Collective Consciousness and Internet

The term 'Collective Consciousness' originates with Durkheim, for whom it means 'one's awareness of one's membership in a group'.  On that basis, the Internet can be characterized as cultivating a Collective Consciousness in anyone who participates in it, thereby potentially influencing how one conducts oneself towards others.  In contrast, in another meaning of the expression, a collective is the subject of a consciousness, and some are characterizing the Internet on that basis.  But, absent in this second rendering, is any account of the relation between the collective consciousness and that of an individual member.  Now, such an absence is a breeding ground for alienation, with the potential for members becoming subordinate to an opaque power that is either inhuman or in the hands of controlling special interests, e. g. a mechanistic bureaucracy.  So, to prevent the Internet from becoming a medium for one Totalitarianism or another, the Collectivity that it embodies must remained grounded in its constituents, e. g. via an Organicist relation with them.