Communication Power [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

This book makes the same arguments as the 12 year older book The Power of Identity. In two respects Castells has made considerable progress. The former book was talking about human selves and identities. Now the author has really discovered psychology. Meaning has become a core concept in the analysis of this structural thinker. He borrows from the currently popular work of neuropsychologists such as Antonio Damasio that have made the turn from cognition and reasoned action to biology and emotions. This enables him to make splendid analyses of media politics and political campaigns, mainly in the United States as a combination of rationality and emotions. For example, he describes the systematic campaign of misinformation in the mass media of the Bush administration dragging the American population into the Iraq war and tries to explain why this was successful.
The second advance is more attention to the struggle over networks: they are programmed and reprogrammed. In a 1999 review of the trilogy The Information Age I accused Castells of completely neglecting the design dimension and the social struggle over networks . At that time, his view was that with networks we have created a machine that is dynamic, full of opportunities but controlled be no one. Now he clearly argues that the `logic' of networks could be transformed (p. 36). He tries to show this in a number of case studies in which communication networks are reprogrammed.
The first study is about the environmental movement and the `new culture of nature' (environmental consciousness). `It was the networking between the scientific community, environmental activists and celebrities that brought the issue to the media, and communicated it to the public at large via multimedia networks' (p. 321). The second study describes the global movement against corporate globalization that is predominantly organized via the Internet (e.g. Indymedia) and mobile telephony. The third study reports the use of mobile telephony (SMS) to launch a public outcry against the deliberate manipulation of the Aznar government after the 2004 terrorist attack in Madrid that accused the ETA in stead of Al Qaeda. The final study analyses the Obama presidential primary campaign amply using the Internet. All these cases are used to demonstrate the potential of the media of mass self communication and the Internet generally to organize counter power or change power relationships.
In my view these studies do not convincingly prove Castells' point despite all descriptive evidence supplied. He gives no detailed information about the networks of scientists, activists and celebrities that are supposed to have brought the issue to the media. Public pressure and the own initiative of the traditional mass media played a role at least as important, and the Internet's role was not more relevant than that of the mass media. The organization of the anti- or other globalization movement certainly depends on counter-networking via the new media. However it has proved to be relatively powerless as is testified by the fact that when its `finest' hour came with the bankruptcy of neo-liberalism and the discredit of global capitalism in the credit crisis, it was virtually absent in public opinion and on the streets. A particular SMS call for a demonstration against the Spanish government's misinformation certainly contributed to the mobilization that stirred a part of the electorate to vote against Aznar. However, a number of old media (newspapers and radio-stations) also played an important role in the public outcry, and they had a larger audience. The role of the Internet in the Obama campaign also is exaggerated . Reading about the superiority of the use of the Internet in this campaign on Castells' account one wonders why Obama did not win with a landslide of 10 to 15 percent. In fact Obama did not win the presidency by means of the Internet but by his personal quality as a candidate attracting many new voters. He was saved by his reaction to the credit crisis at the start of September 2008, just two months before the election when he was at the losing end according to the polls. Despite all Internet use.

Clearly, the Internet and other digital media are getting more important in these, and many other cases. Certainly, they have a liberating potential as was recently demonstrated by the oppositional movement in Iran. However, this case also proves the opposite: the remaining control of the far more important mass media by the regime and the attempts to censor the new media. So, my biggest problem with Castells' analysis is that he is very one-sided in highlighting the liberating potential instead of opposite tendencies. For me it is unacceptable to talk about communication power in networks without any treatment of privacy, security and surveillance issues (with the partial exception of Internet censorship in China). Unfortunately, central registration and control also are important potentials of power in networks. Further, Castells completely ignores the problems of the digital divide and the lack of digital skills among at least half of Internet users, even in high-access countries. The liberating potential of mass self-communication will be seen in another light when Internet use in practice would lead to a reinforcement of the `information elite' and big problems to catch up for large parts of the population.

The theoretical parts of this book are very tough reading for non-academic readers of this book, as the author tries to summarize his former work of the Information Age in a very condensed way. Opposed to that, the descriptive parts are relatively easy to read and well written.

In his conclusions Castells claims to present the beginnings of a general communication theory of power. However, it is utterly disappointing that he does so by only presenting a `methodological approach' and a number of very general hypotheses for others to investigate (p. 430). One wonders why he did not do this himself in the 500 plus pages at his disposal. His hypotheses lack sufficient specification for empirical test as he admits himself: `I am not identifying the concrete social actors who are power-holders' (p. 430). This book contains many well-documented and sharply analysed case studies as we are used to read in Castells' work marked by a very high level of expertise. However, the gap between these cases and a real theory of communication power remains large.

Jan A.G.M. van Dijk
Professor of Communication Science and the Sociology of the Information Society University of Twente, The Netherlands

A longer and more academic version of this review will appear in Communications, The European Journal of Communication

Does Castells ever write books of less than 600 pages? He should try. This book is far too too long for the points it makes - power, money media manipulation mixed with new technologies. C.Wright Mills, Chomsky, Habermas and the rest of recent western thought stampede onto the page with little evidence of any theoretical bridle. It is not quite a mess but not quite not one either. A lot of the detail is good and interesting but the overview never comes together. I found myself pushing quickly through blocks of twenty and thirty pages at a time just to get on with it. A much shorter book with a more specific agenda would have been better. I still am undecided whether this worked contributed anything to the debate on media and power or merely rehashed established ideas.

Castells is a big name in communications today, but I was underwhelmed by his book. It seems more suitable for the general public than the scholarly world. I thought it was rather thin conceptually - provocative, but thin. It's worth having a look at to understand what the hype about Castells it, but for that you could also get it from your local library.