Communication Power

ISBN-13: 9780199567041 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 608 str.

Manuel Castells

Opis

We live in the midst of a revolution in communication technologies that affects the way in which people feel, think, and behave. The media have become the space where power strategies are played out. In the current technological context mass communication goes beyond traditional media and includes the Internet and mobile communication.
In this wide-ranging and powerful book, Manuel Castells analyses the transformation of the global media industry by this revolution in communication technologies. He argues that a new communication system, mass self-communication, has emerged, and power relationships have been profoundly modified by the emergence of this new communication environment. Created in the commons of the Internet this communication can be locally based, but globally connected. It is built through messaging, social networks sites, and blogging, and is now being used by the millions around the world who have access to the Internet.
Drawing on a wide range of social and psychological theories, Castells presents original research on political processes and social movements. He applies this analysis to numerous recent events--the misinformation of the American public on the Iraq War, the global environmental movement to prevent climate change, the control of information in China and Russia, Barak Obama's internet-based presidential campaigns, and (in this new edition) responses to recent political and economic crises such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. On the basis of these case studies he proposes a new theory of power in the information age based on the management of communication networks
Justly celebrated for his analysis of the network society, Castells here builds on that work, offering a well grounded and immensely challenging picture of communication and power in the 21st century. This is a book for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics and character of the modern world.

Recenzje

Castells has done it again, a masterpiece of global perspective and enviable erudition. Moving beyond his trilogy on the information age, Castells focuses on how cultural, economic and particularly political power relationships are constituted and sustained through systematic communication flows. A new line of analysis draws on neuroscience and cognitive psychology to track the role of emotion in political communication. Case studies include global media deregulation, the politics of scandal, framing the war in Iraq, ecological social movements, the Obama presidential candidacy and a fascinating comparison of media control dynamics in Russia and China. Advance praise from W. Russell Neuman, Evans Professor of Media Technology, University of Michigan

O autorze

Manuel Castells is University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, as well as Research Professor of Information Society at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at MIT and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University. He was Professor of Sociology and of Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1979 to 2003. He has published 23 books, including the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Blackwell, 1996-2000), translated into 22 languages, and The Internet Galaxy (OUP, 2001) translated into 15 languages. He is a Fellow of the European Academy, of the British Academy, and of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics. He has received 14 honorary doctorates and has been knighted by France, Catalonia, Finland, Portugal, and Chile.