Barry Wellman wrote: > I learn something new from this list all the time. > > Reading the digest today, I learned that Capitalism is basically > responsible for media lies. > > Which I guess excludes socialism, fascism, theocracies, > authorianism, etc. At the risk of repeating others. No one, as far as i can see, argued that: "Only capitalism produces Media Lies" In which case the objection might have validity. but in general if A=> B Then C=> B is not a refutation. I am not sure at all that the internet can be studied, as *might* be being implied here, without reference to the society it is largely embedded within, and that society's main organisation of power - which surely includes corporate capitalism and a corporate controlled and organised mass media. (We might add a largely corporately run and dominated Internet while we are at it, but i'll stay conservative and leave that out :) Within the context of the immeadiate discussion, the question remains whether dean's campaign has been 'derailed' by the exercise of power, or whatever, which is not primarily based in the Internet but elsewhere. Thus, while he could do things which may not have been possible without the net, this is not sufficient to counter other factors, one of which might be the power of the media to disseminate another line. There might be other factors as well - the sequential organisation of the primaries being one of them. These are areas for research surely? It also indicates that poltics is a major way that people interpret the responses of others when engaged in online discussions, and that we cannot be free of offline categories that easily. They might even take on a greater importance than they do offline, because online we only have cliches to resolve the essential ambiguity of language, and partly because we tend to have fairly simple, non-complex, ties with each other which might lead to us looking for more complex interpretations. jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER ======================================================================== This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. ========================================================================