This article was posted online by Jay Rosen in 2006. He extolls the powers of the blog, hailing it the ‘modern printing press,’ due to its ability to give more authors a voice. Information can now flow form citizen to citizen, rather than from institution to citizen. Rosen contends that audiences are more powerful and active, and thus there is a ‘new balance of power.’

Interestingly, this article was posted 10 years ago, before social media, smartphones and Netflix became ubiquitous. The user communities that Rosen would be referencing back then, would have been replaced or morphed into different spaces. Yet, the argument he makes is increasingly relevant today, as audiences continue to interact with each other in different ways.

One of the responses, by Mark Howard, raises an interesting point to consider. Rosen’s article is quite aggressive in tone, suggesting that all audiences have a desire to be active and reclaim power from institutions. However, Howard considers that there is perhaps a subset of audience that wants to be passive, and indeed, there are media producers who depend on passive audience. Home shopping channels come to mind, for example.  If all audiences were critical of the media they were presented with, I doubt these channels would exist or make a profit.