large,centralized corporate servers. Instead, Web 2.0 operates as an interdependent grassrootscommunity of individuals, organizations, and sites whose relevance and authority areestablished through interaction and participation – in short, a quintessentially
human +network
. Freelance writer and blogger Kevin Kelly describes the phenomenon as a way toextend his
“…passion to a far wider group for no extra cost or effort. In this way, my site is part of a…visibleunderground of valuable creations - text, music, film, software, tools, and services - all given away forfree. This gift economy fuels an abundance of choices…It permits easy modification and reuse, and thus
promotes consumers into producers
.”
3
 
Kelly and other “technologists” envision Web 2.0 as a virtual space in a perpetual state of emergence, continually reshaping itself as users publish text and multimedia content,comment upon others’ work, and celebrate contributions, collectively crafting a new publicculture.
“…is another man’s nightmare.”
However, this sentiment is far from universal. Traditional media outlets are recognizing thedualistic potential and concomitant threat of Web 2.0. In December 2006, Time Magazine
2
Fittingly, the Mozilla Foundation released
Phoenix
 , the forerunner to Firefox and later, Flock (the de facto browsers of Web 2.0) shortly following the “dot-com crash” in 2002.
3
Wired Magazine, August 2005 (emphasis mine). Kevin’s blog is located at http://www.kk.org.
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