How did the Internet emerge as a mass medium?
Through claims that could not be fulfilled and laws that could not be considered constitutional, the Internet has emerged as a, if not the, new mass medium (a medium, which because of its flexibility and variability, put the term mass sous rature). These “false” claims did not simply mistake or propagate propaganda for reality; they affected Internet development and ideology, and these “virtualities” were (and still are) surprisingly resilient in the face of contradictory experiences. The same corporations selling the Internet as empowering sponsored debates on the digital divide; the lack of dot-com profitability did not affect belief in the new economy. The dot-coms turned into dot.bombs through a “fact,” their unprofitability, that had always been known, and this fact challenges the idea that better accountability ensures better actions, that all we need is better information, more transparency. Indeed, as I discuss in detail in chapter 2, the notion that better information means be
