Synopses & Reviews
We live in the midst of a revolution in communication technologies that affects the way in which people feel, think, and behave. The mass media (including web-based media), Manuel Castells argues, has become the space where political and business power strategies are played out; power now lies in the hands of those who understand or control communication.
Over the last thirty years, Castells has emerged as one of the world's leading communications theorists. In this, his most far-reaching book for a decade, he explores the nature of power itself, in the new communications environment. His vision encompasses business, media, neuroscience, technology, and, above all, politics. His case histories include global media deregulation, the misinformation that surrounded the invasion of Iraq, environmental movements, the role of the internet in the Obama presidential campaign, and media control in Russia and China. In the new network society of instant messaging, social networking, and blogging--"mass self-communication"--politics is fundamentally media politics. This fact is behind a worldwide crisis of political legitimacy that challenges the meaning of democracy in much of the world.
Deeply researched, far-reaching in scope, and incisively argued, this is a book for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics and character of the modern world.
"How could Manuel Castells have predicted that now is the time of the perfect storm? I do not know. But I do know that his new book coincides with the largest downturn in global economies since the 1930s, with the most important American election since the 1960s, with a most radical transformation of world politics in many generations, and with the most profound reevaluation of the lives of modern citizens, from what they value to how they communicate. We have become used to Castells' careful scholarship and penetrating analyses but in this new book he cuts deeper into the heart of the matter. Sometimes he provides illuminating answers and where he cannot, he frames the questions that must be answered. This is a powerful and much needed book for a world in crisis."--Antonio Damasio
"Manuel Castells unites the mind of a social scientist with the soul of an artist. His trilogy took us to the edge of the millennium. This book takes us beyond to the critical crossroads of the 21st century, where technology, communication, and power converge."--Rosalind Williams, Director, Program on Science, Technology and Society, MIT
Review
"Of much value... Manuel Castells has shaped himself into the most prominent and influential theorist and analyst of the modern communications and network age."--Financial Times
"Provides a bevy of illustrious examples of how grassroots campaigns could use the internet to bring public attention to issues as diverse as climate change and the war in Iraq."--Forbes
"Castells is a synthesizer and meta-theoretician. He reaches far and wide to bring together disparate elements to his arguments. This is his amazing strength as a seminal figure in modern scholarship.... Reading Communication Power is rather like taking a great birding dog out for a walk: every nook and cranny must be sniffed and explored with endearing enthusiasm before moving on in a bound to the next point of discovery."--Political Communication
"Manuel Castells unites the mind of a social scientist with the soul of an artist. His trilogy took us to the edge of the millennium. This book takes us beyond to the critical crossroads of the 21st century, where technology, communication, and power converge."--Rosalind Williams, Dibner Professor and Director, Program on Science, Technology and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"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. ... 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."--W. Russell Neuman, Evans Professor of Media Technology, University of Michigan
"How could Manuel Castells have predicted that now is the time of the perfect storm? I do not know. But I do know that his new book coincides with the largest downturn in global economies since the 1930s, with the most important American election since the 1960s, with a most radical transformation of world politics in many generations, and with the most profound reevaluation of the lives of modern citizens, from what they value to how they communicate. ... This is a powerful and much needed book for a world in crisis."--Antonio Damasio, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California
"That Manuel Castells' new book raises so many difficult questions is testimony to both its richness and timeliness." -- The British Journal of Sociology
"An impressive, interdisclipinary narrative about the politics of contemporary communication that confirms [Castell's] status as one of the world's leading media scholars."
--Contemporary Sociology
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Hailed by
The Financial Times as "the most prominent and influential theorist and analyst of the modern communications and network age," Manuel Castells here offers a ground-breaking account of the modern communication revolution, a dramatic transformation of technology--and of the signals we receive--that is changing the way we feel, think, and behave. And that, writes Castells, is creating a revolution in power.
With his landmark trilogy, The Information Age, Castells offered one of the first comprehensive analyses of how the Internet was creating a networked society. Now he draws on neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and case histories from around the world to explore the psychology of decision making in the new communications environment, highlighting the rise of communication power. He ranges widely, exploring global media deregulation, the misinformation that surrounded the invasion of Iraq, environmental movements, the role of the Internet in the Obama presidential campaign, and media control in Russia and China. In a network society, he writes, politics is fundamentally media politics--and the politics of scandal is its epitome. That fact is behind a worldwide crisis of political legitimacy that challenges the meaning of democracy in much of the world. More fundamentally, Castells argues, the Internet's instant messaging, social networking, and blogging have given rise a new communication system, mass self-communication, that is profoundly altering power relationships.
Deeply researched, far-reaching in scope, and incisively argued, Communication Power offers a profound new understanding of implications of the information revolution.
"Castells has done it again, a masterpiece of global perspective and enviable erudition."
--W. Russell Neuman, Evans Professor of Media Technology, University of Michigan
"A powerful and much needed book for a world in crisis."
--Antonio Damasio, Director, Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California
About the Author
Manuel Castells,
University Professor and Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.Manuel Castells is University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California. He is also Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning, University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 24 years. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, of the Academia Europaea, of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics, and of the British Academy. His main books include the trilogy The Information
Table of Contents
Opening
1. Power in the Network Society
2. Communication in the Digital Age
3. Networks of Mind and Power
4. Programming Communication Networks: Media Politics, Scandal Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy
5. Reprogramming Communication Networks: Social Movements, Insurgent Politics, and the New Public Space
6. Toward a Communication Theory of Power