Recent appraisals of developing media technologies, such as the Internet, have emphasized their potential to fragment audiences. This fragmentation is presumed to result because the technologies allow and even encourage people to narrow the focus of their media consumption to pursue their individualized news interests and needs. As Katz has argued, such a narrowed focus is problematic for the functioning of modern democracies. Fragmented audiences are unlikely to consume a common diet of news, potentially leaving them underinformed about central issues facing a nation. Individually tailored media use, Katz writes, "seems to be fast displacing national comings-together, and pleasure seems to be pushing public affairs ever more out of sight." Such an environment threatens the very foundation of political systems based on assumptions of citizen awareness and involvement.