'Media of the masses taking over'[fr] 

For our readers that have not read your book “The Pronetarian Revolution”, could you summarise what you understand by “from mass media to media of the masses”? 

One of the main reasons behind the rise of “pronetariat” and the constantly increasing influence of “media of the masses” is the confidence crisis undergone by readers and users vis-à-vis traditional mass media. 

In the past thirty years, written press has lost in credibility, to the extent that some are wondering today whether written media have become an outdated communication mode. 

The same goes for television and sometimes for radio. The most astonishing result of this confidence crisis is the alarming drop in newspaper distribution, particularly of dailies, even if other phenomena contribute to this drop too. 

Another reason behind the mass media crisis is of course the increasing success of Internet and especially the creation of information by internet-users themselves. The blog phenomenon, interactive websites, P2P and personal diaries have contributed to flooding the Net with quality information that is extremely diverse but often original, giving a new angle to the news. 

The creation of content by "pronetarians" is gaining ground. After music and films, new domains conquered by pronetarians include the press, with the advent and success of online papers written by “bloggers” or non-journalists. Those are the roots of the emergence of the “media of the masses”. 

Since “The Symbiotic Man” in 1995, you have been talking about the emergence of a collective conscience, the transformation of networks into a form of planetary brain: the “cybiont”. In its February 2006 White Book, the European Commission hopes for the emergence of a European public sphere. Do you see any potential synergies between the ‘conscientisation’ of internet users in Europe and the progressive constitution of a more democratic, citizen-orientated European Union? 

Yes, I do. Internet and especially the Web 2.0 allow the reinvention of participative methods founded on new relational technologies that could be of interest to the big institutions – notably European – that are at the basis of our societies’ equilibrium. There will be no real participatory democracy without respect for the big institutions and without collaboration in the framework of their fundamental missions. But there is still a lot to do before we see the premises of a true participatory democracy emerge and citizen co-regulation of tomorrow’s big communication systems on a European scale. 

During the French campaign on the Constitution, the majority of traditional media were recommending the ‘yes’ vote while – according to many observers – the ‘no’ camp dominated in the « new media », notably the classical web and blogs. How do you explain this? What teachings can we learn from this for future campaigns on Community issues? 

Media of the masses carry more nuances than classical media. Citizens recognise themselves in the multitude of diverse expressions, relayed by blogs inter-connected by RSS, a surprising amplification system. The “buzz” between internet-users can make opinions move, much more than traditional political campaigns using the big classical media. 

You are the initiator of a successful « media of the masses »: www.AgoraVox.fr . Its heart lies clearly in France, at least in the francophone version. Other than specialised media such as EurActiv or generalist international media, there does not seem to exist a big European political media. Do you think the pronetarians will generate one? How can the linguistic challenge be resolved so as to allow an exchange accross borders, that goes beyond the English-writing minorities? 

There already exists www.agoravox.com , on which Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Swedes or Russians express themselves in English. It is up to these pronetarian neo-journalists to make this media evolve on a European scale. 

Search engines such as Google and new applications like Google Earth are disturbing to some in Europe because they are of American origin. What do you think of European ‘industrial policy’ attempts such as Quaero? 

Quaero is not a search engine. It is a grouping of software initiatives of a very good level, capable of bringing intelligent solutions to the numerous problems that are caused by decentralised access to information. 

Do you personally advise the European institutions? Which recommendations would you like to give them as regards their communication and media policy? 

Trust the "Long Tail " of pronetarians to find innovative ways of communicating Europe using the new technologies of the Web 2.0. For example a political "MySpace" or a "Delicious" with tags, to rethink “citizens’ Europe” with the help of collaborative intelligence.