The paper’s general nature and scope is that of a comparative study of media.
The author’s objective is to demonstrate some ways in which the print-based culture’s conception of the internet developed along lines similar to the way generations of Orientalists conceived the Orient as an inferior or threatening version of the Occident, according to Edward W. Said’s Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient.
The methodology begins with an analysis of media according to Marshall McLuhan’s concepts of: the global village, hot and cool media, “the medium is the message”, and rear-view-mirrorism. From this we establish i) that the internet is the coolest medium, and ii) the importance of disregarding content in order to comprehend the message of the medium in its functions.
Factors of media control are then examined for their functions using the propaganda model devised by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. First of all the hot media are regarded in the light of the model’s five filters. Then the four chief criticisms of the model are rehearsed before passing the internet through the same filters.
The propaganda model reveals how the internet responds in a dramatically different manner to the hotter media despite the habitual tendency of print culture to treat it as an inferior or threatening version of existing media.
Sources include works by the above authors, newspaper archive material, published academic papers, and some internet material.
The results of this process are used to show the fundamental differences between the internet and other media before showing the parallels to be found in Said’s work.
The paper contributes a re-evaluation of the way society is affected by established media and its perceptions of new media.