Disintermediation

Today, politicians and communicators can deliver a message untouched, and spread it to the public without the distorting interpretation of the middleman. On the other side, journalists, mainstream media and intermediary bodies are increasingly struggling to maintain their prominence in the public debate. While technology has given politicians powerful means to bypass the old media become themselves a medium, disintermediation cannot be however be considered just a technological phenomenon, but most importantly a cultural phenomenon, generated by media themselves, and by politics. Disintermediation may be the chance for a renovation of the decayed relationship between politics and public opinion, allowing an informal and direct dialogue and generating an interactive proximity, a positive re-intermediation, a restored inclusion of innovative and web-savvy cultural intermediaries, and the rise of new forms of political and social organisations. In this work, the very concept of disintermediation will be questioned and 'debunked': is that merely a method of message delivery, or is it a more complex phenomenon that includes a wider range of agents and processes?