The Corporate Colonization of Online Att

Journal of Communication
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Inquiry
The Corporate Colonization of Online Attention and the Marginalization of Critical Communication?
Lincoln Dahlberg
Journal of Communication Inquiry 2005 29: 160
DOI: 10.1177/0196859904272745
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Corporate
Journal
10.1177/0196859904272745
of Colonization
Communicationof Online
InquiryAttention
Lincoln Dahlberg
The Corporate Colonization of Online

Attention and the Marginalization of
Critical Communication?
This article provides a general exploration of the argument that the Internet’s
potential for extending strong democratic culture through critical communica-
tion is being undermined by a corporate colonization of cyberspace. The article
investigates which sites are attracting the attention of participants seeking pub-
lic content and interaction. The investigation finds that large corporate portals
and commercial media sites are dominating online attention for news, infor-
mation, and interaction, privileging consumer content and practices while
marginalizing many voices and critical forms of participation. This situation
threatens to limit the Internet’s contribution to the expansion of democratic cul-
ture. More research is needed to identify exactly what is being represented on
which sites and how different groups are participating. However, the general
colonization trend seems clear, and this article concludes by considering public
policy options and civil society initiatives that may increase the visibility of
marginalized voices and critical communication online.
Keywords: corporate colonization; critical communication; democracy;

Internet; online attention; portal
Corporate Colonization Thesis

Many democratic theorists today agree that at the heart of any strong demo-
cratic society must be a vibrant sphere of moral-practical discourse (critical
communication) involving open and reflexive articulation and contestation of
Author’s Note: This research has been undertaken with funding from the New Zealand Foundation for
Research, Science, and Technology. Various aspects of this work were presented in September 2003 at the
London Metropolitan University Workshop on the Internet and Democracy, at the University of Amsterdam
School of Communications Research, at EURICOM’s What’s Left of Communications Research collo-
quium, and in November 2003 at the International Communications Association (ICA) and International
Association of Media and Communications Research (IAMCR) Digital Dynamics conference at
Loughborough University. I would like to thank all those persons who provided feedback in these forums,
and particularly Lee Salter and Tamara Witschge for their insights. I would also like to thank the two anony-
mous referees of the Journal of Communication Inquiry for their helpful comments.
Journal of Communication Inquiry 29:2 (April 2005): 160-180
DOI: 10.1177/0196859904272745
© 2005 Sage Publications
160

Corporate Colonization of Online Attention 161
diverse positions on problems of living together with difference (see Bauman

2002; Benhabib, 1996; Boggs, 2000; Bohman, 1996; Dryzek, 2000; Haber-
mas, 1996; Young, 2000). The safeguarding of this communication from state
power is necessary for the free public interrogation of official decision-making
processes and hence for political systems to be held accountable to the so-
called democratic will. Needless to say, autonomy from state power has been
far from realized in the mass-mediated spaces through which such communi-
cation predominantly takes place in today’s large-scale, dispersed societies.
However, in these neoliberal times, it is private economic power that is largely
dominating media systems, posing the most significant threat to democratic
culture. Critical theorists and political economists have demonstrated soundly
how privatized, commercialized media is instrumentalizing communication
and thus undermining the public sphere (see Boggs, 2000; Curran, 2000;
Gandy, 2002; Herman & McChesney, 1997; Kellner, 2004; McChesney, 1999;
D. Schiller, 1999; H. I. Schiller, 1989). These critics have shown how the mass
media, in particular, have been captured by powerful conservative interests,
leading to the marginalization of critical and less powerful voices in the central
discursive arenas of liberal-capitalist societies.
However, there has been much recent excitement among advocates of dem-
ocratic communication about the possibility of the Internet’s radically enhanc-
ing the public sphere. The Internet is seen as subverting state and corporate
power, offering a space to voice otherwise marginalized positions. Kellner
(2004) put forward this vision eloquently:
The Internet, by contrast [to the corporate media], provides potential for a demo-
cratic revitalization of the public sphere. The Internet makes accessible more
information available to a greater number of people, more easily, and from a
wider array of sources than any instrument of information and communication
in history. It is constantly astonishing to discover the extensive array of material
available, articulating every conceivable point of view and providing news,
opinion, and sources of a striking variety and diversity. Moreover, the Internet
allows two-way communication and democratic participation in public dia-
logue, activity that is essential to producing a vital democracy . . . the Internet . . .
contains the most varied and extensive sources of information and entertainment
ever assembled in a single medium. The Internet can send disparate types and
sources of information and images instantly throughout the world and is in-
creasingly being used by a variety of oppositional groups. (p. 51)
The Internet, as presently stands, allows for public communication rela-

tively free of state and corporate control. It is a global decentralized, two-way
medium that is not currently owned by any one corporation or government. In
fact, the fundamental software protocols that enable Internet communication
are embedded within the public domain. This potential for critical communi-
cation can be seen unfolding in practice. Through e-mail, discussion spaces,

