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244 Manuel Castells et al.by radio. Because the Catalan government television (broadcasting only inCatalan) is the main television network in Catalonia, the dominance of televisionreinforces the feeling of a cultural, national community. What isspecific to Catalan society vis-á-vis Europe is a lower percentage of readersof newspapers and magazines. But it is significant that, while most newspapersare in the Spanish language, the newspapers based in Catalonia have amuch larger readership than the main Spanish newspapers, such as the leadingnewspaper in Spain, El Pais, which is based in Madrid. So, nationalcultural identity, in this case, is not expressed in language preference (sincethere is not much choice in Catalan) but in the focus on the Catalan-orientedpress.In this context, the main effect of the Internet is that intense activity onthe Internet reduces time spent watching television, and this is particularlythe case for young viewers, a phenomenon that replicates trends in othercountries, such as the United States. So, in terms of national identity, televisionand radio in Catalonia, and the mass media as a whole, seem to conveya sentiment of resistance identity, while the Internet appears associated withan emerging Catalan project identity, built in relative autonomy vis-á-vis themass media. Indeed, the Internet has been associated in some analyses to theconstruction of autonomy from the point of view of social actors (Katz andRice, 2002). We now turn to this analysis.THE INTERNET AND THE CONSTRUCTION OFAUTONOMYThe Internet is a technology of freedom. It allows the construction of selfdirectednetworks of horizontal communication, bypassing institutionalcontrols. It also allows information to be retrieved, and recombined inapplied knowledge at the service of purposive social action. Thus, thehypothesis has often been put forward of the role of the Internet in stimulatingproject-oriented activities by individuals or collective social actors. Inour study of Catalonia we tested the relevance of this hypothesis. To do so,we built a typology of projects of autonomy, each one expressed by empiricalindicators defined in the population of our survey. We used factor analysisto obtain the clustering of these indicators in six different factors,statistically independent, which constitute the empirical basis of our analyticaltypology. We then studied the relationship between the differential presenceof the social characteristics in each type and the use of Internet. Table10.2 presents the results of the factor analysis, whose methodology can beconsulted in the book cited as the general source for our study (Castells etal., 2003).