Communication Power - Hardcover

Castells, Manuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199567042 ISBN 13: 9780199567041

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009

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.

About this title

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 Age: Economy, Society, and Culture (Blackwell, 1996-2003), Communication Power (OUP, 2009), and Networks of Outrage and Hope (Polity, 2012). He was a founding member of the board of the European Research Council and is a member of the Governing Board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

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 c

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0199567042
• ISBN 13: 9780199567041
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 571