Communication Power | Manuel Castells

Description

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

Features

• Manuel Castells is our foremost theorist of the power of communication in modern society
• This book is a natural progression from his “Network Society” trilogy–a powerful, forward-looking analysis of communication in the Network Society
• Builds on some of the themes of Castells’ Internet Galaxy (OUP, 2001), and considers the social and political implications of recent phenomena such as social networking and blogging
• Draws on theories from across the social sciences: politics, sociology, psychology, communication studies, management studies
• Rich and wide-ranging, including examples from the author’s experience of Franco’s Spain, the operation of global media companies, and Barack Obama’s campaign

Reviews

“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

“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

Product Details

608 pages; Numerous figures and tables; 6 1/8 x 9 1/4;ISBN13: 978-0-19-956704-1ISBN10: 0-19-956704-2

About the Author

Manuel Castells is Wallis Annenberg Professor of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and Research Professor of Information Society at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Internet Studies at the University of Oxford. He is the author of twenty-two books, including the three-volume The Information Age.