And now this:

The question, "is the Internet (part of) a new public sphere?" takes the existence of ‘the Internet’ as a unified sociopolitical entity for granted. From a computer science standpoint, the Internet is a well-defined technological infrastructure of meticulously classified and categorized computers, cables, and code. In any other context, it is a gross category error to invoke the unity of the Internet. It has no more potential to become a new public sphere than do the airwaves that made possible the modern mass-mediated public sphere. A better question might be, "what is the role of the Internet-based discourse communities in the constitution of the public sphere?” When the question is phrased this way, it becomes clear that the initial version attributes a problematic but widely assumed stability to “the Internet”. While this may seem like a trivial technical distinction, it becomes quite relevant when considering the similarly-constituted entity known as “the blogosphere.”

-R. Stuart Geiger, "Does Habermas Understand the Internet?". gnovis 10.1, Fall 2009.