162 Journal of Communication Inquiry
publishing sites (from Web logs to online media), and Web broadcasting
(audio-video streaming), a vast network of actors engage in the articulation
and contestation of positions on a myriad of issues of local, national, and inter-
national significance.
Research has demonstrated that various factors tend to limit the effective-
ness of this online engagement, including poor-quality discourse,1 stratified
participation, and state control of data flows through surveillance and regu-
lation at the network’s ends (see Dahlberg, 2001; Davis, 1999; Fung & Kedl,
2000; Hill & Hughes, 1998; Wilhelm, 2000). Despite these problems, the
Internet continues to facilitate the articulation and contestation of positions,
which supports the expansion of strong democratic culture. However, a num-
ber of critical commentators argue that the limiting factors listed above do not
include the most significant threat to the extension of the public sphere online.
They believe the greatest threat to be the corporate colonization of cyberspace.
The argument is that powerful corporations supported by neoliberal policies
are re-creating and reinforcing through the Internet the dominant discourses
and practices of consumer capitalism, marginalizing critical communica-
tion central to strong democratic culture (Barney, 2000, 2003; Fortier, 2001;
McChesney, 1999; Napoli, 1998; D. Schiller, 1999).
In this article, I explore this colonization thesis. However, I approach the
task in a somewhat different way from previous investigations. The limited
amount of work undertaken so far in this area has concentrated on the possibil-
ities of corporate control of online communication afforded by the increasing
corporate ownership of Internet content, software, and bandwidth. I have else-
where examined the threat to online democratic communication stemming
from the increasing corporate ownership of these three layers (Dahlberg,
2004a). This is important work, as it highlights the need for urgent government
action, including legislative measures, to ensure that space online is preserved
for nondiscriminatory and noninstrumental communication. However, this
work does not take into account the full extent of the corporate threat to the
potential of Internet’s expanding the public sphere. It is not necessary to own
and control all, or even an extensive amount, of Internet space—in terms of the
data space constituted by bits—to have a major impact on online communica-
tion and use. This is because the route to the domination of online practice is
the domination of online attention, achieved through control over key content,
software, and bandwidth. Space may be preserved for critical communication
free of corporate interests; yet such communication may be largely margin-
alized in the competition for user attention.
How successful then have corporations been at dominating online attention
oriented to public discourse (news, information, discussion), and what is the
impact of this on critical communication? This is a question yet to be exten-
sively examined in communication research focused on enhancing democratic

culture. In this article, I undertake a critical and general examination of this

question. The examination is critical in that it involves reasoned problemati-
zation and critique, consistent with how I use the term in the phrase “critical
communication constituting the public sphere.” The approach here is focused
on reasoned argumentation aimed at contributing to an ongoing discourse
about the Internet and democracy, rather than applying a particular method to
provide so-called objective findings. The examination is general in that the
argument made is not focused on a particular context but makes broad-based
(and preliminary) claims supported by reasoning based on currently available
research, statistics, and my own observations. Although the examination does
focus mostly on the case of the United States, it also draws examples from else-
where to highlight global trends. This general exploration will complement
research on the problems for online democracy of the increasing corporate
ownership of the Internet and will lay the basis for more specific and in-depth
research of the question of attention control and its impact on online critical
communication.
The Corporate Domination of Online Attention

Attention is arguably the most valuable resource online (Davenport & Beck,
2001; Goldhaber, 1997; Hargittai, 2004). Although it is relatively straightfor-
ward (for those with the resources) to get views published on the Internet, hav-
ing them noticed is another matter. With millions of Web pages, and millions
more messages passing through e-mail and discussion groups, being noticed
by any more than a handful of people is extremely difficult for most online par-
ticipants. This is not the case for large media and communication corporations.
They can gain significant audience attention given their established branding,
strong customer loyalty, extensive product lines, large marketing budgets, and
the capital to develop and buy up Internet service providers (ISPs), user appli-
cations, Web sites, and online content. Disney (with ABC), Microsoft, Time
Warner (with AOL), Viacom (with CBS) and Yahoo!, among others, have suc-
cessfully deployed these resources to capture audience attention for sales and
advertising by developing megaportals that not only provide users with a start-
ing point for all their online journeys but also promise to guide users through
the maze of information and point them to relevant sites.
These corporations initially get people to their portals by operating ISPs,
ensuring that users’ first point of entry each time they go online is the corpo-
ration’s default homepage. Internet research has consistently found that less
than one half of those who sign up for an ISP change the default homepage
(Hargittai, 2000, p. 130).2 Users are attracted to these portals in a number of
other ways: through online and offline advertising, via recommender systems
based on surveillance and profiling, and by extensive systems of links through-

