Castells and the Media E-Book

Philip N. Howard

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: TM - Theory and Media
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 187

Beschreibung

One of the most prolific and respected scholars today, Manuel Castells has given us a new language for understanding the impact of information and communication technologies on social life. Politicians can no longer run for office without a digital media strategy, new communication technologies are a fundamental infrastructure for the economy, and the internet has become an invaluable tool for cultural production and consumption. Yet as more of our political, economic, and cultural interaction occurs over digital media, the ability to create and manipulate both content and networks becomes real power. Castells and the Media introduces a great thinker, presents original theories about the network society, and encourages readers to use these theories to help them understand the importance of digital media and social networks in their own lives.

Leseprobe

CASTELLS AND THE MEDIA

Theory and Media

Philip N. Howard, Castells and the Media

Paul A. Taylor, Žižek and the Media

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Kittler and the Media

CASTELLS AND THE MEDIA

PHILIP N. HOWARD

polity

Copyright © Philip N. Howard 2011

The right of Philip N. Howard to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2011 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3767-9

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10.75 on 14 pt Janson by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Group Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com

For Professor Castells, an inspiring social scientist

CONTENTS

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

A Network Perspective on the Media

Outline of the Book

1

Castells and the Theory of the Network Society

Intellectual Biography

Publications and Impact

Basic Statements on Network Theory

2

Media Economics and Life Online

The Permanently Beta, Network Enterprise

From Bricks and Mortar to Bandwidth and Servers

The Changing Nature of Media Work

The Death of Distance and Long Tails

The Network Perspective on Economic Life

3

Networks of Power and Politics

Network Campaigns

Media Networks

The Politics of Code and Cultural Production

Privacy and Data Mining

The Network Perspective on Political Life

4

Cultural Industries in a Digital Century

Transforming Cultural Industries

Cultures of Digital Media

Social Networking and Cultural Production

Mediated and Multiple Identities

The Network Perspective on Cultural Life

5

Mobile and Social Media

Networked and Mobile

The Space of Flows and Timeless Time

Cosmopolitan Culture and Cultural Identity

Mobile Politics

The Mobile is the Social

6

Conclusion—Media Rules and the Rules of Media

The Personal and Global Contexts of Networks

Scientific Inquiry in the Network Society

Critical Responses and Alternative Approaches

Remaining Questions and Future Directions of Research

The New Power of Digital Media

Appendix

An Exercise in Visualizing Your Own Digital Networks

An Exercise in Tracking Your Media and Cultural Consumption

An Exercise in Surveillance and Sousveillance—Tracking the Trackers

Notes

References

Glossary/Index

FIGURES

Figure I.1: Global Information Infrastructure, Glowing as Server Locations

Figure I.2: Global Information Infrastructure, Glowing as Traffic between Servers

Figure 3.1: The Power of Digital Networks in Modern P olitical Campaigns

Figure 3.2: Network Relations between Media Firms, through Links between Board Members

Figure 4.1: Network Relations between Media Firms, through Links of Ownership and Content Distribution

Figure 5.1: Two Babies Play with Baby Apps on the Latest iPhone

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was inspired by a series of lectures given by Professor Manuel Castells at the University of Washington in 2010. As a visiting Walker Ames lecturer, Castells also met with students, and joined my graduate seminar for several long conversations. The grace with which he encouraged students to pursue their own lines of inquiry inspired me to find ways of making his ideas and work accessible to a broad audience. And I believe he would say that the participants in the graduate seminar, a well-read group from across the social sciences and humanities, offered constructive critiques and comments on his latest research. I am very grateful to the Simpson Center, directed by Dr Kathleen Woodward, for initiating and supporting the graduate seminar.

Even as a book, this work is a result of digital media networks. First, this book was written and edited in the cloud. It did not appear in material form, and will not appear as such, unless you buy it in material form. The file didn’t even really reside on my hard drive while I was working on it; it was located on a server somewhere in the network. When software crashes or network disconnects necessitated, I used a backup file that did reside on my hard drive, but for the most part I was saving the file to the network. The research for this book was done online; the journals consulted were electronic. I have copies of Castells’ books, but used digital versions of them for searching within the text and interrogating the ideas in non-linear ways.

Second, Castells’ ideas need to be situated in the wider network of media researchers. This book is dedicated to Castells and is about his ideas (though I may put my interpretive spin on some things). It would make for rough reading to offer citations at every sentence, so this book is not an annotated bibliography. I provide direct citation to entry points for important themes and sources of criticism, but the goal is to interest readers in moving on to the original ideas and primary texts. Sometimes this may mean moving on to other scholars and their texts.

Figures I.1 and I.2 appear courtesy of Chris Harrison from http://chrisharrison.net/projects/internetmap/index.html. Figure 3.1 appears courtesy of Gene Keo from http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2008/10/14/a-network-analysis-of-the-obama-08-campaign/. Figure 3.2 was made using the graphing tool at www.theyrule.net. Figure 4.1 is from Manuel Castells and Amelia Arsenault, “The Structure and Dynamics of Global Multi-Media Business Networks” in the International Journal of Communication 2 (2008), 707– 748, and appears courtesy of the authors. Figure 5.1 appears courtesy of me.

For problems with this book I blame Rebecca Fahrig, Werner Colangelo, Carson Fahrig-Colangelo, Josh, Helen, Oscar and Angus Whitkin, Sandy Oh, Tracy Cassavant, Nathalie Oh-Cassavant, Gino Segre, Kate Gordon, and Julia Segre, and the other “friends” who interrupted and complicated my work. Some of the insights in this book have come through teaching, which is itself an important part of the research process. So I must gratefully acknowledge the good and bad questions that came from undergraduate students who have been part of “Basic Concepts of New Media” and the graduate students in the “Communication and Power” seminar. Muzammil Hussain assisted with the compilation of Castells’ articles and book chapters, and Aiden Duffy designed the procedures for extracting Facebook data for the exercise on visualizing social networks. I am grateful for Andrea Drugan’s vision as a Polity editor. I did this book for Hammer and Gordon Howard, and I mean that literally. Not in the sense that I expect them to read it, but in the sense that they are the main reason I look for additional work.

Penang, Malaysia

INTRODUCTION

Manuel Castells is one of the most important contemporary social scientists. His nicely crafted research questions have captivated many students and his findings have both inspired and provoked other scholars. His ideas about media networks and power are simultaneously among the most widely accepted and most often critiqued. Today, conversations about media, networks, and power begin with Castells’ ideas.