For Landow and others, hypertext became the electronic realization of poststructuralist theory. Many of the qualities that the poststructuralists had been claiming for print—the instability and the intertextuality of the text, the loss of authority of the author, and the changed relationship between author, text, and reader—were realized in a literal or operational way in the computer.

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The point is that film critics were and still are examining a mass medium to which they will not in general make a practical contribution. The same has been true for the critics of radio and television and to some extent even the mass print genres of magazines, newspapers, and trade fiction. […] When cultural studies critics now approach digital media, they often assume that these new media must follow the same pattern of hegemonic production and resistant reception. They look for examples of new media forms that can be characterized as mass media, because they are comfortable with the broadcast model in which the control of the media form is centralized.

[…]

Whether qualitative or quantitative, formal theories focus on aspects that are by definition under the control of the designer or producer. Cultural theories place their focus elsewhere. In showing how the weight of global capital defines new media production, a cultural theory seems to be taking control away from the individual designer or producer.

Jay David Bolter. „Theory and Practice in New Media Studies“