out the Web. These megaportals attempt to keep users’attention as long as pos-
sible by providing a one-stop shop, offering a wide array of enticing services
including syndicated news, entertainment, shopping, chat channels, e-mail,
discussion forums, information managers, packaged communities, search
engines, and by attempting to create ongoing, so-called deep relationships
with users. The idea is to structure a total online experience around the portal.
Possibly the most extreme example of ISPs structuring user experience has
been the practice of AOL, which has attempted to create a so-called walled gar-
den to keep its subscribers within its sphere of influence, using strategies such
as obscuring exits from its online properties and limiting the destinations
available on its search engine (Patelis, 2000). Services such as directories and
search engines do help users to move out into cyberspace at large; however,
users repeatedly return to the major portals as the familiar starting points for
new online experiences, particularly to undertake new searches. Search ser-
vices assisting corporate portals monopolize attention in another way. By link-
ing advertising banners to search results, portals are able to keep participants
within a corporation’s online sphere of influence even when participants ven-
ture outside that particular corporation’s cyberproperties. Furthermore, the
political economy and design of search engines means that searching tends to
favor those who can afford to employ search engine optimization experts, can
pay for priority indexing and/or sponsored links, can attract a large amount of
inbound hyperlinks, and who own and control significant domain names and
large amounts of interlinked online properties (Hargittai, 2004; Hindman,
Tsioutsiouliklis, & Johnson, 2003; Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000; Lawrence &
Giles, 1999; Walker, 2002).
These big corporate sites are becoming very effective at attracting online
attention. In the case of the United States, Jupitermedia (2001) reported that
between March 1999 and March 2001 the total number of companies control-
ling 50% of all U.S. online user minutes shrank from 11 to 4, and the number of
companies controlling 60% of all U.S. minutes fell from 110 to 14, an 87%
swing. The online properties of one company, AOL-Time Warner, accounted
for almost one third (32%) of all time spent online by U.S. Internet users.
According to Aram Sinnreich, former senior analyst for Jupitermedia, the
“data show an irrefutable trend toward online media consolidation and indi-
cate that the playing field is anything but even” (n.p.). He concluded that “a
major share of the market is being absorbed by a handful of companies, with
those same companies continuing to direct traffic across their own networks of
sites” (Jupitermedia, 2001, n.p.). Since 2001, data from Jupitermedia, Nielsen/
/NetRatings, and International Data Corporation (IDC) consistently report the
domination of attention by the big corporate portals (AOL, Microsoft, and
Yahoo! being the big three). In China, which is second only to the United
States in the number of citizens actively participating online, five corporate

portals have captured a large proportion of user attention (Liang, 2003). There
is a similar pattern of domination taking shape globally. Nielson//NetRatings’s
research shows that in most countries a handful of megaportals (including the
above three) generally dominate the rankings of the most popular sites in many
countries.3
The Marginalization of Critical Communication

What is the impact of this domination in terms of the Internet’s extending
critical communication and the public sphere? At first glance, these mega-
portals may seem to significantly facilitate the articulation and contestation
of positions. They provide access to news and information from multiple
sources, and they offer extensive discussion and publishing facilities. As such,
they may be thought of as bringing together diverse positions for contestation
in central public spaces, thus helping to overcome the fragmentation of the
Internet into highly focused interest groups and the editorial bias of mass
media sources. However, there are problems with this reasoning.
For a start, the multiplicity of media sources referred to does not result in a
great deal of diversity. The news offerings, when not simply advertorials, are
largely drawn from a few so-called authoritative sources (mainstream, com-
mercial, and Western) that have been shown by media researchers to narrow
diversity and limit criticism and that are often owned by or in strategic alli-
ances with the corporate portals. Despite the Internet’s offering news editors
the opportunity to represent diverse views on any story, corporate media tend
to develop their online reports from the same pool of stories as their offline
offerings and along the same editorial lines, even if providing a greater volume
of material, and thus continue to represent most positively and most frequently
conservative institutional voices (Boczkowski, 2002, p. 247; Zimmermann &
Koopmans, 2003). By drawing attention to these conservative news and infor-
mation offerings, the corporate portals narrow the diversity available to their
users, driving content toward the homogeneity and compromised nature of the
offline dominant news media.
Recently, news-aggregating systems have been developed by the likes of
Google News and Microsoft Newsbot that move news portal sites away from
the syndication model to a search model. As a result, Google and Microsoft
claim to offer an unbiased selection of online news. Google News, part of
Google’s set of online search and related services, claims to provide greater
diversity by using an algorithm rather than human editors to search, choose,
and rank (by relevancy) stories of a particular event from more than 4,500
Web-based news sources. This search service does indeed seem to offer a
greater diversity than any single news media site. However, the selection and
ranking of news stories for any particular event biases the big media. The 4,500

