As a large part of my discussion for this project is around 'big power' vs 'small resistance' his work around the shift towards a networked society could be invaluable. A basic search on wikipedia provides some immediate response to this problem.
Castells maintains that the Information Age can "unleash the power of the mind,"[6] which would dramatically increase the productivity of individuals and lead to greater leisure, allowing individuals to achieve "greater spiritual depth and more environmental consciousness."[6] Such change would be positive, he argues, in that it would cause resource consumption to decrease. The Information Age, The Age of Consumption, and The Network Society are all perspectives attempting to describing modern life as known in the present and to depict the future of society. As Castells suggests, contemporary society may be described as “replacing the antiquated metaphor of the machine with that of the network.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Castells, accessed on 21.11.15)
This is something that helps show his pluarlist viewpoint on the individualising power of the internet. When applied to crowdfunding and the networked model of financing a different form of journalism its possible that Castell's would be encouraging about the potential for some form of power-shift for the press.
Castells, M
2013, Communication
Power, Oxford: OUP Oxford, eBook
Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost, viewed 15 November 2015.
When discussing the question; what is power? Its difficult for Castells not to sound like Gramsci. Domination, embedded, conditioning its all scary marxist stuff!
"What is Power?
Power is the most
fundamental process in society, since society is defined around values and
institutions, and what is valued and institutionalized is defined by power
relationships. Power is the
relational capacity that enables a social actor to influence asymmetrically the
decisions of other social actor(s) in ways that favor the empowered actor’s
will, interests, and values. Power is exercised by means of coercion (or the
possibility of it) and/or by the construction of meaning on the basis of the
discourses through which social actors guide their action. Power relationships
are framed by domination, which is the power that is embedded in the
institutions of society. The relational capacity of power is conditioned, but
not determined, by the structural capacity of domination. Institutions may
engage in power relationships that rely on the domination they exercise over
their subjects." (pg 11)
The history of power and its impact on media control is consistently referred to throughout this book:
Media concentration is not new. History is full of examples of oligopolistic control over communication media, including the priesthood’s control of clay-stylus writing, the Church’s control of the Latin Bible, the chartering of the presses, government mail systems, and military semaphore networks, among others. Wherever we look across history and geography, there is a close association between the concentration of power and the concentration of communication media (Rice, personal communication,2008) (pg74)
But, by using Habermas, he aligns himself with a more pluralistic approach by recognising how it is that individuals can re-address this absence of power structure that institutions wield. The strength and power creation of the public sphere is at the heart of the democratic process and is ultimately what is needed if, in the case of my project, journalism is to become a democratic medium rather than one that used for coercion of the masses.
"Meaning is
constructed in society through the process of
communicative action. Cognitive rationalization provides the basis for the
actions of the actors. So, the ability of civil society to provide the content
of state action through the public sphere (“a network for communicating
information and points of view” [Habermas, 1996:360]) is what
ensures democracy and ultimately creates the conditions for the legitimate
exercise of power: power as representation of the values and interests of
citizens expressed by means of their debate in the public sphere. Thus,
institutional stability is predicated on the capacity to articulate different interests
and values in the democratic process via communication networks" (Habermas,
1989) (pg 12)
Castells also highlights here his beliefs for the potential change that networks can bring
"Thus, the social
dynamics constructed around networks appears to dissolve
society as a stable social form of organization. How-ever, a more
constructive approach to the understanding of the process ofhistorical change is
to conceptualize a new form of society, the networksociety, made up of
specific configurations of global, national, and localnetworks in a
multidimensional space of social interaction. I hypothesizethat relatively
stable configurations built on the intersections of these net-works may provide
the boundaries that could redefine a new “society,”(pg19)
Castells presents an overview of contemporary internet structure and also shows that these networks can also be used by media conglomerates to strengthen their hold over the market and that it is not all one way traffic. The strength of any resistance offered by networks does depend on the collective strength of those nodes and bonds between them.
"Communication in the
Digital Age these “Magnificent
Seven” with the largest diversified Internet/computer companies: Google,
Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Apple. Looking at the
configuration of this global media core, we can observe four inter-related
trends:
1. Media ownership is
increasingly concentrated
2. At the same time,
media conglomerates are now able to deliver a diversity of products over one
platform as well as one product over a diversity of platforms They also form new
products by the combination of digital portions of
different products.
3. The customization
and segmentation of audiences in order to maximize
advertising revenues is
encouraged by the fluid movement of communication products across
platforms.
4. Finally, the
extent to which these strategies are successful is determined by the ability of
internal media networks to find
optimal economies of
synergy that take advantage
of the changing communications environment."
(pg74)
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