The Internet’s New Public Spaces
Andrew Lih
The Wikipedia Revolution
15 June 2009

Old Media
One Many
In person Publishing
One Phone call Broadcasting
Letter to editor
Many Call-in show

Web 1.0 Media
One Many
Email, SMS Email blast
One Instant message Web site, CMS
Feedback form Chat room
Many Comments Mailing list

Web 2.0 Media
One Many
Facebook
One LinkedIn Blogging
(Discovery)
Blog
Many comments
Wikipedia

Twitter
One Many
Direct
One message
µ blogging
Many @username #hashtag

Commons
One Many
One Wikipedia
(Knowledge commons)
Twitter
Many (Information commons)

Metaphors: Wikipedia
Community names: village
pump, forum, esplanade

Commons properties
Open and accessible
Navigable
Human-oriented
Safe
Adaptable

Wikipedia and Twitter
Community driven norms
Situated (custom) software
Fast adaptation
Low participation barrier
Public spaces/zeitgeist

Distinction
“Free culture” and Creative
Commons
vs.
Communications commons
creating public spaces

Lessig
“weirdly totalitarian”
communications of the
20th century yields to
“read/write”

M2M Information Pyramid
?
wisdom
Wikipedia
knowledge / collaboration
Twitter
Information / messaging
P2P, BitTorrent
data / transmission

News industry
Journalism not doomed
Guiding the public to
wisdom
Fortune at the top of the
pyramid?

A new digital commons
has emerged as a global
public space for discourse
and deliberation, fulfilling a
journalistic need

The old monolithic media giants
will go away for good
A modern and diverse news
landscape will be re-constituted in
these public spaces

Approach
Democracy x
Socialism x
Deliberative adhocracy √

For China,
a technology first adopted
for entertainment, can be
a deliberative space
designed for social justice