sources, though numerous, are dominated by the so-called authoritative West-

ern, commercial media. Most independent online media channels and Web
logs are not included. Furthermore, although the details of the algorithm are
corporate secrets, a number of the main (relevancy) criteria for the selection
and ranking of stories are well known. Three of the criteria are the credibility
of the source, how recently stories are published on the Web, and how widely
linked and reproduced stories are. These criteria again privilege the big, corpo-
rate media, which enjoy their codification as so-called quality and thus trusted
news, have the resources to continually update their reports, and are exten-
sively referred to online, given (and subsequently reinforcing) their trusted
news status. So whereas a few non-Western media sources and a few noncom-
mercial news sites are included, it is the dominant commercial media reports
that are constantly ranked highest. Moreover, despite Google News’s provid-
ing multiple stories for each search, the stories tend to be highly cross-refer-
enced and often derived from just a few corporate sources, further challenging
the diversity claim. For example, Yahoo! stories are often highly ranked; how-
ever, Yahoo! simply acts as another news aggregator whose reports are again
drawn from the authoritative media, which are themselves often simply ver-
sions of the corporate news wire services such as Associated Press and
Reuters. Microsoft Network’s Newsbot (a recent addition to MSN’s extensive
portal) similarly biases these media by using a computer algorithm that selects
on the basis of “the number of sources covering the same story, when the story
was published, and how many people have looked at a particular story”
(Microsoft Network, 2004, n.p.). Google and MSN Newsbot draw further
attention to big media sites by being forced by copyright law to link directly to
the media site concerned, rather than host the content on an independent site.
Users seeking news and information can, of course, draw on general search
engines to find a plethora of alternative sources to the dominant media. For
instance, Google’s general search engine for the Web provides a much greater
diversity of information sources and range of positions on any issue than is
offered on the Google News site. Many news and information seekers do go
online to find a greater range of views than can be found from offline sources.
Pew research on U.S. Internet uses in relation to the Iraq War found two thirds
of online news, information, and opinion seekers thought that it was very im-
portant (37%) or somewhat important (29%) that they could get news and
information from a variety of sources (Rainie, Fox, & Fallows, 2003). In addi-
tion, 52% claimed that it is very important (22%) or somewhat important
(30%) that they encounter points of view different from traditional news
sources, and 52% replied that it is very important (24%) or somewhat impor-
tant (28%) that they get different views from official government sources.
However, only 17% of U.S. Internet users thought that the news and points of
view that they found online in relation to the Iraq War was any different from

that found in newspapers and on television. This initially seems a surprising

finding, given the diversity of views that is actually available online compared
to the mass media. Yet it is not so surprising given that few of these news and
information seekers actually visited sites other than the authoritative news
sources. The research found that 32% of the users surveyed visited U.S. tele-
vision network sites for news and 29% U.S. newspaper sites. In contrast, only
10% of the users surveyed visited foreign news organizations, 8% alternative
media sites, and 4% Web logs (survey participants were allowed to select more
than one option). According to measurements by Nielsen//NetRatings (cited
in Greenspan, 2003), the 15 most popular news sites in the United States dur-
ing the 1st week of the invasion of Iraq were CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo!News,
NYTimes.com, AOLNews, Washingtonpost.com, FoxNews, ABCNews, In-
ternet Broadcasting Systems Inc., MSN Slate, Gannet Newspapers and News-
paper Division, USATODAY.com, Marketwatch.com, Hearst Newspapers
Digital, and CBS News. Where does this leave the promise of the Internet
operating as a significant alternative to the corporate media? Although Web
logs surged in popularity during the war, by far the most popular Web log—
the globally famous dear_raed.blogspt.com accounting for 86% of traffic to
Blogspot.com—received less than 5% of the traffic that the top news sites
attracted.
Other research of U.S. Internet news confirms that users favor corporate
media sites (Kohut & Raine, 2003; Liang, 2003, p. 48; Pew Center, 2004). This
is also true for many other countries, although there are variations in online
media use, as can be expected given different political systems and cultures. In
New Zealand and Australia, the most popular online news sites are owned by
major telecommunications and media companies.4 The same is true for Japan
(see Japanmediareview.com for details). In the United Kingdom, the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is an exception in that it is a noncommercial
public broadcaster that is by far and away the most popular online news desti-
nation for U.K. citizens. However, the BBC falls behind Google, Microsoft,
and Yahoo! in terms of U.K. online population use and, in fact, is more like one
of these megaportals than a news site given its extensive entertainment con-
tent, interactive services, and its Web search engine (BBC, 2003). After the
BBC, all other popular online news sites are private and commercial.5 In
Southern Africa, the corporate media Web news sites IOL, M-Web, and
News24 dominate audiences.6 In China, the situation for alternative online
media could be seen as even worse, with a matrix of state and corporate media
dominating online attention for news (Liang, 2003).
Exceptions do exist. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, corporate and state
media sites are a great deal less popular than independent, online-based media
projects (Krasnoboka, 2002). In South Korea, which boasts a Net-savvy and
politically active population, the pioneering citizen-based participatory news

