Communication Power

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.