Mass Media: Democratic or Hegemonic?

The role of mass media (culture industry) has been variously defined and hotly debated. There are two sides of the matter: one its democratic potential, and the other its use for hegemonic purpose. The idea is who produces and who consumes knowledge or information. What can be the effect of the rise of World Wide Web in information politics? What about the authenticity of the news? On the other side is the tendency in some intellectuals to question the information or knowledge produced and reproduced by the dominant media as they are in one way or the other appropriated by the rulers. So, some people think that rumors can be more truthful than the news in dominant news media or the information in official discourses. Can Internet or WWW provide a space for rumor and have some revolutionary(?) potential?
Mass media has the potential to shape the mind of the people. Very often people talk of the appropriation and distortion of information or knowledge by media to fulfill their vested interest. However, there are others who see an immense democratic potential in visual mass media as it opens up the avenues of mass media to the general public. For instance, people like Adorno and Horkeimer see mass media as a means of control and domination rather than freedom and liberation. Whereas people like Habermas and Rorty see a high potential in mass media (as public sphere) to keep watch on the activities of the rulers and to indirectly but very powerfully keep them on the right track.
The Marxists (like Adorno and Horkeimer) believe that the mass media is mostly owned by the big corporate houses and businessman or multinational companies and they do nothing more than providing consumers to those companies and corporate houses. The media, through various advertisements, instills the idea that “we buy therefore we are.” But as the writer in this book says, though that is partially true, media is not so much monolithic to propagate and promote the values of the single community and to fulfill its selfish interests. Now media has become diverse and both the forces work simultaneously. On the one hand, media like TVs have started participatory approach to the representation of voices of the diverse population. On the other hand, the rise of WWW has offered multiple forums to counter the hegemonic practices of the dominant media and the official discourses. On the one hand Internet offers an ample and incredibaly vast global reach for the dominant media, on the other hand, it can equally be used by any group to articulate their view and counter the hegemonic practices.
However, there is still another complexity. Do the people at the margin own the public sphere? I think the matter of access is again there. Second is the issue of authenticity. Though we question it, most of the public still believe that what CNN or BBC reports is authentic and what we see on the internet is either false or fictional. These big media houses have the resources and manpower to gather information, though screened through their orientation, and to disseminate it. Whereas the news or information served by individuals or a particular group is considered biased or one-sided or insufficient. Maybe we can never come out of this contradiction.

Question for discussion: How does Internet or World Wide Web affect the role of media in the present world? What can be the positive and negative aspects of it?