Observations of J. Rosen webpiece

J. Rosen's Audience Atomization Overcome: why the internet weakens the authority of the press explains real media democracy. This title seems to represent the desires of people not to atomized but to have a forum where their legitamate concerns can be debated. Blogs, social networking and alternative media domanins allow this to happen. The diagram Rosen provides breaks down three realms of "consensus". The inner core is the Sphere of Consensus, this sphere encompasses anything that is thought to be generally agreed upon by most in society, also called conventional wisdom. Rosen explains that before the internet in the age of big media, the press dominated this conventional wisdom and the second sphere of legitamate debate. This sphere lies just outside the sphere of consensus, protecting it from what Noam Chomsky might call the "rascal multitude". The sphere of legitamate debate consists of publicly debated issues inwhich the solution, or in most cases the means by which to reach a solution held in common are subject to debate. For instance, Newsweek might ask the tough questions like; How's Barack Obama going to save capitalism? But a more interesting question might be; Is Capitalism, in it's present form, working? Yet in contemporary American culture this question is considered "off limits", Rosen has a sphere for these debates as well. He calls it the sphere of devience. This sphere encompasses any belief or theory that falls outside the guidelines considered "legitamate" by those who control the realms of debate. This often leads to disenfranchisement causing many folks in this sphere to abandon the debate altogether. However, if we care about the future we have a responsibility to understand how the media system works. The audience for this piece would be anyone who's longed for more serious changes, risked themselves for democratic principals, who're disenfranchised by the system and want it to change. Rosen claims the mainstream media strives to silence debate from outside of the sphere of legitamate debate. Rosen asserts that the freedom of information sharing and democratic nature of the internet have all but eliminated the mainstream media's control over the sphere of legitamate debate, and I agree. The web has allowed folks to social network and force flexability, even if only a little, from the mainstream. Though these new technologies are a wonderful tool, I can't help but notice they are desensitizing the public to being connected and even monitored nearly round the clock. We must be mindful and fight for our minds, because it's always surprising how quickly the future becomes the present.