site OhmyNews draws an estimated 2 million readers daily and 15 million hits
(Gluck, 2003; Khaney, 2003). However, the general pattern, particularly in the
case of liberal capitalist nations, is the domination of online news attention by
major corporate (sometimes state-controlled) media interests via commercial
media sites and the megaportals discussed earlier. Moreover, it is U.S. media
corporations that dominate the global rankings of top online news sites in
terms of user numbers and time spent online (see www.cyberjournalist.net/
top_news_sites/ for monthly rankings of most popular news sites globally).
Given the diversity of reports and information available online, why do so
many users simply go to mainstream commercial sources? An obvious answer
would be that these news media are familiar and trusted and that they reinforce
this trust by designing their sites to signify authority, professionalism, objec-
tivity, up-to-date-ness, and so on. In the United States, market research con-
firms strong brand loyalty by Internet users to major mass media sites (Elkin,
2003). The variations in online media use noted above also fit this trust thesis.
Korea’s OhmyNews prospers from its technological and political climate,
whereas the BBC prospers from large state funding and its reputation for high-
quality professional journalism. China’s most popular online news sites are
provided by state-controlled mass media, which are also the most trusted news
source in the country (Liang, 2003). The case of Russia and Ukraine shows
that users seek out alternative online news sources more in situations where
trust in the mass media has been undermined. Another significant reason why
mass media Web sites attract so many users is that these sites tend to be the
most visible online. This visibility is because they are systematically favored
by search engine results (in the ways indicated earlier for the megaportals) and
also by hyperlink patterns—governments, civic organizations, and individuals
(on average) link their Web pages to mass media sites more than any other
information source (Hargittai, 2004; Zimmermann & Koopman, 2003). In
addition, the corporate news media parallel the megaportals in being able to
deploy their extensive content and other resources (advertising budgets, cross-
promotional strategies, strategic alliances) to not only attract attention but to
keep it. Riley, Keough, and Christiansen (1998) provided an interesting case
study of a mainstream newspaper, showing that central to the newspaper’s
online strategy is the building of an online colony to keep people in its sphere
of influence as long as possible. Through acquisitions and strategic alliances,
the newspaper has been able to build its virtual colony, offering the user a vast
amount of content and providing extensive links to other sites that it controls.
So even if a user believes that he or she is leaving the newspaper’s site through
one of the links provided, he or she simply gets to another site controlled by the
newspaper. Noncommercial media and nongovernmental organization (NGO)
sites that provide more diverse views to those offered by the corporate media
do not generally have the same level of resources to attract extensive participa-

tion (Hargittai, 2004). It is ironic to note, if such spaces do achieve large partic-
ipation levels, they can be the victim of their own success given that bandwidth
costs—especially with increasing pressure to provide audio-visual content—
can cripple a low-budget Web site (Simpson, 2003).
There are other possibilities for the voicing of difference and contestation of
meanings offered by corporate portals and professional media sites. In particu-
lar, we can think of online discussion spaces. Certainly there seems to be much
diversity and contestation of opinion within such spaces. This is less so in the
case of the major portals than in the case of those commercial media sites offer-
ing discussion forums. Although megaportals, including the big three (AOL,
MSN, Yahoo!), often provide space for a large number of user-run discussion
forums, critical dialogue tends to be buried among a myriad of specialized
interest groups, spaces of mutual support, and private transaction. In contrast
to the megaportals, many commercial news media do not offer discussion
spaces; however, those that do often provide spaces that support vibrant and
critical engagement on so-called serious issues (Boczkowski, 2002, 2004;
Light & Rogers, 1999; Tanner, 2001). This provision of citizen discussion
encourages visions of the Internet expanding democratic culture. However,
those participating in these discussions tend to be those persons already politi-
cally engaged offline (Dahlberg, 2001; Schultz, 2000). In addition, various
factors in the structuring of these discussion spaces presently limit them from
developing the full potential of the Internet for extending critical communica-
tion: Agendas tend to be structured by the media organization, discussions are
largely separated from foregrounded news reports, and there is a lack of facili-
ties for opinions to feed back into news stories. Thus, the articulation and
contestation of positions that does take place in discussion forums remains
largely hidden from the larger news readership.7
In contrast, there are a large number of independent and citizen-contributing
publishers—critical discussion spaces, bloggers, independent-media sites,
media-watch sites—that are watching and contesting the corporate news re-
portage, as well as making space for alternative stories. The opinions and cri-
tiques expressed on these sites can ultimately feed into and alter corporate
news online and offline. In this way, the media is opened to more diverse
claims and critiques, although it is often the more sensational stories and views
that are picked up by the mass media. For instance, the mass media in the
United States have, on a number of occasions, picked up and run with scandal-
ous stories from the sensationalist Drudge Report, including the Monica
Lewinsky story and, more recently, the false rumor of an affair between a grad-
uate student and Sen. John Kerry (Karr, 2004). The mass media have not been
so fast to carry stories from independent online media and media-watch sites.
Yet the Internet does provide opportunities for this to happen. Moreover, in
contexts where the mass media is not highly trusted, as seen earlier in the case

of Russia and Ukraine, users who can get online access often seek critical
information and discussion. Colonization is thus only partial, and control of
attention and meaning is highly contested. Overall, however, the general
exploration undertaken here indicates that a domination of online attention by
corporate hubs and media sites is taking place, leading to a marginalization of
online critical communication. Critique of dominant views and articulation of
alternative positions online is largely confined to the sidelined discussion
spaces of corporate portals and commercial news media sites, and to the
marginalized cyberspaces of alternative media and civic society. How does
this affect the constitution of democratic citizens? I now investigate this
question.
The Constitution of Cyberparticipants as Consumers

