The Internet, despite being partially a print-based medium, contains discourse more similar in a crucial way to television than traditional text: It encourages the written soundbite, the quick shot from the hip, the pithy remark steeped in attitude. Viewers expect only this. Anything more, they jump afield. Most of them prefer attitude or image over substance, design over content. If you attempt to address an issue with depth, viewers change the channel. Just like on TV. So I’ll keep this short. But before you continue with your search, before you follow yet another link that leads only to more links, note that I, and others, have begun to call Internet users “viewers,” not “readers.”
[Editor’s Note: The description above was written in 1997; it still seems to characterize our interactions with the web today.]
This portion of the site is a magazine of media criticism. Some of it contains indepth, academically oriented content under the rubric “theory.” The site aims to provide stand-alone content on media cultural studies, mass communication, media sociology, and sociolinguistics. I’m not talking about a just a list of links to more links, though it offers some of that too, but working papers and published essays on these subjects.