Making common sense of cyberlibertarian ideology: The journalistic consecration of John Perry Barlow

Abstract

This study critiques the way in which journalism and other media used John Perry Barlow, an early Internet enthusiast, as a source to make common sense of cyberlibertarian ideology as the Internet emerged as a dominant communications technology in the 1990s and early-2000s. During this period, journalists used Barlow, someone with no technical expertise but a reputation as a prophet of the new technology, to translate the deregulatory, conservative ideals of free markets and speech so central to cyberlibertarianism for mass consumption. In the process, Barlow and these journalists depoliticized a central political question about the Internet that remains today: how and how much it should be regulated. This amplification of cyberlibertarianism as doxa in popular discourses during this period helped foreclose on alternative conceptions of the Internet not only in the press but also in discussions of policy.

Keywords:

• Journalism
• John Perry Barlow
• cyberlibertarianism
• 1990s Internet history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Buozis

Michael Buozis is an assistant professor at Muhlenberg College. He received his PhD from Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. His research, which has been published in Journalism, Journalism Studies, American Journalism, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Convergence, examines journalism, digital culture, and tec hnology from a critical cultural studies perspective.