The corporate domination of attention not only marginalizes many voices but
also promotes the constitution of participants as individualized-instrumental
consumers rather than as critical-reflexive citizens. This constitution takes
place in many ways, and to various extents, depending on the sites concerned.
On corporate portals such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo!, public communication is
often buried within a myriad of consumer services, marketing, and privatized
practices, encouraging participants to perform as private, strategic actors
(Koerner, 2001; Patelis, 2000). News items provided are often kept brief for
easy consumption and tend to promote consumer identities. News can even be
found written as consumer advice, stories sponsored by businesses that offer
solutions to problems outlined in the stories—links at the end of stories direct-
ing readers to sponsors’ Web sites. For instance, on New Zealand’s dominant
portal—Xtra.co.nz in alliance with MSN—there was a story in early 2003 dis-
cussing “how will an Iraq war affect your investments,” with a link to where to
go for advice—to the investment company sponsoring the story. Moreover,
marketing does not simply confront the user as banner and pop-up advertise-
ments distinct from news but can be found written as stories and placed within
lists of story hyperlinks. In response to protest, Google News has removed
press releases from its lists of so-called most relevant news but does still con-
sider them acceptable content for its search results (McCullagh, 2003).
Whereas Google tags these stories press releases, some corporate portals such
as Xtra do not distinguish advertorials from news: The reader is simply
deemed a consumer to be targeted. Furthermore, there is an individualization
of news and interaction on these spaces that fragments the audience into iso-
lated consumers. As well as news written as individual consumer advice, this
individualization includes hyperlinks directing participants to personal con-
sumer interests, news customization feeding “daily me” news and information
(e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN), and so-called interactive instruments such as

polls and petitions for voicing private views. These services tend to be focused
on national identity, with portals and information sites customizing their oper-
ations to look similar to national communication services (e.g., Google.co.nz).
However, commercial ventures are increasingly taking over information and
interaction sites of civic groups focused around other identities, notably those
of race and sexuality. The aim is to build commercial portals that capture the
attention of large user communities. As a result, participants are fed a diet of
marketing and consumer-focused, politically conservative news (Gamson,
2003; McLaine, 2003). The only reprieve from this barrage of consumer-
oriented content seems to be the discussion spaces offered. However, as noted
above, when discussion groups on corporate megaportals do not simply offer
another means for material transactions, they often involve the reinforcement
of private interests.
The major commercial news media sites, in contrast to the more general
corporate Internet portals, present themselves as maintaining some traditional
news standards. They do not simply declare themselves quality press but sig-
nify this by using the style of news reporting that has come to be coded as
objective and systematic. Moreover, as discussed above, some of these sites
provide spaces for public discussion, which encourages communicative action
oriented to citizenship. However, to conform to models of quality journalism,
these media sideline public (citizen-constituting) participation in the writing
of news and the development of associated Web sites, participation that is so
nicely enabled by the Internet as demonstrated by the Independent Media
Centers (indymedia.org). Many news media sites continue to provide some
citizen-oriented interactive services, such as e-mail feedback forms and public
discussion groups. However, most corporate online news sites only pay lip
service to citizen participation. In fact, many newspapers are now simply pro-
viding online digital replicas of their newsprint editions, abandoning all inter-
active features (Lasica, 2003).
Furthermore, there is a noticeable encroachment of advertising into edito-
rial content on many professional media sites (Boczkowski, 2002, p. 275). Not
only is advertising taking up significant space above and alongside news clips
but, on many news sites, marketing links are mixed in with news links, adver-
tisements are placed within editorial columns, and pop-up advertisements dis-
tract the reader and obscure the news story until removed. Moreover, market-
ing and advertising personnel are having an increasing influence on what gets
covered, via topic selection and budget allocation (Boczkowski, 2004). De-
spite all this, online advertising revenues are failing to produce profits for news
media Web ventures. This failure is leading many media operations to charge
for all or part of their content and services (hAnluain, 2004; Lasica, 2003). It is
hard to tell at this early stage whether this move to charge for content will lead
to more open and less consumer-oriented news or will simply drive the online

world further toward a consumer model, where journalists are compelled to

produce material that will attract a paying audience.
The merging of advertising and editorial material is most apparent on
dedicated corporate news Web-casting sites such as WNBC’s Feedroom.com.
Here, a limited range of conservative, entertainment-oriented news clips and
slick advertising are served up together in the same format. This Web casting
is attempting to combine the interactivity of the Internet with the audience-
pulling power of television, to attract large audiences and serve them with
interactive marketing. As the Feedroom enthusiastically claims on its Web
site, “The Feedroom is where Television and the Internet converge,” it is “just
like TV, only better.” The very name Feedroom evokes ideas of a passive audi-
ence, interactivity being reduced to choosing channels and products. Of
course, Web casting can be developed and deployed as a democratic and criti-
cal communication tool for bringing sidelined issues and concerns to a wider
public. The human rights media project Witness.org gives local activists
around the world video cameras and field training and then Web casts the
resulting stories. This allows previously unheard voices to be broadcast glob-
ally. Similarly, the international human rights and sustainable development
news network OneWorld.net supports limited Web casting through its online
radio and television, and the U.S. alternative media organization Democracy
Now provides audio and video streaming of its reports and interviews. Yet
these democratic initiatives have limited resources and will continue to strug-
gle to attract a large online audience given the increasing monopolization of
attention by the content-rich and distribution-controlling corporate portals and
commercial media sites.
Extending Critical Communication

Through the Internet
In this article, I undertook a preliminary exploration of the corporate domi-
nation of Internet attention and the impact of this on critical communication.
This provides the basis for further research to identify more fully how various
voices are being represented on particular online portals and media sites and
how exactly users are participating. However, a general trend is already clear:
Although the Internet provides for the articulation and contestation of diverse
views in multiple spaces, corporate portals and media sites are directing much
online attention toward conservative news and consumer practices. This situa-
tion goes against the vision of the Internet operating as an alternative medium
to the mass media, as a space where positions and critique excluded offline are
foregrounded.
Despite this domination of attention, extensive critical communication con-
tinues to take place through the Internet on an impressive scale. As well as a

certain amount of critical interaction taking place within corporate sites, thou-
sands of online civil society and independent media spaces are facilitating
diasporic, alternative, and counterpublics that provide safe places for the artic-
ulation, contestation, and development of identities and positions and for the
organization of online and offline actions to publicize voices excluded from
dominant discourses (Downey & Fenton, 2003; Franklin, 2001; Lekhi, 2000;
Mills, 2002; Salazar, 2003). Moreover, there are a number of initiatives work-
ing to support the development and publicity of marginal voices online, initia-
tives such as the Association for Progressive Communications (APC; www.
apc.org). The APC is a global network of civil society organizations dedicated
to supporting progressive groups through the use of information and commu-
nication technologies (ICTs), by providing Internet access, information (on
ICT policy, technologies, rights, etc), and applications (Web-publishing soft-
ware). As well as assisting technically, the APC links up NGO sites. Other
democratic initiatives have developed not-for-profit online portals and search
tools specifically for making visible the diverse voices and critical practices
that can be found online. For instance, DemocracyGroups.org offers an online
directory of 550 plus U.S.-based electronic mail discussions and e-mail news-
letters related to social change and democratic participation to enhance grass-
roots organizations. Many portals of cultural groups who are socially margin-
alized also exist, such as Te Karere Ipurangi (Maori News Online) that lists
online Maori information and interaction sites (see http://maorinews.com/
karere/). Another exciting initiative is Clift’s Open Groups (opengroups.org),
which aims to build a directory system to provide greater access to online pub-
lic discussion forums by developing a set of open standards, through which
online interactive hosts can describe their forums to help people search, locate,
evaluate, and join ongoing interactive public groups across the Internet.
In spite of such initiatives, the dominant voices online continue to be those
that are dominant offline. What further can be done to give marginal voices and
critical practices more prominence online and thus help overcome the bias
toward certain views and forms of participation in political arenas at large?
The implementation of public-service-type criteria on major portals and
media sites would help; however, it is highly unlikely that arguments for such
criteria would be successful, given the current dominance of neoliberal dis-
course and the diversity of material actually available (somewhere) online.
Similar to print media, the problem of vast attention inequalities between pub-
lications is masked by abundance; and this abundance, combined with the sim-
plistic notion that people freely choose what they consume, convinces policy
makers of the inherent democracy of the medium. We must look to other strate-
gies for bringing to the fore in cyberspace those viewpoints and critical forms
of practice silenced or marginalized in offline media.

One strategy for resourcing, linking, and making visible progressive groups
is to build major public media sites. The BBC has attempted such a site for
U.K. citizens. The BBC successfully competes for online attention with cor-
porate megaportals and media sites by drawing on its global reputation for
news and information and by providing a Web site with extensive content and
services (see BBC, 2003). The BBC’s site draws together in one space investi-
gative news and hundreds of public discussion groups covering diverse issues.
Some groups have been set aside specifically for public debate on the BBC’s
own programming and interactive services. These latter discussions are re-
sponded to (at times) by BBC staff members and provide an additional feed-
back system to formally organized consultation sessions and the standard e-
mail form provided for direct communication with the BBC. Furthermore, its
new iCan service allows groups to develop and publicize citizen projects.
However, the BBC’s site is developing on the back of an established and
well-funded public service institution, capitalizing on its offline reputation
and resources, and doing so in the context of a third-way politics pushing on-
line democracy as a solution to social problems (see BBC, 2003). It is improb-
able that many other governments could, or would, foot the bill to support such
a major operation, and the BBC’s public service status and funding is itself
increasingly being questioned in the United Kingdom. Moreover, despite the
BBC’s so-called independence, its site remains embedded within dominant
ideologies that define news discourse conservatively and marginalize radical
positions, if less so than in the case of the U.S. corporate media. The BBC site
also continues to rely on mainstream, professional journalist codes and so
aims to signify itself as a quality news service, which has steered its online
offerings away from experimentation with citizen participation in news pro-
duction and also from the provision of direct links to alternative or radical
media organizations.
It is unlikely, within liberal capitalist nations, that state-driven initiatives
will improve on the less-than-ideal BBC effort at providing public space on-
line for critical communication. In any case, it seems sensible to find ways to
support the independent directory and search system initiatives mentioned
above that are attempting to point people to spaces of critical communication
online. The major limitation facing these initiatives is that they must them-
selves be made visible before they can be effective. One simple but possibly
very helpful solution would be to have all ISP home pages, Internet mega-
portals, mass media sites, and government home pages prominently display a
link to a progressive metaportal carrying major civic directories and search
tools. It would be preferable to have such a metaportal as the first Web page
users encounter when logging on to the Internet, enforcing an initial separation
between carrier and content. However, this is unrealistic to expect given the
current neoliberal policy climate and the powerful resistance likely from cor-

porate media to any such requirement. Hence, the more limited proposal that
major portals simply display a link to a civic metaportal. Voluntary compli-
ance in this matter is not unheard of. For instance, OneWorld.net achieved a
news syndication agreement with Yahoo!News in 2001 to provide some of the
news for Yahoo!’s World Section. However, further research is needed to
determine the extent that this syndication might simply result in cooptation. In
any case, compliance to public service norms will remain exceptional in a
commercially dominated environment. Regulation would thus be necessary.
Moreover, public funding would be needed to develop and promote the civic
portal. Such regulation and funding should be seen as central to a democratic
government’s role in protecting and advancing a strong public sphere and
should be incorporated into e-democracy programs. However, government
must not be involved in the operation of such critical communication initia-
tives. The actual design, development, governance, and day-to-day running of
any civic metaportal need to be undertaken by those civil society groups
already active and successful in fostering initiatives extending online public
participation.
Even this limited proposal may be unrealistic, given the present alliance
between neoliberal government and powerful corporations, and given the gen-
eral ideological climate celebrating consumer sovereignty, free markets, tech-
nological solutions, and the inherent democratic character of the Internet. In
this environment, putting forward regulatory-based solutions does indeed
invite hostility. For significant advancement of any such proposal, a stronger
understanding and commitment to democratic communication is needed
among policy makers and the general public. To bring this about, progressive
civic organizations challenging consumer models of politics and articulating
democratic ideals for communication media are required. A number of such
organizations do presently exist, including academic centers, such as the Yale
Information Society with its Democracy in Cyberspace initiative; professional
organizations, such as the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
with its Public Sphere Project; independent public-media advocacy groups,
such as the Center for Digital Democracy with its digital media policy activ-
ism; and civic networks, such as the APC with its ICT policy advocacy and
Internet rights lobbying.8 Although not (yet) particularly influential at policy
level, these groups are working hard to broaden public understanding and
debate about the need to develop ways to limit the corporate colonization of
the Internet. As such, these groups provide the basis for mobilizing support for
policies and initiatives that would demarginalize critical communication on-
line and enable the Internet to more fully fulfill its potential to enhance the
public sphere, a mobilization that for success needs the support of critical
intellectuals and democratically oriented civic groups.

Notes
1. Following Habermas (2001), quality discourse in the public sphere is open, reciprocal,
reasoned, reflexive, sincere, inclusive, and noncoercive. For an outline of these criteria, see
Dahlberg (2004b).
2. Control of the entry point into cyberspace is also possible through computer operating
systems and applications software. I discuss this possibility with reference to the case of
Microsoft in Dahlberg (2004a).
3. See regularly updated research results at Nielsen//NetRatings (www.nielsen-netratings.
com/) and Cyberatlas.internet.com.
4. The only exception here is that in New Zealand the State Broadcaster’s (TVNZ) Web site
Nzoom.com ranks in the top four New Zealand media sites for popularity. However, TVNZ is a
commercial and conservatively focused media organization with only limited public service
obligations. See Redsheriff.com for ongoing Internet-market research for New Zealand and
Australia.
5. The Guardian report of MediaMetrix research can be found at http://media.guardian.
co.uk/newmedia/tables/0%2C7681%2C638820%2C00.html (retrieved February 19, 2004).
6. For more information on South African online news sites, see Redsheriff (www.
redsheriff.com/us/news/news_4_208.html) and the Online Publishers Association of South
Africa (www.online-publishers.org.za/).
7. There are very few exceptions in terms of the lack of reader-responsive online news.
Boczkowski’s (2004) study of three cutting-edge online news sites led him to argue that online
news is developing in response to readers. However, at present, most online news sites are not
developing in this way. In fact, two of the three specialized cases Boczkowski studied have sub-
sequently closed down—HoustonChronicle.com’s Virtual Voyager and the nonprofit sites in
New Jersey Online’s Community Connection. The third case, The New York Times’ Technology
Section may be more user oriented than the majority of corporate media sites but is hardly radi-
cal in its approach to journalism. It largely contains reader views within discussion forums and
does not encourage citizen participation in the writing of news stories as in alternative media
sites.
8. The Yale Information Society Democracy in Cyberspace initiative can be found at http://
islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/strongdem/overview.html, the Computer Professionals for Social Re-
sponsibilities’ Public Sphere Project at www.cpsr.org/program/sphere/, the Center for Digital
Democracy at www.democraticmedia.org/, and the APC’s ICT policy advocacy work at http://
apc.org/english/rights/index.shtml.
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